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 22

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manse to-morrow afternoon! Mr. Allan left the letter for me at the post-office. Just look at it, Marilla. ‘Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables.’ That is the first time I was ever called ‘Miss.’ Such a thrill as it gave me!” H13

“Mrs. Allan told me she meant to have all the members of her Sunday School class to tea in turn,” said Marilla, regarding the wonderful event very coolly. “You needn’t get in such a fever over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child.”

For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All “spirit and fire and dew” as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note H13
I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.


TEXT ANNOTATION

"to-morrow afternoon!": This final exclamation point resembles a question mark. Judging by her handwriting, this page was written (or copied?) in haste.

PHOTO ANNOTATION

one image of a worn green book cover with gilt edges and the other with lines of poetry on yellowed paper

"spirit and fire and dew": From Robert Browning’s "Evelyn Hope," III.3–4. Montgomery used two complete lines from this poem for the epigraph in the published novel: "The good stars met in your horoscope, / Made you of spirit and fire and dew." Pictured here is Montgomery's own copy of Browning's poems, a gift of her friend and correspondent, George MacMillan, in 1911.

The page reads,
"Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew—
And, just because I was thrice as old
And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was nought to each, must I be told?
We were fellow mortals, nought beside?"
Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph, L.M. Montgomery Collection