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 25 - (VERSO)

369 443

requiring explanation and consultation, Matthew felt that he must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson’s, where Samuel (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)or his son(end superscript) would wait on him.

Alas! Matthew did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife’s and a very dashing young person indeed. (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)V14(end superscript) She was dressed with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets that glittered and rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands. Matthew was covered with confusion at finding her there at all; and those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.

“What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Cuthbert?” Miss Lucilla Harris

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note V14
with a huge, drooping pompadour, big (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)rolling(end superscript) brown eyes, and a most extensive and bewildering smile.


TEXT ANNOTATION

"Lawson's": The general store, like the community post office (in the Macneill kitchen) was a meeting place for news and social interchange. Comic memorable lines from Anne of Green Gables–The Musical(begin superscript)TM(end superscript) include these: "The general store is just the place / To meet the needs of the human race."

TEXT ANNOTATION

The tragic phrase "one fell swoop," from Macbeth IV. iii. 219, had long been used as a comic exaggeration.

PHOTO ANNOTATION

ink sketch of a woman in profile with her hair swooping over her forehead and an long curl

"drooping pompadour" [in V14]: A hairstyle of large puffs and twists that brought the hair swooping back from the forehead into a topknot or roll. Many "Gibson girls" wore varieties of pompadours. One of Charles Dana Gibson's most famous drawings, called "Woman: The Eternal Question" (1905), was actually a drawing of Evelyn Nesbit, the same iconic actress that Montgomery had pinned as "her ideal Anne."