Over the girls at Patty’s Place was falling the shadow of April examinations. They were studying hard; even Phil had settled down to text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.
“I’m going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics,” she announced calmly. “I could take the one in Greek easily, but I’d rather take the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas that I’m really enormously clever.”
“Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked4 smile than for all the brains you carry under your curls,” said Anne.
“When I was a girl it wasn’t considered lady-like to know anything about Mathematics,” said Aunt Jamesina. “But times have changed. I don’t know that it’s all for the better. Can you cook, Phil?”
“No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and it was a failure—flat in the middle and hilly round the edges. You know the kind. But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest to learn to cook don’t you think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship will also enable me to learn cooking just as well?”
“Maybe,” said Aunt Jamesina cautiously. “I am not decrying5 the higher education of women. My daughter is an M.A. She can cook, too. But I taught her to cook BEFORE I let a college professor teach her Mathematics.”
In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford, saying that she and Miss Maria had decided6 to remain abroad for another year.
“So you may have Patty’s Place next winter, too,” she wrote. “Maria and I are going to run over Egypt. I want to see the Sphinx once before I die.”
“Fancy those two dames7 ‘running over Egypt’! I wonder if they’ll look up at the Sphinx and knit,” laughed Priscilla.
“I’m so glad we can keep Patty’s Place for another year,” said Stella. “I was afraid they’d come back. And then our jolly little nest here would be broken up—and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruel world of boardinghouses again.”
“I’m off for a tramp in the park,” announced Phil, tossing her book aside. “I think when I am eighty I’ll be glad I went for a walk in the park tonight.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anne.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you, honey.”
They captured in their ramble8 all the mysteries and magics of a March evening. Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great, white, brooding silence—a silence which was yet threaded through with many little silvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears. The girls wandered down a long pineland aisle9 that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep-red, overflowing10 winter sunset.
“I’d go home and write a poem this blessed minute if I only knew how,” declared Phil, pausing in an open space where a rosy11 light was staining the green tips of the pines. “It’s all so wonderful here—this great, white stillness, and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking.”
“‘The woods were God’s first temples,’” quoted Anne softly. “One can’t help feeling reverent12 and adoring in such a place. I always feel so near Him when I walk among the pines.”
“Anne, I’m the happiest girl in the world,” confessed Phil suddenly.
“So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last?” said Anne calmly.
“Yes. And I sneezed three times while he was asking me. Wasn’t that horrid13? But I said ‘yes’ almost before he finished—I was so afraid he might change his mind and stop. I’m besottedly happy. I couldn’t really believe before that Jonas would ever care for frivolous14 me.”
“Phil, you’re not really frivolous,” said Anne gravely. “‘Way down underneath15 that frivolous exterior16 of yours you’ve got a dear, loyal, womanly little soul. Why do you hide it so?”
“I can’t help it, Queen Anne. You are right—I’m not frivolous at heart. But there’s a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and I can’t take it off. As Mrs. Poyser says, I’d have to be hatched over again and hatched different before I could change it. But Jonas knows the real me and loves me, frivolity17 and all. And I love him. I never was so surprised in my life as I was when I found out I loved him. I’d never thought it possible to fall in love with an ugly man. Fancy me coming down to one solitary18 beau. And one named Jonas! But I mean to call him Jo. That’s such a nice, crisp little name. I couldn’t nickname Alonzo.”
“What about Alec and Alonzo?”
“Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of them. It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it possible that I might. They felt so badly I just cried over both of them—howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It’s very delightful19 to feel so sure, and know it’s your own sureness and not somebody else’s.”
“Do you suppose you’ll be able to keep it up?”
“Making up my mind, you mean? I don’t know, but Jo has given me a splendid rule. He says, when I’m perplexed20, just to do what I would wish I had done when I shall be eighty. Anyhow, Jo can make up his mind quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable to have too much mind in the same house.”
“What will your father and mother say?”
“Father won’t say much. He thinks everything I do right. But mother WILL talk. Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as her nose. But in the end it will be all right.”
“You’ll have to give up a good many things you’ve always had, when you marry Mr. Blake, Phil.”
“But I’ll have HIM. I won’t miss the other things. We’re to be married a year from next June. Jo graduates from St. Columbia this spring, you know. Then he’s going to take a little mission church down on Patterson Street in the slums. Fancy me in the slums! But I’d go there or to Greenland’s icy mountains with him.”
“And this is the girl who would NEVER marry a man who wasn’t rich,” commented Anne to a young pine tree.
“Oh, don’t cast up the follies21 of my youth to me. I shall be poor as gaily22 as I’ve been rich. You’ll see. I’m going to learn how to cook and make over dresses. I’ve learned how to market since I’ve lived at Patty’s Place; and once I taught a Sunday School class for a whole summer. Aunt Jamesina says I’ll ruin Jo’s career if I marry him. But I won’t. I know I haven’t much sense or sobriety, but I’ve got what is ever so much better—the knack23 of making people like me. There is a man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting. He says, ‘If you can’t thine like an electric thtar thine like a candlethtick.’ I’ll be Jo’s little candlestick.”
“Phil, you’re incorrigible24. Well, I love you so much that I can’t make nice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I’m heart-glad of your happiness.”
“I know. Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with real friendship, Anne. Some day I’ll look the same way at you. You’re going to marry Roy, aren’t you, Anne?”
“My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who ‘refused a man before he’d axed her’? I am not going to emulate25 that celebrated26 lady by either refusing or accepting any one before he ‘axes’ me.”
“All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you,” said Phil candidly27. “And you DO love him, don’t you, Anne?”
“I—I suppose so,” said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be blushing while making such a confession28; but she was not; on the other hand, she always blushed hotly when any one said anything about Gilbert Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and Christine Stuart were nothing to her—absolutely nothing. But Anne had given up trying to analyze29 the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course she was in love with him—madly so. How could she help it? Was he not her ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that pleading voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious30? And what a charming sonnet31 he had sent her, with a box of violets, on her birthday! Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff of its kind, too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare—even Anne was not so deeply in love as to think that. But it was very tolerable magazine verse. And it was addressed to HER—not to Laura or Beatrice or the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley. To be told in rhythmical32 cadences33 that her eyes were stars of the morning—that her cheek had the flush it stole from the sunrise—that her lips were redder than the roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows34. But then, Gilbert could see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story—and he had not seen the point of it. She recalled the chummy laugh she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting in the long run. But who could expect a melancholy35, inscrutable hero to see the humorous side of things? It would be flatly unreasonable36.
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1
meekest
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| adj.温顺的，驯服的( meek的最高级 ) | |
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tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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decrying
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| v.公开反对，谴责( decry的现在分词 ) | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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dames
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| n.（在英国）夫人（一种封号），夫人（爵士妻子的称号）( dame的名词复数 )；女人 | |
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ramble
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| v.漫步，漫谈，漫游；n.漫步，闲谈，蔓延 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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overflowing
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| n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式 | |
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rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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reverent
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| adj.恭敬的，虔诚的 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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knack
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| n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法 | |
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incorrigible
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| adj.难以纠正的，屡教不改的 | |
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emulate
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| v.努力赶上或超越，与…竞争；效仿 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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29
analyze
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| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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envious
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| adj.嫉妒的，羡慕的 | |
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31
sonnet
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| n.十四行诗 | |
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rhythmical
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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cadences
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| n.（声音的）抑扬顿挫( cadence的名词复数 )；节奏；韵律；调子 | |
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34
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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