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

L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables Manuscript Scan

Chapter 2

said Matthew.

“Mrs. Spencer said my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it isn’t — it’s firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Spencer said your place was named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were trees ^all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. _^^M1 Is there a brook anywhere near Green Gables?[“] I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer that.”

“Well, now, yes, there’s one just below the house.”

“Fancy! It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. ~~Dreams~~ I never expected I would, though. Dreams don’t often come true, do they? ^N1 But just now I feel _^^{pretty nearly} perfectly happy. I can’t feel perfectly happy because — well, what colour would you call this?”

LMM Notes

LMM Note M1

and there weren't any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny teeny things out front with little white washed cagey things about them. They looked just like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you poor little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and the little mosses and Junebells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in your branches you could grow, _^^{couldn't you?} But you can't where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little trees.' I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so attached to things like that; don't you?