She had grown to love Davy
dearly. . .how
dearly she had not
known until this minute. . .and it hurt her unbearably to
discover that he was
guilty of
deliberatefalsehood.
Marilla listened to Anne's tale in a silence that boded no good
Davy-ward; Mr. Barry laughed and advised that Davy be summarily
dealt with. When he had gone home Anne soothed and warmed the
sobbing, shivering Dora, got her her supper and put her to bed.
Then she returned to the kitchen, just as Marilla came
grimly in,
leading, or rather pulling, the
reluctant, cobwebby Davy, whom she
had just found
hidden away in the darkest corner of the stable.
She jerked him to the mat on the middle of the floor and then went
and sat down by the east window. Anne was sitting limply by the
west window. Between them stood the
culprit. His back was toward
Marilla and it was a meek, subdued,
frightened back; but his face
was toward Anne and although it was a little shamefaced there was a
gleam of comradeship in Davy's eyes, as if he knew he had done wrong
and was going to be punished for it, but could count on a laugh over
it all with Anne later on.
But no half
hidden smile answered him in Anne's gray eyes,
as there might have done had it been only a question of
mischief.
There was something else. . .something ugly and repulsive.
"How could you
behave so, Davy?" she asked sorrowfully.
Davy squirmed un
comfortably.
"I just did it for fun. Things have been so awful quiet here for
so long that I thought it would be fun to give you folks a big scare.
It was, too."
In spite of fear and a little
remorse Davy grinned over the recollection.
"But you told a
falsehood about it, Davy," said Anne, more sorrowfully
than ever.
Davy looked puzzled.
"What's a
falsehood? Do you mean a whopper?"
"I mean a story that was not true."
"Course I did," said Davy
frankly. "If I hadn't you wouldn't have
been scared. I HAD to tell it."
Anne was feeling the
reaction from her
fright and exertions.
Davy's impenitent attitude gave the finishing touch.
Two big tears brimmed up in her eyes.
"Oh, Davy, how could you?" she said, with a
quiver in her voice.
"Don't you know how wrong it was?"
Davy was
aghast. Anne crying. . .he had made Anne cry! A flood of real
remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed it.
He rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms around
her neck, and burst into tears.
"I didn't know it was wrong to tell whoppers," he sobbed.
"How did you expect me to know it was wrong? All Mr. Sprott's
children told them REGULAR every day, and cross their hearts too.
I s'pose Paul Irving never tells whoppers and here I've been
tryingawful hard to be as good as him, but now I s'pose you'll never
love me again. But I think you might have told me it was wrong.
I'm awful sorry I've made you cry, Anne, and I'll never tell a
whopper again."
Davy buried his face in Anne's shoulder and cried stormily.
Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight
and looked over his curly
thatch at Marilla.
"He didn't know it was wrong to tell
falsehoods, Marilla.
I think we must
forgive him for that part of it this time
if he will promise never to say what isn't true again."
"I never will, now that I know it's bad," asseverated Davy between sobs.
"If you ever catch me telling a whopper again you can. . ." Davy groped
mentally for a
suitablepenance. . ."you can skin me alive, Anne."
"Don't say `whopper,' Davy. . .say `
falsehood,'" said the schoolma'am.
"Why?" queried Davy, settling
comfortably down and looking up with
a tearstained, investigating face. "Why ain't whopper as good as
falsehood? I want to know. It's just as big a word."
"It's slang; and it's wrong for little boys to use slang."
"There's an awful lot of things it's wrong to do," said Davy with a sigh.
"I never s'posed there was so many. I'm sorry it's wrong to tell whop. . .
falsehoods, 'cause it's awful handy, but since it is I'm never going to
tell any more. What are you going to do to me for telling them this time?
I want to know." Anne looked beseechingly at Marilla.
"I don't want to be too hard on the child," said Marilla. "I
daresay nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and
those Sprott children were no fit companions for him. Poor Mary
was too sick to train him
properly and I
presume you couldn't
expect a six-year-old child to know things like that by instinct.
I suppose we'll just have to assume he doesn't know ANYTHING right
and begin at the
beginning. But he'll have to be punished for
shutting Dora up, and I can't think of any way except to send him
to bed without his supper and we've done that so often. Can't you
suggest something else, Anne? I should think you ought to be able
to, with that
imagination you're always talking of."
