Anne of Green Gables
CHAPTER XI
Anne's Impressions of Sunday-School
"Well, how do you like them?" said Marilla.
Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses
spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been
tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so
serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked up
at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue
shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store.
She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike—plain skirts
fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and
tight as sleeves could be.
"I'll imagine that I like them," said Anne soberly.
"I don't want you to imagine it," said Marilla, offended. "Oh, I can see you
don't like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren't they neat and clean
and new?"
"Yes."
"Then why don't you like them?"
"They're—they're not—pretty," said Anne reluctantly.
"Pretty!" Marilla sniffed. "I didn't trouble my head about getting pretty
dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I'll tell you that
right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any
frills or furbelows about them, and they're all you'll get this summer. The
brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go.
The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I'll expect you to keep them neat
and clean and not to tear them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most
anything after those skimpy wincey things you've been wearing."
"Oh, I AM grateful," protested Anne. "But I'd be ever so much gratefuller
if—if you'd made just one of them with puffed sleeves. Puffed sleeves are so
fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill, Marilla, just to wear a dress
with puffed sleeves."
"Well, you'll have to do without your thrill. I hadn't any material to waste
on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things anyhow. I prefer
the plain, sensible ones."
"But I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and
sensible all by myself," persisted Anne mournfully.
"Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your closet,
and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got a quarterly from Mr.
Bell for you and you'll go to Sunday school tomorrow," said Marilla,
disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.
Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.
"I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves," she whispered
disconsolately. "I prayed for one, but I didn't much expect it on that account.
I didn't suppose God would have time to bother about a little orphan girl's
dress. I knew I'd just have to depend on Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can
imagine that one of them is of snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and
three-puffed sleeves."
The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from going to
Sunday-school with Anne.
"You'll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne." she said. "She'll see
that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave yourself properly. Stay
to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to show you our pew. Here's a cent
for collection. Don't stare at people and don't fidget. I shall expect you to
tell me the text when you come home."
Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen,
which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of
skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure.
Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the extreme plainness of which
had likewise much disappointed Anne, who had permitted herself secret visions of
ribbon and flowers. The latter, however, were supplied before Anne reached the
main road, for being confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of
wind-stirred buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally
garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people might have
thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped gaily down the road,
holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink and yellow very proudly.
When she had reached Mrs. Lynde's house she found that lady gone. Nothing
daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she found a
crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites and blues and
pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with
her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little girls had already heard queer
stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the
hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the
trees and flowers like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each
other behind their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later
on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson's class.
Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school class for
twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed questions from the
quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the particular little girl she
thought ought to answer the question. She looked very often at Anne, and Anne,
thanks to Marilla's drilling, answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she
understood very much about either question or answer.
She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every
other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that life was
really not worth living without puffed sleeves.
"Well, how did you like Sunday school?" Marilla wanted to know when Anne came
home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane, so Marilla was
spared the knowledge of that for a time.
"I didn't like it a bit. It was horrid."
"Anne Shirley!" said Marilla rebukingly.
Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny's leaves,
and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.
"They might have been lonesome while I was away," she explained. "And now
about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs. Lynde was
gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with a lot of other
little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while the opening
exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully long prayer. I would have been
dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadn't been sitting by that window.
But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that
and imagined all sorts of splendid things."
"You shouldn't have done anything of the sort. You should have listened to
Mr. Bell."
"But he wasn't talking to me," protested Anne. "He was talking to God and he
didn't seem to be very much inter-ested in it, either. I think he thought God
was too far off though. There was a long row of white birches hanging over the
lake and the sunshine fell down through them, 'way, 'way down, deep into the
water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I
just said, 'Thank you for it, God,' two or three times."
"Not out loud, I hope," said Marilla anxiously.
"Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last and
they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson's class. There were
nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried to imagine mine
were puffed, too, but I couldn't. Why couldn't I? It was as easy as could be to
imagine they were puffed when I was alone in the east gable, but it was awfully
hard there among the others who had really truly puffs."
"You shouldn't have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school. You
should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it."
"Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so
many. I don't think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were lots I
wanted to ask her, but I didn't like to because I didn't think she was a kindred
spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a paraphrase. She asked me if I
knew any. I told her I didn't, but I could recite, 'The Dog at His Master's
Grave' if she liked. That's in the Third Royal Reader. It isn't a really truly
religious piece of poetry, but it's so sad and melancholy that it might as well
be. She said it wouldn't do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase
for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it's splendid. There
are two lines in particular that just thrill me.
"'Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
In Midian's evil day.'
"I don't know what 'squadrons' means nor 'Midian,' either, but it sounds SO
tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it. I'll practice it all
the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss Rogerson—because Mrs. Lynde was too
far away—to show me your pew. I sat just as still as I could and the text was
Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If
I was a minister I'd pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,
too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn't think he was a
bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn't enough
imagination. I didn't listen to him very much. I just let my thoughts run and I
thought of the most surprising things."
Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was
hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had said,
especially about the minister's sermons and Mr. Bell's prayers, were what she
herself had really thought deep down in her heart for years, but had never given
expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret, unuttered, critical
thoughts had suddenly taken visible and accusing shape and form in the person of
this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.