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Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery, XIII A Golden Picnic

XIII A Golden Picnic

Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad's Bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from a nap. "I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday," said Anne. "Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!" "That wasn't my fault," laughed Anne. "If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. But since I didn't, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We'll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we'll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been SEEN although they may have been LOOKED at. We'll make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts." "It SOUNDS awfully nice," said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne's magic of words. "But won't it be very damp in some places yet?" "Oh, we'll wear rubbers," was Anne's concession to practicalities. "And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch. I'm going to have the daintiest things possible . things that will match the spring, you understand . little jelly tarts and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and buttercup cake. And we must have sandwiches too, though they're NOT very poetical." Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . a day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green.

Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four girls, basket laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him.

"It's so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn't it?" Anne was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. "Let's try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back with delight. We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. 'Begone, dull care!' Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday." "How do you know?" gasped Jane, amazed.

"Oh, I know the expression . I've felt it often enough on my own face. But put it out of your mind, there's a dear. It will keep till Monday . or if it doesn't so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets! There's something for memory's picture gallery. When I'm eighty years old . if I ever am . I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That's the first good gift our day has given us." "If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet," said Priscilla. Anne glowed.

"I'm so glad you SPOKE that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much more interesting place . although it IS very interesting anyhow . if people spoke out their real thoughts." "It would be too hot to hold some folks," quoted Jane sagely. "I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into her head. THAT is conversation. Here's a little path I never saw before. Let's explore it." The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file and even then the fir boughs brushed their faces. Under the firs were velvety cushions of moss, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things.

"What a lot of elephant's ears," exclaimed Diana. "I'm going to pick a big bunch, they're so pretty." "How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful name?" asked Priscilla.

"Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much," said Anne, "Oh, girls, look at that!" "That" was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin.

"HOW sweet!" said Jane.

"Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs," cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands. But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane's rubbers came off. "You can't be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers," was her decision. "Well, we must name this place before we leave it," said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts. "Everybody suggest a name and we'll draw lots. Diana?" "Birch Pool," suggested Diana promptly. "Crystal Lake," said Jane. Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion with "Glimmer-glass." Anne's selection was "The Fairies' Mirror." The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil Schoolma'am Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne's hat. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. "Crystal Lake," read Jane triumphantly. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a shabby trick she did not say so.

Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane's back pasture. Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane's pasture, came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.

"This is where the bad wood elves dwell," whispered Anne. "They are impish and malicious but they can't harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn't you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places." "I wish there really were fairies," said Jane. "Wouldn't it be nice to have three wishes granted you . or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I'd wish to be rich and beautiful and clever." "I'd wish to be tall and slender," said Diana. "I would wish to be famous," said Priscilla. Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy.

"I'd wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody's heart and all our lives," she said. "But that," said Priscilla, "would be just wishing this world were like heaven." "Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn . yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don't you, Jane?" "I . I don't know," said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that.

"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven," laughed Diana. "And didn't you tell her we would?" asked Anne.

"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there." "Oh, I think we will . a LITTLE," said Anne earnestly. "There'll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without neglecting more important things. I believe we'll all wear beautiful dresses . or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first . it would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world." Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.

Beyond were the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed bloom above the lush green grasses.

"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only gazed in eloquent silence.

"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?" said Priscilla in amazement.

"It must be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "I've heard mother speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne?" "No, but the name seems familiar to me." "Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in the poplar corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and 'Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged twenty-two.' Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there's no stone to him. It's a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten." "Well, if there's a story we must have it," said Anne. "Let's sit right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them . they've spread over everything. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making. To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before! Now, Diana." "Long ago," began Diana, "this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray. He didn't live on it . he lived where Silas Sloane lives now. He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked her to marry him she said she would if he'd take her away to some quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers. And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to wait on her. He did it all himself and mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled up at him . and closed her eyes . and that," concluded Diana softly, "was the end." "Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears. "What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.

"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester." "I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything," said Jane. "Oh, I can easily understand THAT," said Anne thoughtfully. "I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest. And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four beautiful years before she died. four years of perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you . oh, I think it was beautiful!" "She set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana. "She told mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead." "I'm so glad we came this way," said Anne, the shining-eyed. "This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?" "No . only just that she was pretty." "I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like, without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face." The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all . on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade.

