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 28

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receive Elaine the lily maid.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few minutes it was necessary for Anne Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and gaze and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. The sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne did not know this but it did not take her long to see realize that she was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the


TEXT ANNOTATION

"Anne Elaine": This little change, from "Anne" to "Elaine," enhances the humour of the whole scene. With the girls themselves giving stage directions earlier in the scene, the comic timing and melodrama are underscored, too. Montgomery was a proficient director of plays and local drama as she proved later in her life in Norval, Ontario, especially.