“Marilla isn’t to blame for what you thought. Bad things aren’t always exciting. They’re very often just nasty and stupid.”
“It was awful funny to see Marilla and you looking down the well, though,” said Davy, hugging his knees.
Anne kept a sober face until she got downstairs and then she collapsed on the sitting room lounge and laughed until her sides ached.
“I wish you’d tell me the joke,” said Marilla, a little grimly. “I haven’t seen much to laugh at today.”
“You’ll laugh when you hear this,” assured Anne. And Marilla did laugh, which showed how much her education had advanced since the adoption of Anne. But she sighed immediately afterwards.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have told him that, although I heard a minister say it to a child once. But he did aggravate me so. It was that night you were at the Carmody concert and I was putting him to bed. He said he didn’t see the good of praying until he got big enough to be of some importance to God. Anne, I do not know what we are going to do with that child. I never saw his beat. I’m feeling clean discouraged.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Marilla. Remember how bad I was when I came here.”
“Anne, you never were bad . . . never. I see that now, when I’ve learned what real badness is. You were always getting into terrible scrapes, I’ll admit, but your motive was always good. Davy is just bad from sheer love of it.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think it is real badness with him either,” pleaded Anne. “It’s just mischief. And it is rather quiet for him here, you know. He has no other boys to play with and his mind has to have something to occupy it. Dora is so prim and proper she is no good for a boy’s playmate. I really think it would be better to let them go to school, Marilla.”
“No,” said Marilla resolutely, “my father always said that no child should be cooped up in the four walls of a school until it was seven years old, and Mr. Allan says the same thing. The twins can have a few lessons at home but go to school they shan’t till they’re seven.”