"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.

"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the birch trees.

"There . down in the brook . that old green, mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down into the pool. Oh, it's the most beautiful poem I ever saw." "I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines and verses." "Oh dear me, no." Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively. "The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are YOU, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them . and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul . even of a poem." "I wonder what a soul . a person's soul . would look like," said Priscilla dreamily. "Like that, I should think," answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. "Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers . and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea . and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn." "I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla. "Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, "and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet." "And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart," finished Priscilla. Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about. Could she?

The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester's grave. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.

"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out. "It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla. "I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane. Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray.

XIII A Golden Picnic XIII Ein goldenes Picknick XIII Un picnic dorado XIII Un pique-nique en or XIII 黄金のピクニック XIII Złoty piknik XIII Um piquenique dourado XIII 金色野餐

Anne, on her way to Orchard Slope, met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the Haunted Wood, and they sat down by the margin of the Dryad's Bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixy folk wakening up from a nap. Anne, qui se rendait à Orchard Slope, rencontra Diana, qui se rendait à Green Gables, juste à l'endroit où le vieux pont de rondins moussus enjambait le ruisseau en contrebas du bois hanté, et elles s'assirent au bord de la Dryad's Bubble, où de minuscules fougères se déroulaient comme des lutins verts à tête bouclée qui se réveillent d'une sieste. Энн, направлявшаяся в Орчард-Слоуп, встретила Диану, направлявшуюся в Грин Гейблс, как раз там, где старый бревенчатый мост, поросший мхом, перекинулся через ручей под Лесом привидений, и они присели на краю Дриадиного пузыря, где крошечные папоротники разворачивались, словно кудрявые зеленоголовые пикси, пробуждающиеся от сна. "I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday," said Anne. "Your birthday? But your birthday was in March!" Mais ton anniversaire était en mars !" "That wasn't my fault," laughed Anne. "If my parents had consulted me it would never have happened then. "Si mes parents m'avaient consulté, cela ne serait jamais arrivé. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with the mayflowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. Vous auriez toujours l'impression d'être leur sœur adoptive. But since I didn't, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Mais comme je ne l'ai pas fait, la meilleure chose à faire est de fêter mon anniversaire au printemps. Priscilla is coming over Saturday and Jane will be home. We'll all four start off to the woods and spend a golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. Nous partirons tous les quatre dans les bois et passerons une journée dorée à faire connaissance avec la source. We none of us really know her yet, but we'll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. Nous ne la connaissons pas encore vraiment, mais nous la rencontrerons là-bas comme nous ne le pourrons jamais ailleurs. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. Je veux explorer tous ces champs et ces lieux solitaires de toute façon. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been SEEN although they may have been LOOKED at. J'ai la conviction qu'il y a là-bas des dizaines de coins magnifiques qui n'ont jamais vraiment été VUS, même s'ils ont peut-être été REGARDÉS. We'll make friends with wind and sky and sun, and bring home the spring in our hearts." "It SOUNDS awfully nice," said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne's magic of words. "Cela SONNE terriblement bien", a déclaré Diana, avec une certaine méfiance intérieure à l'égard de la magie des mots d'Anne. "But won't it be very damp in some places yet?" "Mais ne sera-t-il pas encore très humide à certains endroits ?" "Oh, we'll wear rubbers," was Anne's concession to practicalities. "And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch. I'm going to have the daintiest things possible . Je vais avoir les choses les plus délicates possibles. things that will match the spring, you understand . little jelly tarts and lady fingers, and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing, and buttercup cake. petites tartes à la gelée et doigts de dame, et déposer des biscuits givrés avec un glaçage rose et jaune, et un gâteau au bouton d'or. And we must have sandwiches too, though they're NOT very poetical." Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic . Le samedi s'est avéré une journée idéale pour un pique-nique. a day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. une journée de brise et de bleu, chaude, ensoleillée, avec un petit vent qui souffle sur les prairies et les vergers. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green.

Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witch-work even in his sober, middle-aged blood, saw four girls, basket laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fir. M. Harrison, qui passait la herse à l'arrière de sa ferme et ressentait un peu de la sorcellerie printanière même dans son sang sobre et d'âge mûr, a vu quatre filles, le panier chargé, trébucher à l'extrémité de son champ, là où il rejoint une forêt de bouleaux et de sapins qui le borde. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him.

"It's so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn't it?" Anne was saying, with true Anneish philosophy. "Let's try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back with delight. We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. 'Begone, dull care!' 'Allez-y, soins insignifiants!' Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday." Jane, tu penses à quelque chose qui s'est mal passé à l'école hier." "How do you know?" gasped Jane, amazed.

"Oh, I know the expression . I've felt it often enough on my own face. Je l'ai senti assez souvent sur mon propre visage. But put it out of your mind, there's a dear. It will keep till Monday . or if it doesn't so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets! There's something for memory's picture gallery. When I'm eighty years old . if I ever am . I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That's the first good gift our day has given us." "If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet," said Priscilla. Anne glowed.

"I'm so glad you SPOKE that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. "Je suis si heureuse que tu aies exprimé cette pensée, Priscilla, au lieu de la penser et de la garder pour toi. This world would be a much more interesting place . although it IS very interesting anyhow . if people spoke out their real thoughts." "It would be too hot to hold some folks," quoted Jane sagely. "Il ferait trop chaud pour accueillir certaines personnes", a déclaré Jane avec sagacité. "I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things. "Je suppose que ça pourrait l'être, mais ce serait leur propre faute de penser des choses désagréables. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into her head. THAT is conversation. Here's a little path I never saw before. Let's explore it." The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file and even then the fir boughs brushed their faces. Under the firs were velvety cushions of moss, and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things.

"What a lot of elephant's ears," exclaimed Diana. « Que d'oreilles d'éléphant », s'exclama Diana. "I'm going to pick a big bunch, they're so pretty." "How did such graceful feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful name?" "Comment des choses à plumes aussi gracieuses ont-elles pu porter un nom aussi affreux ?" asked Priscilla.

"Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all or else far too much," said Anne, "Oh, girls, look at that!" "Parce que la personne qui les a nommés en premier n'avait pas d'imagination ou en avait beaucoup trop", a déclaré Anne. "That" was a shallow woodland pool in the center of a little open glade where the path ended. "Ça" était un bassin boisé peu profond au centre d'une petite clairière ouverte où le chemin se terminait. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns; but now it was a glimmering placid sheet, round as a saucer and clear as crystal. Plus tard dans la saison, il serait desséché et sa place remplie d'une végétation luxuriante de fougères ; mais maintenant c'était une feuille placide scintillante, ronde comme une soucoupe et claire comme du cristal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin. Un cercle de jeunes bouleaux élancés l'entourait et de petites fougères bordaient sa marge.

"HOW sweet!" said Jane.

"Let us dance around it like wood-nymphs," cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands. But the dance was not a success for the ground was boggy and Jane's rubbers came off. Mais la danse n'a pas été un succès car le sol était marécageux et les caoutchoucs de Jane se sont détachés. "You can't be a wood-nymph if you have to wear rubbers," was her decision. "Well, we must name this place before we leave it," said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts. "Eh bien, nous devons donner un nom à cet endroit avant de le quitter", dit Anne, cédant à la logique indiscutable des faits. "Everybody suggest a name and we'll draw lots. Diana?" "Birch Pool," suggested Diana promptly. "Crystal Lake," said Jane. Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name and Priscilla rose to the occasion with "Glimmer-glass." Anne, debout derrière eux, a imploré Priscilla avec ses yeux de ne pas perpétrer un autre nom de ce genre et Priscilla s'est montrée à la hauteur avec "Glimmer-glass". Anne's selection was "The Fairies' Mirror." La sélection d'Anne était "Le miroir des fées". The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil Schoolma'am Jane produced from her pocket, and placed in Anne's hat. Les noms ont été écrits sur des bandes d'écorce de bouleau avec un crayon Schoolma'am Jane sorti de sa poche et placés dans le chapeau d'Anne. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. Puis Priscilla a fermé les yeux et en a dessiné un. "Crystal Lake," read Jane triumphantly. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought that chance had played the pool a shabby trick she did not say so. C'était Crystal Lake, et si Anne pensait que le hasard avait joué un mauvais tour à la piscine, elle ne l'a pas dit. Это было Хрустальное озеро, и если Энн и подумала, что случайность сыграла с бассейном нечестную шутку, то не стала этого говорить.

Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloane's back pasture. Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloane's pasture, came an archway of wild cherry trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen.

"This is where the bad wood elves dwell," whispered Anne. « C'est ici que vivent les mauvais elfes sylvains », chuchota Anne. "They are impish and malicious but they can't harm us, because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir; and didn't you see a group of them on that big freckly toadstool we just passed? Il y en avait un qui nous épiait autour de ce vieux sapin tordu ; et n'en as-tu pas vu un groupe sur ce gros crapaud tacheté que nous venons de dépasser ? The good fairies always dwell in the sunshiny places." "I wish there really were fairies," said Jane. "Wouldn't it be nice to have three wishes granted you . or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I'd wish to be rich and beautiful and clever." "I'd wish to be tall and slender," said Diana. "I would wish to be famous," said Priscilla. Anne thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy. Anne pensa à ses cheveux, puis rejeta cette pensée comme indigne.

"I'd wish it might be spring all the time and in everybody's heart and all our lives," she said. "J'aimerais que ce soit le printemps tout le temps, dans le cœur de chacun et dans toute notre vie", a-t-elle déclaré. "But that," said Priscilla, "would be just wishing this world were like heaven." "Mais ce serait souhaiter que ce monde soit comme le paradis", dit Priscilla. "Only like a part of heaven. "Seulement comme une partie du paradis. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn . yes, and a bit of winter, too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes. Don't you, Jane?" "I . I don't know," said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. Jane était une bonne fille, membre de l'église, qui essayait consciencieusement d'être à la hauteur de sa profession et croyait tout ce qu'on lui avait enseigné. But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help, for all that. Mais elle n'a jamais pensé au paradis plus qu'elle ne pouvait l'aider, malgré tout.

"Minnie May asked me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven," laughed Diana. "Minnie May m'a demandé l'autre jour si nous porterions nos plus belles robes tous les jours au paradis", dit Diana en riant. "And didn't you tell her we would?" "Et tu ne lui as pas dit que nous le ferions ?" asked Anne.

"Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there." "Oh, I think we will . a LITTLE," said Anne earnestly. "There'll be plenty of time in all eternity for it without neglecting more important things. "Il y aura bien assez de temps dans l'éternité pour le faire sans négliger des choses plus importantes. I believe we'll all wear beautiful dresses . or I suppose RAIMENT would be a more suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first . it would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so and I can never wear it in THIS world." Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook; and then came the glory of a sunlit beechwood where the air was like transparent golden wine, and the leaves fresh and green, and the wood floor a mosaic of tremulous sunshine. Après les épicéas, le chemin s'enfonçait dans un petit espace ensoleillé où un pont de rondins enjambait un ruisseau ; puis venait la gloire d'une hêtraie ensoleillée où l'air était comme un vin doré transparent, les feuilles fraîches et vertes, et le sol en bois une mosaïque de soleil tremblotant. Then more wild cherries, and a little valley of lissome firs, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their breath climbing it; but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them.

Beyond were the "back fields" of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody road. Au-delà se trouvaient les "champs arrière" des fermes qui se prolongeaient jusqu'à la route supérieure de Carmody. Just before them, hemmed in by beeches and firs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden . Juste devant eux, enserré de hêtres et de sapins mais ouvert au sud, se trouvait un petit coin et dans celui-ci un jardin. or what had once been a garden. ou ce qui était autrefois un jardin. A tumbledown stone dyke, overgrown with mosses and grass, surrounded it. Une digue de pierre éboulée, envahie de mousses et d'herbes, l'entourait. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as a snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still and a double line of rosebushes through the middle; but all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white narcissi, in their airiest, most lavish, wind-swayed bloom above the lush green grasses.

