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126 pages

English

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Get swept into another era in this classic from author Lucy Maud Montgomery. Originally penned with younger audiences in mind, Chronicles of Avonlea is a comfort read that will captivate readers of all ages. This collection of heartwarming short stories capturing the vicissitudes of life in a sleepy seaside town will draw you in again and again.

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Children's

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775456827
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA
* * *
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY

*
Chronicles of Avonlea First published in 1912 ISBN 978-1-77545-682-7 © 2012 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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I - The Hurrying of Ludovic II - Old Lady Lloyd III - Each in His Own Tongue IV - Little Joscelyn V - The Winning of Lucinda VI - Old Man Shaw's Girl VII - Aunt Olivia's Beau VIII - The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's IX - Pa Sloane's Purchase X - The Courting of Prissy Strong XI - The Miracle at Carmody XII - The End of a Quarrel
*
TO THE MEMORY OF Mrs. William A. Houston, A DEAR FRIEND, WHO HAS GONE BEYOND
The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. —Whittier
I - The Hurrying of Ludovic
*
Anne Shirley was curled up on the window-seat of Theodora Dix'ssitting-room one Saturday evening, looking dreamily afar at some fairstarland beyond the hills of sunset. Anne was visiting for a fortnightof her vacation at Echo Lodge, where Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Irving werespending the summer, and she often ran over to the old Dix homesteadto chat for awhile with Theodora. They had had their chat out, on thisparticular evening, and Anne was giving herself over to the delight ofbuilding an air-castle. She leaned her shapely head, with its braidedcoronet of dark red hair, against the window-casing, and her gray eyeswere like the moonlight gleam of shadowy pools.
Then she saw Ludovic Speed coming down the lane. He was yet far from thehouse, for the Dix lane was a long one, but Ludovic could be recognizedas far as he could be seen. No one else in Middle Grafton had such atall, gently-stooping, placidly-moving figure. In every kink and turn ofit there was an individuality all Ludovic's own.
Anne roused herself from her dreams, thinking it would only be tactfulto take her departure. Ludovic was courting Theodora. Everyone inGrafton knew that, or, if anyone were in ignorance of the fact, it wasnot because he had not had time to find out. Ludovic had been comingdown that lane to see Theodora, in the same ruminating, unhasteningfashion, for fifteen years!
When Anne, who was slim and girlish and romantic, rose to go, Theodora,who was plump and middle-aged and practical, said, with a twinkle in hereye:
"There isn't any hurry, child. Sit down and have your call out. You'veseen Ludovic coming down the lane, and, I suppose, you think you'll be acrowd. But you won't. Ludovic rather likes a third person around, andso do I. It spurs up the conversation as it were. When a man has beencoming to see you straight along, twice a week for fifteen years, youget rather talked out by spells."
Theodora never pretended to bashfulness where Ludovic was concerned.She was not at all shy of referring to him and his dilatory courtship.Indeed, it seemed to amuse her.
Anne sat down again and together they watched Ludovic coming down thelane, gazing calmly about him at the lush clover fields and the blueloops of the river winding in and out of the misty valley below.
Anne looked at Theodora's placid, finely-moulded face and tried toimagine what she herself would feel like if she were sitting there,waiting for an elderly lover who had, seemingly, taken so long to makeup his mind. But even Anne's imagination failed her for this.
"Anyway," she thought, impatiently, "if I wanted him I think I'd findsome way of hurrying him up. Ludovic SPEED! Was there ever such a misfitof a name? Such a name for such a man is a delusion and a snare."
Presently Ludovic got to the house, but stood so long on the doorstepin a brown study, gazing into the tangled green boskage of the cherryorchard, that Theodora finally went and opened the door before heknocked. As she brought him into the sitting-room she made a comicalgrimace at Anne over his shoulder.
Ludovic smiled pleasantly at Anne. He liked her; she was the only younggirl he knew, for he generally avoided young girls—they made him feelawkward and out of place. But Anne did not affect him in this fashion.She had a way of getting on with all sorts of people, and, although theyhad not known her very long, both Ludovic and Theodora looked upon heras an old friend.
Ludovic was tall and somewhat ungainly, but his unhesitating placiditygave him the appearance of a dignity that did not otherwise pertain tohim. He had a drooping, silky, brown moustache, and a little curly tuftof imperial,—a fashion which was regarded as eccentric in Grafton,where men had clean-shaven chins or went full-bearded. His eyes weredreamy and pleasant, with a touch of melancholy in their blue depths.
