Verso Pages
These back-of-page seemingly random, out-of-order scrap pieces are drafts of Montgomery’s early short stories and poems. Some were already published when she drafted Anne in 1905 and 1906, and others were probably typed up and kept elsewhere. Some verso scrap sheets show early experiments: “A Baking of Gingersnaps” (1895) was her first published short story; she tests the pen names Maud Cavendish and Maud Eglinton. After Chapter 15, she started writing Anne front-to-back. Why did she switch from scrap pages to fresh sheets?
View an index of the verso contents here, or explore the full collection of Verso pages below:
Chap. 30. The Queen’s Class is organized
Marilla laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late. It was nearly dark, for the dull November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the fire dancing red flames in the stove. Anne was curled up ^Turk-fashion on the hearth-rug, ^A17 She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her ^parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her471 544
that it was rather sinful to set one’s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne and perhaps she performed a sort of ^unconscious penance for this by being stricter ^and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy ^and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Marilla.
“Anne,” said Marilla abruptly, “Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana.”
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“Was she. Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t in. Why didn’t you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the
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men and the older she gets the worse she is. ^D17 Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn’t quite made up her mind though because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. We Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn’t becoming to talk of childish matters. It’s such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday and talked to us about it. She said we couldn’t
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Anne, if you’ll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.”
“About me?” Anne looked rather scared scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:
“Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon ^when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner-hour and I had just got to the chariot-race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out – although I felt sure Ben Hur must win because it wouldn’t be poetical justice if he didn’t – so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my
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Miss Stacy to forgive me and I’d never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn’t require that and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn’t very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all.”
“Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, ^and it’s only your guilty conscience that’s’ the matter with you. You have no business to be taking story books to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn’t so much as allowed to look at a novel.”
“Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it’s really such a religious book?” protested Anne. Of course it’s a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday and I only read it on week-days. And I never read any book now
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Well, I guess I’ll light the lamp and get to work,” said Marilla. “I see plainly that you don’t want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say. You’re more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else.”
“Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it,” cried Anne ^contritely. “I won’t say another word – not one. I know I talk too much but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don’t, you’d give me some credit for it. Please tell me, Marilla.”
“Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen’s. She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask Matthew and me if we would like
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here, but nobody knows what is going to happen in this uncertain world and it’s just as well to be prepared. So you can join the Queen’s class if you like, Anne.”
“Oh, Marilla, thank you.” Anne flung her arms about Marilla’s waist and looked up earnestly into her face. “I’m so extremely grateful to you and Matthew. And I’ll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a credit to you. I warn you not to expect ver mu much in geometry but I think I can hold my own in anything else if I work hard.”
“I daresay you’ll get along well enough. Miss Stacy says you are bright and diligent.” ^G17 “You needn’t rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books. There is no hurry.
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Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane and Moody Spurgeon MacPherson joined it. Diana Barry did not, as her parents did not intend to send her to Queen’s. This was seemed nothing short of a calamity to Anne. Never, since the night in which Minnie May had had the croup, had she and Diana been separated in anything. On the evening when the Queen’s class first remained in school for the extra lessons and Anne saw Diana go ^slowly out with the others, it was al to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing ^impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat and she
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she won’t have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity—they have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he couldn’t be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it isn’t wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh. He’s such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face and his little blue eyes ^and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie Sloane says he’s going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament but Mrs. Lynde says he’ll never succeed at that
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Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer-meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley he simply ignored and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself ^with a toss of the head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, ^feminine little heart she knew that she did care and that if she had
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she was and how much she wished she hadn’t been so proud proud and horrid! She determined to “shroud her feelings in deepest oblivion” and it may be stated here and now that she did it so successfully that Gilbert, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Charlie Sloane, unmercifully, continually and undeservedly.
Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies. For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the neck-
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lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days stretched ^rosily before them.
“But you’ve done good work this past year,” Miss Stacy told them on the last evening, “and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year.” M17
“Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?” asked Josie Pye.
Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask Miss Stacy but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors rumours
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the heart to go on with my studies at all if you another teacher came here”.
When Anne got home that night she stacked all her text-books away in an old truck trunk ^in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box.
“I’m not even going to look at a school-book in vacation,” she told Marilla. “I’ve studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I’ve pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first book off by heart, even when the letters are changed. I just feel tired of everything sensible and I’m going to let my imagination run loose riot for the summer. Oh, you needn’t be alarmed, Marilla. I’ll only let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time this summer for maybe it’s the last
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Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables.
“Matthew had a bad spell with his heart on Thursday,” Marll Marilla explained, “and I didn’t feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he’s all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I’m anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful and to avoid avoid excitement. That’s easy enough, for Matthew doesn’t go about looking for excitement by any means ^and never did but he’s not to do any very heavy work either and you might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay off your things, Rachel. You’ll
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have turned out so well that first day I was here three years ago,” said Mrs. Rachel. “Lawful heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to Thomas, says I, ‘Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert’ll live to rue the step she’s took.’ But I was mistaken and I’m not one rea real glad of it. I ain’t one of those kind of people, Marilla, as never can be bro brought to own up that they’ve made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it weren’t no wonder for an odder, unexpecteder ^witch of a child there never was in this world, ^that’s what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules that worked with other children. Its nothing short of wonderful how she’s improved