"Oh, how perfectly lovely!" three of the girls cried. Anne only gazed in eloquent silence.

"How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here?" "Comment diable se fait-il qu'il y ait jamais eu un jardin ici?" said Priscilla in amazement.

"It must be Hester Gray's garden," said Diana. "I've heard mother speak of it but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne?" "No, but the name seems familiar to me." "Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in the poplar corner. Elle est enterrée dans le coin des peupliers. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and 'Sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, aged twenty-two.' Vous connaissez la petite pierre brune sur laquelle sont gravées les portes d'entrée et la mention "Sacré à la mémoire de Hester Gray, âgée de vingt-deux ans". Jordan Gray is buried right beside her but there's no stone to him. Jordan Gray est enterré juste à côté d'elle, mais il n'y a pas de pierre à son nom. It's a wonder Marilla never told you about it, Anne. C'est un miracle que Marilla ne vous en ait jamais parlé, Anne. To be sure, it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten." Certes, cela s'est passé il y a trente ans et tout le monde a oublié." "Well, if there's a story we must have it," said Anne. "Eh bien, s'il y a une histoire, nous devons l'avoir", a déclaré Anne. "Let's sit right down here among the narcissi and Diana will tell it. "Asseyons-nous ici, au milieu des narcisses, et Diana nous racontera l'histoire. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them . Pourquoi, les filles, il y en a des centaines. they've spread over everything. ils se sont répandus sur tout. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making. C'est une découverte à faire. To think that I've lived within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before! Quand je pense que j'ai vécu à moins d'un kilomètre de cet endroit pendant six ans et que je ne l'ai jamais vu auparavant ! Now, Diana." "Long ago," began Diana, "this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray. He didn't live on it . he lived where Silas Sloane lives now. He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up in the country and she always wanted to get back. Elle avait été élevée à la campagne et elle voulait toujours revenir. When Jordan asked her to marry him she said she would if he'd take her away to some quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Lynde said he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper; but mother says she was very pretty and sweet and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on. Mme Lynde a dit qu'il prenait un risque terrible en épousant une Yankee, et il est certain qu'Hester était très délicate et une très mauvaise gouvernante ; mais maman dit qu'elle était très jolie et douce et que Jordan adorait le sol sur lequel elle marchait. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm and he built a little house back here and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much and hardly anybody went to see her except mother and Mrs. Lynde. Jordan made her this garden and she was crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers. And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the time. Elle ne s'est jamais vraiment endormie, mais est devenue de plus en plus faible tout le temps. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to wait on her. Jordan n'aurait personne pour la servir. He did it all himself and mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in a shawl and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench quite happy. Каждый день он заворачивал ее в шаль, выносил в сад, и она лежала там на скамейке совершенно счастливая. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came. On dit qu'elle obligeait Jordan à s'agenouiller près d'elle tous les soirs et tous les matins et à prier avec elle pour qu'elle puisse mourir dans le jardin le moment venu. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her; and she just smiled up at him . Un jour, Jordan l'a portée jusqu'au banc, puis il a cueilli toutes les roses qui se trouvaient là et les a déposées sur elle ; elle lui a souri. and closed her eyes . and that," concluded Diana softly, "was the end." "Oh, what a dear story," sighed Anne, wiping away her tears. "What became of Jordan?" asked Priscilla.

