This page has been validated.
SWEET MISS LAVENDAR
 

and it was awful ugly and I told him if he made pictures of Anne like that I’d lick him at recess. I thought first I’d draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt anyone’s feelings. It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you must do something. Milty said he wasn’t scared of me but he’d just as soon call it somebody else to ’blige me, so he rubbed out Anne’s name and printed Barbara Shaw’s under it. Milty doesn’t like Barbara ’cause she calls him a sweet little boy and once she patted him on his head.”

Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet, even for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to bed she hesitated and began to cry.

“I’m . . . I’m frightened,” she sobbed. “I . . . I don’t want to go upstairs alone in the dark.”

“What notion have you got into your head now?” demanded Marilla. “I’m sure you’ve gone to bed alone all summer and never been frightened before.”

Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her sympathetically, and whispered,

“Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart. What are you frightened of?”

“Of . . . of Mirabel Cotton’s uncle,” sobbed Dora. “Mirabel Cotton told me all about her family to-day in school. Nearly everybody in her family has died . . . all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever

237