L M Montgomery

Anne of Avonlea L M Montgomery

A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which her friendscalled auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince EdwardIsland farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines ofVirgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little windswhispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming againstthe dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams thandead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chinpropped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that wereheaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like a great white mountain, was far away ina delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping thedestinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and loftyambitions.