"He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloane bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. M. Jabez Sloane a acheté la ferme et a transporté la petite maison jusqu'à la route. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester." "I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here, away from everything," said Jane. "Je ne comprends pas comment elle a pu vouloir vivre ici, loin de tout", a déclaré Jane. "Oh, I can easily understand THAT," said Anne thoughtfully. "I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing, because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too. "Je ne le voudrais pas moi-même pour une chose stable, car, bien que j'aime les champs et les bois, j'aime aussi les gens. But I can understand it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and caring nothing for her. Elle était fatiguée à mort du bruit de la grande ville et des foules de gens qui allaient et venaient sans se soucier d'elle. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest. And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do, I believe. She had four beautiful years before she died. four years of perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut your eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you . oh, I think it was beautiful!" "She set out those cherry trees over there," said Diana. « Elle a planté ces cerisiers là-bas », dit Diana. "She told mother she'd never live to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead." "Elle a dit à sa mère qu'elle ne vivrait jamais assez longtemps pour manger leurs fruits, mais elle voulait penser que quelque chose qu'elle avait planté continuerait à vivre et contribuerait à embellir le monde après sa mort. "I'm so glad we came this way," said Anne, the shining-eyed. "This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me. "C'est mon anniversaire d'adoption, vous savez, et ce jardin et son histoire sont le cadeau d'anniversaire qu'il m'a offert. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana?" "No . only just that she was pretty." "I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like, without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes, and a little wistful, pale face." The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all . on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long feathery grasses. sur la rive escarpée d'un ruisseau glougloutant où des bouleaux blancs surgissent des longues herbes plumeuses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Les filles s'assirent près des racines et rendirent pleinement justice aux gourmandises d'Anne, même les sandwichs peu poétiques étant très appréciés par des appétits vigoureux et intacts, aiguisés par tout l'air frais et l'exercice dont elles avaient bénéficié. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. Anne avait apporté des verres et de la limonade pour ses invités, mais elle buvait de l'eau froide du ruisseau dans une tasse en écorce de bouleau. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth, as brook water is apt to do in spring; but Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade. La tasse fuyait et l'eau avait un goût de terre, comme l'eau d'un ruisseau a tendance à le faire au printemps, mais Anne la trouvait plus appropriée à l'occasion que la limonade.

"Look do you see that poem?" she said suddenly, pointing.

"Where?" Jane and Diana stared, as if expecting to see Runic rhymes on the birch trees.

"There . down in the brook . that old green, mossy log with the water flowing over it in those smooth ripples that look as if they'd been combed, and that single shaft of sunshine falling right athwart it, far down into the pool. ce vieux tronc vert et moussu sur lequel l'eau coule en ondulations douces comme si elles avaient été peignées, et cet unique rayon de soleil qui tombe juste en face de lui, loin dans le bassin. Oh, it's the most beautiful poem I ever saw." "I should rather call it a picture," said Jane. "A poem is lines and verses." "Oh dear me, no." "Oh mon Dieu, non." Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively. Anne a secoué sa tête avec son cornet de cerises sauvages duveteux positivement. "The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are YOU, Jane. "Les lignes et les vers ne sont que les vêtements extérieurs du poème et ne le constituent pas plus que tes volants et tes flonflons ne sont TOI, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them . and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul . even of a poem." "I wonder what a soul . a person's soul . would look like," said Priscilla dreamily. "Like that, I should think," answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree. "Only with shape and features of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers . D'autres sont parsemés de taches rosées et de frémissements. and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea . and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn." "I read somewhere once that souls were like flowers," said Priscilla. "Then your soul is a golden narcissus," said Anne, "and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet." Celle de Jane est une fleur de pommier, rose, saine et douce". "And your own is a white violet, with purple streaks in its heart," finished Priscilla. "Et la tienne est une violette blanche, avec des stries violettes dans le cœur", termine Priscilla. Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about. Jane a chuchoté à Diana qu'elle ne comprenait vraiment pas de quoi ils parlaient. Could she?

The girls went home by the light of a calm golden sunset, their baskets filled with narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester's grave. Les filles sont rentrées chez elles à la lumière d'un coucher de soleil doré et calme, leurs paniers remplis de fleurs de narcisse du jardin de Hester, dont certaines ont été apportées par Anne au cimetière le lendemain et déposées sur la tombe de Hester. Minstrel robins were whistling in the firs and the frogs were singing in the marshes. Les merles ménestrels sifflaient dans les sapins et les grenouilles chantaient dans les marais. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light.

"Well, we have had a lovely time after all," said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out. "Eh bien, nous avons passé un bon moment après tout", dit Diana, comme si elle ne s'attendait pas à ce qu'il en soit ainsi lorsqu'elle est partie. "It has been a truly golden day," said Priscilla. "I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself," said Jane. "J'aime vraiment beaucoup les bois moi-même", a déclaré Jane. Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray.