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 21 - (VERSO)

339 393

Wednesday morning came. Anne got up at sunrise because she was too excited to sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast she proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door upon it she drew a long breath.

“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Marilla. But do you think it will rise? Just suppose the baking powder isn’t good? I used it out of the new can. (begin superscript)Y12(end superscript) Marilla,

“We’ll have plenty without it,” was Marilla’s unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.

The cake did rise, however, and came

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note Y12
And Mrs. Lynde says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated. Mrs. Lynde says the Government ought to take the matter up but she says we'll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it.


TEXT ANNOTATION

"so adulterated" [in Y12]: The adulteration of food had become a problem in the late 19(begin superscript)th(end superscript) century before governmental regulations. "Tory" was another name for Conservative (as Grit was for Liberal).

TEXT ANNOTATION

"Marilla,": Neither the manuscript nor the Note pages complete the sentence that Montgomery clearly begins here. The rest of the sentence is in the published novel: "what if that cake doesn’t rise?" Montgomery probably added the missing part when she typed the manuscript, a process she found rather tedious. In a letter to her friend Ephraim Weber, she wrote that: "Typewriting almost finished me. I'd have hired it done but I knew nobody could ever make the MS out, with its innumerable alterations, interlineations and complex notes to be inserted in scores of places" (The Green Gables Letters from L.M. Montgomery to Ephraim Weber, 1905–1909, edited by Wilfred Eggleston, Borealis, 1981, p. 81). She will learn later that this manuscript is very straightforward compared to many of her later manuscripts.