“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Anne. That sad one was simply splendid.”
“Oh, I was so nervous, Diana. When Mr. Allan called out my name I really cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I was sure I couldn’t begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves, Diana. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so far away. I just felt like a parrot. It’s providential that I practised those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able to get through. Did I groan all right?”
“Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,” assured Diana.
“I saw old Mrs. Sloane wiping away tears when I sat down. It was splendid to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic to take part in a concert, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable occasion indeed.”
“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Diana. “Gilbert Blythe was just splendid. Anne, I do think it’s awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic that I’m sure you ought to be pleased at that.”
“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Anne loftily. “I simply never waste a thought on him, Diana.”
That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after Anne had gone to bed.