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Isn't it

lovely? Don't you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn't it

be nice if roses could talk? I'm sure they could tell us such lovely

things. And isn't pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love

it, but I can't wear it. Redheaded people can't wear pink, not even in

imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she

was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?"

"No, I don't know as I ever did," said Marilla mercilessly, "and I

shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either."

Anne sighed.

"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of

buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it

over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself," said Marilla.

"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a

heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a

graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can

imagine isn't it? I'm rather glad I have one. Are we going across the

Lake of Shining Waters today?"

"We're not going over Barry's pond, if that's what you mean by your Lake

of Shining Waters. We're going by the shore road."

"Shore road sounds nice," said Anne dreamily. "Is it as nice as it

sounds? Just when you said 'shore road' I saw it in a picture in my

mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I

don't like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just

sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?"

"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking you might as

well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself."

"Oh, what I KNOW about myself isn't really worth telling," said Anne

eagerly. "If you'll only let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself

you'll think it ever so much more interesting."

"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts.

Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?"

"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts

with a little sigh. "And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia.

My father's name was Walter Shirley, and he was a teacher in the

Bolingbroke High School. My mother's name was Bertha Shirley. Aren't

Walter and Bertha lovely names? I'm so glad my parents had nice names.

It would be a real disgrace to have a father named--well, say Jedediah,

wouldn't it?"

"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as long as he behaves

himself," said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good

and useful moral.

"Well, I don't know." Anne looked thoughtful. "I read in a book once

that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been

able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was

called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been

a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm sure it would

have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school,

too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A

husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were

a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a

weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I've never seen that

house, but I've imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have

had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and

lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in

all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born

in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I

was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I

was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge

than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn't you?