mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are
interesting, don't you think? You don't know what's going
to happen through the day, and there's so much scope for
imagination. But I'm glad it's not rainy today because
it's easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a
sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up
under. It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine
yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so
nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

"For pity's sake hold your tongue," said Marilla. "You talk
entirely too much for a little girl."

Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly
that her continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as
if in the presence of something not exactly natural.
Matthew also held his tongue,--but this was natural,--so
that the meal was a very silent one.

As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted,
eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly
and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made
Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable
feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at
the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy
cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who
would want such a child about the place?

Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things!
Marilla felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as