Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 15 - (VERSO)

247
on Eben Wright’s house, where the master boarded. When they saw Mr. Phillips emerging therefrom they race for the schoolhouse; but the distance being about twice as long three times longer than Mr. Wright’s lane, they were very apt to arrive there, breathless + gasping, some three minutes too late.

On the following day Mr. Phillips was seized with one of his spasmodic fut fits of reform and announced before going home to dinner that he should expect to see all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone who came in late would be punished.

All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But spruce groves are seductive and (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)yellow(end superscript) nuts of gum beguiling; they picked and loitered



TEXT ANNOTATION

"pick a chew": Spruce gum: spruce trees produce a thick, chewable, flavourful resin. On their honeymoon, Maud (a little homesick for Canada) and Ewan Macdonald discovered a grove of spruce trees in Horncliffe Glen, in northern England, and thoroughly enjoyed picking and chewing gum with an enthusiasm their Scottish traveling companions could not understand: "Spruce gum and the delights of picking it seem quite unknown in Scotland." (Complete Journals, 1911–1917, August 20, 1911, p. 24).