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 2

27

beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me and I was imagining all the things that might have happened to prevent me. I had made up my mind that if you didn’t come for me tonight I’d go down the track che to that big wild cherry tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? (begin superscript)C1(end superscript) and I was quite sure you would come for me me in the morning, if you didn’t tonight.”

Matthew had taken the (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)scrawny(end superscript) little hand awkwardly in his; then and there he decided what to do (L.0,3.,0)  He could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that there had been a mistake; he would take her home

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note C1
You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn't you?


TEXT ANNOTATION

"big wild cherry tree at the bend": Montgomery is showing that Anne is already conscious of the "bend in the road," or track in this case, preparing the reader, perhaps, for Anne's creation of what will become her signature metaphor at the end of the novel.

TEXT ANNOTATION

"dwelling marble halls" [in C1]: Rea Wilmshurst identified the allusion to marble halls from Alfred Bunn's song "I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls" in Act II of Michael William Balfe's (and Alfred Bunn's) opera The Bohemian Girl.

TEXT ANNOTATION

"(begin strikethrough)(L.0,3.,0)(end strikethrough)": A puzzling insertion in the manuscript. Is it in any way connected to the mystery numbers at the top of the verso pages?

TEXT ANNOTATION

"to prevent me": This should say "to prevent you," as it does in the published edition of the novel.