Lucy Maud Montgomery

  to
                          my former teacher
                         HATTIE GORDON SMITH
                    in grateful remembrance of her
                       sympathy and encouragement

               Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
                       The careful ways of duty,
                 Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
                     Are flowing curves of beauty.
                                                  -WHITTIER
 
  I
  An Irate Neighbor

    A tall,
           slim girl,
         "half-past sixteen,"
            with serious gray eyes
               and hair
              which her friends called auburn,
           had sat
               down on
                   the broad red sandstone doorstep
              of a Prince Edward
                  Island farmhouse
                   one ripe afternoon
                 in August,
         firmly resolved
              to construe so
                   many lines of Virgil.

    But an August afternoon,
           with blue
              hazes scarfing the harvest slopes,
         little winds
              whispering elfishly in the poplars,
           and a dancing slendor
               of red poppies outflaming
             against the dark coppice
                   of young firs
                 in a corner
                       of the cherry orchard,
         was fitter for dreams
               than dead languages.

    The Virgil soon
          slipped unheeded to the ground,
           and Anne,
         her chin
              propped on her clasped hands,
           and her eyes
               on the splendid mass
                   of fluffy clouds
             that were
                  heaping up
                   just over Mr. J.
                     A. Harrison's house
                       like a great white mountain,
         was far
              away in a delicious world
             where a certain schoolteacher
                was doing a wonderful work,
           shaping the destinies
               of future statesmen,
         and inspiring youthful minds
               and hearts
             with high and lofty ambitions.

    To be sure,
           if you
            came down to harsh facts
        . . .which,
           it must be confessed,
         Anne seldom did
             until she had to
        . . .i

    t did not seem likely
         that there was much
              promising material
                   for celebrities
                 in Avonlea school;
        but you could never tell
             what might happen
               if a teacher
                  used her influence for good.

  Anne had certain rose-tinted
             ideals of
         what a teacher might accomplish
           if she only
            went the right way
                   about it;
        and she
            was in the midst
                   of a delightful scene,
           forty years hence,
         with a famous personage
        . . .just exactly
             what he
                was to be famous for
                    was left in convenient haziness,
           but Anne thought it
            would be rather nice
                  to have
                       him a college president
                      or a Canadian premier
        . . .b

    owing low
           over her wrinkled hand and
          assuring her
         that it was she
           who had first
              kindled his ambition,
           and that all his success
               in life
            was due to the lessons
             she had
                  instilled so long ago
                       in Avonlea school.

    This pleasant vision
        was shattered
               by a most unpleasant interruption.

  A demure little
    Jersey cow came
         scuttling down the lane
            and five seconds later
                Mr. Harrison arrived
        . . .if
         "arrived"
            be not
               too mild a term
              to describe the manner
                   of his irruption
                 into the yard.

    He bounced over the fence
         without waiting
              to open the gate,
           and angrily confronted astonished Anne,
         who had risen
               to her feet and stood
             looking at him
                   in some bewilderment.

    Mr. Harrison
     was their new righthand
             neighbor and
         she had never
              met him before,
           although she
            had seen
                   him once or twice.

    In early April,
           before Anne had come
             home from Queen's,
         Mr. Robert Bell,
           whose farm
              adjoined the Cuthbert place
                   on the west,
         had sold out and
              moved to Charlottetown.

    His farm
        had been
              bought by
                a certain Mr.
                  J. A. Harrison,
           whose name,
         and the fact
             that he
                was a New Brunswick man,
           were all
             that was known about him.

    But before
         he had been a month
               in Avonlea
         he had
             won the reputation of
            being an odd person
     . . ."a crank,"
    Mrs. Rachel Lynde said.

    Mrs. Rachel
        was an outspoken lady,
           as those of you
             who may have already
                 made her acquaintance
                will remember.