“How did William Obadiah take it?” queried Anne.
“Oh, he rumpussed a bit. But he’s going to see a skinny old maid in Millersville now, and I guess she’ll take him fast enough. She’ll make him a better wife than his first did. W.O. never wanted to marry her. He just asked her to marry him ’cause his father wanted him to, never dreaming but that she’d say ‘no.’ But mind you, she said ‘yes.’ There was a predicament for you. Jog along, black mare. She was a great housekeeper, but most awful mean. She wore the same bonnet for eighteen years. Then she got a new one and W.O. met her on the road and didn’t know her. Jog along, black mare. I feel that I’d a narrer escape. I might have married him and been most awful miserable, like my poor cousin, Jane Ann. Jane Ann married a rich man she didn’t care anything about, and she hasn’t the life of a dog. She come to see me last week and says, says she, ‘Sarah Skinner, I envy you. I’d rather live in a little hut on the side of the road with a man I was fond of than in my big house with the one I’ve got.’ Jane Ann’s man ain’t such a bad sort, nuther, though he’s so contrary that he wears his fur coat when the thermometer’s at ninety. The only way to git him to do anything is to coax him to do the opposite. But there ain’t any love to smooth things down and it’s a poor way of living. Jog along, black mare. There’s Janet’s place in the hollow—‘Wayside,’ she calls it. Quite pictureaskew, ain’t it? I guess you’ll be glad to git out of this, with all them mail bags jamming round you.”
“Yes, but I have enjoyed my drive with you very much,” said Anne sincerely.
“Git away now!” said Mrs. Skinner, highly flattered. “Wait till I tell Thomas that. He always feels dretful tickled when I git a compliment. Jog along, black mare. Well, here we are. I hope you’ll git on well in the school, miss. There’s a short cut to it through the ma’sh back of Janet’s. If you take that way be awful keerful. If you once got stuck in that black mud you’d be sucked right down and never seen or heard tell of again till the day of judgment, like Adam Palmer’s cow. Jog along, black mare.”
Chapter XXXI
Anne to Philippa
“Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.
“Well-beloved, it’s high time I was writing you. Here am I, installed once more as a country ‘schoolma’am’ at Valley Road, boarding at ‘Wayside,’ the home of Miss Janet Sweet. Janet is a dear soul and very nicelooking; tall, but not over-tall; stoutish, yet with a certain restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty soul who is not going to be overlavish even in the matter of avoirdupois. She has a knot of soft, crimpy, brown hair with a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with rosy cheeks, and big, kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots. Moreover, she is one of those delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don’t care a bit if they ruin your digestion as long as they can give you feasts of fat things.
“I like her; and she likes me—principally, it seems, because she had a sister named Anne who died young.
“‘I’m real glad to see you,’ she said briskly, when I landed in her yard. ‘My, you don’t look a mite like I expected. I was sure you’d be dark—my sister Anne was dark. And here you’re redheaded!’
“For a few minutes I thought I wasn’t going to like Janet as much as I had expected at first sight. Then I reminded myself that I really must be more sensible than to be prejudiced against any one simply because she called my hair red. Probably the word ‘auburn’ was not in Janet’s vocabulary at all.