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)

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big scholars he’s getting ready for Queens. He’d never have got the school for another year if his uncle hadn’t been a trustee (begin superscript)K8(end superscript)—I declare, I don’t know what education in this Island is coming to.”  L8

Marilla took Mrs. Rachel’s advice and not another word was said to Anne about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her chores, and played with Diana in the chilly purple autumn twilights; but when she met Gilbert Blythe on the road or encountered him in Sunday School she passed him by with an icy contempt that was no whit thawed by his evident desire to appease her. Even Diana’s efforts as peacemaker were of no avail. Anne had evidently made up her mind to hate Gilbert Blythe forever to the end

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note K8
— the trustee, for he just leads the other two around by the nose, that's what.

LMM Note L8
Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.


TEXT ANNOTATION

"trustee": Local schools were managed by elected members of the community, called trustees, who controlled hiring and conducted examinations to determine students' and teachers' proficiency. As Mrs. Lynde suggests, some trustees had few qualifications and made few useful contributions. One notorious incident about the potential (unfair) dismissal of a progressive Island teacher was captured in Robert Harris's 1885 painting Meeting of the School Trustees and became the subject of a 1992 Historica Canada Heritage Minute.