Page:Anne of Avonlea (1909).djvu/220

 “Did you get very wet?” she asked anxiously.

“Oh, no,” returned Anne cheerfully. “My head and shoulders are quite dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat through the lathes. Don’t pity me, Diana, for I haven’t minded it at all. I kept thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds would think when the drops began to fall. I imagined out a most interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden. When I go home I mean to write it down. I wish I had a pencil and paper to do it now, because I daresay I’ll forget the best parts before I reach home.”

Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping paper in the box of the buggy. Anne folded up her dripping parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyl under conditions that could hardly be considered as favourable to literature. Nevertheless, the result was quite pretty, and Diana was “enraptured” when Anne read it to her.

“Oh, Anne, it’s sweet just sweet. send it to the Canadian Woman.”

Anne shook her head.

“Oh, no, it wouldn’t be suitable at all. There is no in it, you see. It’s just a string of fancies. I like writing such things, but of course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication, for editors Rh