“It’s fine!” little Anne approved him. “Though I don’t exactly understand the joke. We’ve so many Annes in Cleavedge that it’s—do you know what? An Anthology. That’s what Peter-two said. Cleavedge is an Anthology. Peter made that joke; it’s a pun; Peter-two likes puns.”
“You don’t know what that means,” said Kit.
“I do! I do, too!” little Anne flatly contradicted him, taking a running leap that landed her sharp little knees on Kit’s legs and made him wince. “An Anthology’s a book with lots of things collected into it, like poetry, or fairy stories, or—oh, things that you can put together in one book. I do know!”
“You certainly do!” Kit admitted, handsomely. “Anne, sometimes I’m afraid you’re too learned; it’s fearful to be erudite.”
“I don’t know what that is,” said little Anne. “Anthology’s not such a dreadfully long word—multiplication is one count longer and all children say it’s easy! Mother says it’s all what you hear and learn. She says it’s the same about thinking; it’s just’s easy to think about big things as little ones, and good things as bad ones; that’s what she says. She says it’s all what you’re used to. And my mother tells me about big things quite often.”
“She does, I know; you frequently allude to them,” said Kit, abstractedly.
He was looking at the lovely group across the room: the leaping, gurgling baby; the two fair, flushed young women with the same look on their faces, a look that Kit found natural in Joan, but awesome and mysterious in Anne Dallas, a prophecy that quickened his breath.
“I’ve an Anthology,” said little Anne, taking Kit’s face between her palms with no intention of allowing his thoughts to wander from her. “It’s the one Joyce Kilmer made. There’s a poem in it about Michael the Archangel. You can hear it rush, and it shines. We say a prayer after Mass. It begins: ‛St. Michael, the archangel, defend us in battle.’ I love it. When we say it I can just see him on account of that poem. A lady wrote it. Her name is Katharine Tynan, but she’s called Mrs. Hinkson now because she married him. Now listen! I’m going to say two verses for you, the two which make me breathe so hard, and you see if you don’t love, love ’em!
‛His wings he hath put away in steel,
He goes mail-clad from head to heel;