He sat down in the big bulgy old armchair that had belonged toTheodora's father. Ludovic always sat there, and Anne declared that thechair had come to look like him.
The conversation soon grew animated enough. Ludovic was a good talkerwhen he had somebody to draw him out. He was well read, and frequentlysurprised Anne by his shrewd comments on men and matters out in theworld, of which only the faint echoes reached Deland River. He had alsoa liking for religious arguments with Theodora, who did not care muchfor politics or the making of history, but was avid of doctrines, andread everything pertaining thereto. When the conversation driftedinto an eddy of friendly wrangling between Ludovic and Theodora overChristian Science, Anne understood that her usefulness was ended for thetime being, and that she would not be missed.
"It's star time and good-night time," she said, and went away quietly.
But she had to stop to laugh when she was well out of sight of thehouse, in a green meadow bestarred with the white and gold of daisies.A wind, odour-freighted, blew daintily across it. Anne leaned against awhite birch tree in the corner and laughed heartily, as she was apt todo whenever she thought of Ludovic and Theodora. To her eager youth,this courtship of theirs seemed a very amusing thing. She liked Ludovic,but allowed herself to be provoked with him.
"The dear, big, irritating goose!" she said aloud. "There never was sucha lovable idiot before. He's just like the alligator in the old rhyme,who wouldn't go along, and wouldn't keep still, but just kept bobbing upand down."
Two evenings later, when Anne went over to the Dix place, she andTheodora drifted into a conversation about Ludovic. Theodora, who wasthe most industrious soul alive, and had a mania for fancy work intothe bargain, was busying her smooth, plump fingers with a very elaborateBattenburg lace centre-piece. Anne was lying back in a little rocker,with her slim hands folded in her lap, watching Theodora. She realizedthat Theodora was very handsome, in a stately, Juno-like fashion offirm, white flesh, large, clearly-chiselled outlines, and great, cowey,brown eyes. When Theodora was not smiling, she looked very imposing.Anne thought it likely that Ludovic held her in awe.
"Did you and Ludovic talk about Christian Science ALL Saturday evening?"she asked.
Theodora overflowed into a smile.
"Yes, and we even quarrelled over it. At least I did. Ludovic wouldn'tquarrel with anyone. You have to fight air when you spar with him. Ihate to square up to a person who won't hit back."
"Theodora," said Anne coaxingly, "I am going to be curious andimpertinent. You can snub me if you like. Why don't you and Ludovic getmarried?"
Theodora laughed comfortably.
"That's the question Grafton folks have been asking for quite a while,I reckon, Anne. Well, I'd have no objection to marrying Ludovic. That'sfrank enough for you, isn't it? But it's not easy to marry a man unlesshe asks you. And Ludovic has never asked me."
"Is he too shy?" persisted Anne. Since Theodora was in the mood, shemeant to sift this puzzling affair to the bottom.
Theodora dropped her work and looked meditatively out over the greenslopes of the summer world.
"No, I don't think it is that. Ludovic isn't shy. It's just his way—theSpeed way. The Speeds are all dreadfully deliberate. They spendyears thinking over a thing before they make up their minds to do it.Sometimes they get so much in the habit of thinking about it that theynever get over it—like old Alder Speed, who was always talking ofgoing to England to see his brother, but never went, though there wasno earthly reason why he shouldn't. They're not lazy, you know, but theylove to take their time."
"And Ludovic is just an aggravated case of Speedism," suggested Anne.
"Exactly. He never hurried in his life. Why, he has been thinking forthe last six years of getting his house painted. He talks it over withme every little while, and picks out the colour, and there the matterstays. He's fond of me, and he means to ask me to have him sometime. Theonly question is—will the time ever come?"
"Why don't you hurry him up?" asked Anne impatiently.
Theodora went back to her stitches with another laugh.
"If Ludovic could be hurried up, I'm not the one to do it. I'm too shy.It sounds ridiculous to hear a woman of my age and inches say that, butit is true. Of course, I know it's the only way any Speed ever did makeout to get married. For instance, there's a cousin of mine married toLudovic's brother. I don't say she proposed to him out and out, but,mind you, Anne, it wasn't far from it. I couldn't do anything like that.I DID try once. When I realized that I was getting sere and mellow, andall the girls of my generation were going off on either hand, I tried togive Ludovic a hint. But it stuck in my throat. And now I don't mind. IfI don't change Dix to Speed unt