Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/15

Rh her chosen path;” or than in Mrs. Eben Andrews (in “Sara’s Way”) who “looked like a woman whose opinions were always very decided and warranted to wear!”

This gift of characterization in a few words is lavished also on material objects, as, for instance; what more is needed to describe the forlornness of the home from which Anne was rescued than the statement that even the trees around it “looked like orphans”?

The poetic touch, too, never fails in the right place and is never too frequently introduced in her descriptions. They throw a glamor over that Northern land which otherwise you might imagine as rather cold and barren. What charming Springs they must have there! One sees all the fruit-trees clad in bridal garments of pink and wnitewhite [sic]; and what a translucent sky smiles down on the ponds and the reaches of bay and cove!

“The Eastern sky was a great arc of crystal, smitten through with auroral crimsonings.”

“She was as slim and lithe as a young white-stemmed birch-tree; her hair was like a soft dusky cloud, and her eyes were as blue as Avonlea Harbor in a fair twilight, when all the sky is a-bloom over it.”

Sentiment with a humorous touch to it prevails in the first two stories of the present book. The one relates the disappearance of a valuable white Persian cat with a blue spot in its tail. “Fatima”