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 18

301
morrow. Anne turned her back on the clock shelf. and tried to imagine it wasn’t there.

“Matthew, did you ever study geometry when you went to school.”

“Well now, no, I didn’t,” said Matthew, coming out of his doze with a start.

“I wish you had,” sighed Anne, “because then you’d be able to sympathize with me (begin subscript)^.(end subscript)(begin superscript)Z9 (end superscript)I’m such a dunce at it, Matthew.”

“Well now, I dunno,” said Matthew soothingly. “I guess you’re all right at anything. Mr. Phillips told me last week in Blair’s store at Carmody that you was the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid progress.” A10

“I’m sure I’d get on better with geometry if only he wouldn’t change the letters,” complained Anne. “I learn the proposition off by heart

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note Z9
You can’t sympathize properly if you’ve never studied it. It is casting a cloud over my whole life.

LMM Note A10
'Rapid progress' was his very words. There’s them as runs down Teddy Phillips and says he ain’t much of a teacher; but I guess he’s all right."

Matthew would have thought anyone who praised Anne was “all right."


PHOTO ANNOTATION

a page from a geometry text with labeled triangles and a string of lines explaining their complicated relationships

"if only he wouldn't change the letters": Detail of a sample page from Public School Euclid and Algebra (Toronto, 1894). While any letters can be used to name each angle, the order of the letters does tell one how they relate to one another.