Anne of Windy Willows by Lucy Maud Montgomery Page B

Pringle was in no more danger of tonsillitis than Anne herself was. It was a deliberate device, whether any of the other Pringles was a party to it or not, to ruin the play because she, Anne Shirley, had sponsored it.
    ‘Oh, if you feel that way about it…’ said Katherine, with a nasty shrug. ‘But what do you intend to do? Get someone to read the part? That would ruin it. Mary is the whole play.’
    ‘Sophy Sinclair can play the part as well as Jen. The costume will fit her, and, thanks be, you made it and have it, not Jen.’
    The play was put on that night before a packed audience. A delighted Sophy played Mary –
was
Mary, as Jen Pringle could never have been,
looked
Mary in her velvet robes and ruff and jewels. Students of Summerside High, who had never seen Sophy in anything but her plain, dowdy dark serge dresses, shapeless coat, and shabby hats, stared at her in amazement. It was insisted on the spot that she should become a permanent member of the Dramatic Club – Anne herself paid the membership fee – and from then on she was one of the pupils who ‘counted’ in Summerside High. But nobody knew or dreamed – Sophy herself least of all – that she had taken the first step that night on a pathway that was to lead to the stars. Twenty years later Sophy Sinclair was to be one of the leading actresses in America. But probably no plaudits ever sounded so sweet in her ears as the wild applause amid which the curtain fell that night in Summerside Town Hall.
    Mrs James Pringle took a tale home to her daughter Jen that would have turned that damsel’s eyes green, if they had not been already so. For once, as Rebecca Dew said feelingly, Jen had got her come-uppance. And the eventual result was the insult in the composition on ‘Important Happenings’.
    Anne went down to the old graveyard along a deep-rutted lane between high, mossy stone dikes, tasselled with frosted ferns. Slim, pointed Lombardies, from which November winds had not yet stripped all the leaves, grew along it at intervals, coming out darkly against the amethyst of the far hills, but the old graveyard, with half its tombstones leaning at a drunken slant, was surrounded by a four-square row of tall, sombre fir-trees. Anne had not expected to find anyone there, and was a little taken aback when she met Miss Valentine Courtaloe, with her long, delicate nose, her thin, delicate mouth, her sloping, delicate shoulders, and her general air of invincible ladylikeness, just inside the gate. She knew Miss Valentine, of course, as did everyone in Summerside. She was ‘the’ local dressmaker, and what she didn’t know about people, living or dead, was not worth taking into account. Anne had wanted to wander about by herself, to read the odd old epitaphs and puzzle out the names of forgotten lovers under the lichens that were growing over them; but she could not escape when Miss Valentine slipped an arm through hers and proceeded to do the honours of the graveyard, where there were evidently as many Courtaloes buried as Pringles. Miss Valentine had not a drop of Pringle blood in her, and one of Anne’s favourite pupils was her nephew, so it was no great mental strain to be nice to her, except that one must be very careful never to hint that she ‘sewed for a living’. MissValentine was said to be very sensitive on that point.
    ‘I’m glad I happened to be here this evening,’ said Miss Valentine. ‘I can tell you all about everybody buried here. I always say you have to know the ins and outs of the corpses to find a graveyard real enjoyable. I like a walk here better than in the new. It’s only the
old
families that are buried here, but every Tom, Dick, and Harry is being buried in the new. The Courtaloes are buried in this corner. My, we’ve had a terrible lot of funerals in our family.’
    ‘I suppose every old family has,’ said Anne, because Miss Valentine evidently expected her to say something.
    ‘Don’t tell me
any
family has ever had