Chapter 33 - (VERSO)
542 616
are you going to recite, Anne? And are you nervous?”
“Not a bit. I’ve recited so often (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)in public(end superscript) I dont mind at all now. I’ve decided to give “The Maiden’s Vow.” It’s so pathetic. Laura Spencer is going to give a comic recitation, but I’d rather make people cry than laugh.”
“What will you recite if they en they encore you?”
“They won’t dream of encoring me,” scoffed Anne, who was not without her own secret hopes that they would, (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)F18(end superscript) “There are Billy and Jane now—I hear the wheels. Come on.”
Billy Andrews insisted that Anne should ride on the front seat with him, so she unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sit back with
LMM Notes
LMM Note F18
and already visioned herself telling Matthew all about it at the next morning's breakfast table.
[This should have been numbered H18; that means that there are two F18s and two G18s; she gets back on track with I18 a few pages later.]
TEXT ANNOTATION
"The Maiden’s Vow": The Annotated Anne (p. 351, n. 11.) suggests that there are two possible "candidates" for this piece. There is "Mars La Tour, or The Maiden’s Vow" by Stafford MacGregor, which is heart-rending and dramatic (but Stafford's piece was privately published, and it would be hard to trace how Montgomery found it). And there is "Maiden's Vow" by Caroline Oliphant, but the editors argue that this latter piece is too "crisp and undramatic" to be the piece Anne recites so movingly. Or, perhaps, Montgomery meant no antecedent for Anne's stirring performance, leaving the reader to imagine the kind of romantic verse Anne would relish.