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 5

81

homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful.
I3
I’m glad she was satisfied with me anyhow. I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her—because she didn’t live very long after that, you see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father died four days afterwards from fever, too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end, (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)so Mrs. Thomas said,(end superscript) what to do with me. You see, nobody wanted me even

 

LMM Notes

LMM Note I3
I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn't you?


TEXT ANNOTATION

"She died of fever when I was just three months old": Another echo of Montgomery's own life, for her mother had died when she was just a toddler.