"But punishments are so
horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant things,"
said Anne, cuddling Davy. "There are so many
unpleasant things in the
world already that there is no use in imagining any more."
In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until
noon next day. He
evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went
up to her room a little later she heard him
calling her name softly.
Going in, she found him sitting up in bed, with his elbows on his
knees and his chin propped on his hands.
"Anne," he said
solemnly, "is it wrong for everybody to tell whop. . .
falsehoods? I want to know"
"Yes, indeed."
"Is it wrong for a
grown-up person?"
"Yes."
"Then," said Davy
decidedly, "Marilla is bad, for SHE tells them.
And she's worse'n me, for I didn't know it was wrong but she does."
"Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life," said Anne
indignantly.
"She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something
dreadfulWOULD happen to me if I didn't say my prayers every night. And I
haven't said them for over a week, just to see what would happen. . .
and nothing has," concluded Davy in an aggrieved tone.
Anne choked back a mad desire to laugh with the
conviction that it
would be fatal, and then
earnestly set about saving Marilla's reputation.
"Why, Davy Keith," she said
solemnly, "something
dreadful HAS happened
to you this very day"
Davy looked sceptical.
"I s'pose you mean being sent to bed without any supper," he said
scornfully, "but THAT isn't
dreadful. Course, I don't like it,
but I've been sent to bed so much since I come here that I'm getting
used to it. And you don't save anything by making me go without
supper either, for I always eat twice as much for breakfast."
"I don't mean your being sent to bed. I mean the fact that you
told a
falsehood today. And, Davy,". . .Anne leaned over the
footboard of the bed and shook her finger impressively at the
culprit. . ."for a boy to tell what isn't true is almost the
worst thing that could HAPPEN to him. . .almost the very worst.
So you see Marilla told you the truth."
"But I thought the something bad would be exciting," protested Davy
in an injured tone.
"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."
"Well, we must try to
reform Davy at home then," said Anne
cheerfully. "With all his faults he's really a dear little chap.
I can't help
loving him. Marilla, it may be a
dreadful thing to say,
but
honestly, I like Davy better than Dora, for all she's so good."
"I don't know but that I do, myself," confessed Marilla, "and it
isn't fair, for Dora isn't a bit of trouble. There couldn't be a
better child and you'd hardly know she was in the house."
"Dora is too good," said Anne. "She'd
behave just as well if there
wasn't a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already brought
up, so she doesn't need us; and I think," concluded Anne, hitting
on a very vital truth, "that we always love best the people who
need us. Davy needs us badly."
"He certainly needs something," agreed Marilla. "Rachel Lynde
would say it was a good spanking."
XI
Facts and Fancies
"Teaching is really very interesting work," wrote Anne to a Queen's
Academy chum. "Jane says she thinks it is
monotonous but I don't
find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day,
and the children say such
amusing things. Jane says she punishes
her pupils when they make funny speeches, which is probably why she
finds teaching
monotonous. This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was
trying to spell `speckled' and couldn't manage it. `Well,' he said
finally, `I can't spell it but I know what it means.'
"`What?' I asked.
"`St. Clair Donnell's face, miss.'
"St. Clair is certainly very much
freckled, although I try to
prevent the others from commenting on it. . .for I was
freckledonce and well do I remember it. But I don't think St. Clair minds.
It was because Jimmy called him `St. Clair' that St. Clair pounded
him on the way home from school. I heard of the pounding, but not
officially, so I don't think I'll take any notice of it.
"Yesterday I was
trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition.
I said, `If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other,
how many would you have altogether?' `A mouthful,' said Lottie.
And in the nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good
reason why toads shouldn't be killed, Benjie Sloane
gravely answered,
`Because it would rain the next day.'
"It's so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusement
until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her
nervous to hear wild shrieks
of mirth
proceeding from the east gable without any
apparent cause.
She says a man in Grafton went
insane once and that was how it began.
"Did you know that Thomas a Becket was canonized as a SNAKE?
Rose Bell says he was. . .also that William Tyndale WROTE the
New Testament. Claude White says a `glacier' is a man who puts
in window frames!
"I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most
interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts