Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Author:L.M. Montgomery [Montgomery, L.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0553213156
Publisher: Penguin Publishing
Published: 2009-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

26

Nan and Di were going to school. They started the last week in August. ‘Will we know everything by night, Mummy?’ asked Di solemnly the first morning. Now, in early September, Anne and Susan had got used to it, and even took pleasure in seeing the two mites trip off every morning, so tiny and carefree and neat, thinking going to school quite an adventure. They always took an apple in their basket for teacher and they wore frocks of pink and blue ruffled gingham. Since they did not look in the least alike, they were never dressed alike. Diana, with her red hair, could not wear pink, but it suited Nan, who was much the prettier of the Ingleside twins. She had brown eyes, brown hair, and a lovely complexion, of which she was quite aware even at seven. A certain starriness had gone to the fashioning of her. She held her head proudly, with her little saucy chin a wee bit in evidence, and so was already thought rather ‘stuck-up’.

‘She’ll imitate all her mother’s tricks and poses,’ said Mrs Alice Davies. ‘She has all her airs and graces already, if you ask me.’

The twins were dissimilar in more than looks. Di, in spite of her physical resemblance to her mother, was very much her father’s child, so far as disposition and qualities went. She had the beginnings of his practical bent, his plain common sense, his twinkling sense of humour. Nan had inherited in full her mother’s gift of imagination and was already making life interesting for herself in her own way. For example, she had had no end of excitement this summer making bargains with God, the gist of the matter being, ‘If you’ll do such-and-such a thing I’ll do such-and-such a thing.’

All the Ingleside children had been started in life with the old classic, ‘Now I lay me’… then promoted to ‘Our Father’… then encouraged to make their own small petitions also in whatever language they chose. What gave Nan the idea that God might be induced to grant her petitions by promises of good behaviour or displays of fortitude would be hard to say. Perhaps a certain rather young and pretty Sunday School teacher was indirectly responsible for it by her frequent admonitions that if they were not good girls God would not do this or that for them. It was easy to turn this idea inside out and come to the conclusion that if you were this or that, did this or that, you had a right to expect that God would do the things you wanted. Nan’s first ‘bargain’ in the spring had been so successful that it outweighed some failures and she had gone on all summer. Nobody knew of it, not even Di. Nan hugged her secret and took to praying at sundry times and in divers places, instead of only at night. Di did not approve of this and said so.

‘Don’t mix God up with everything,’ she told Nan severely. ‘You make Him too common.

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