Page:Anne of Avonlea (1909).djvu/240

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
 
ANNE OF AVONLEA

get a nice roast and some steak. If he doesn’t you’ll have to kill a fowl for dinner to-morrow.”

Anne nodded.

“I’m not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself to-day,” she said. “That cold ham bone will do for noon lunch and I’ll have some steak fried for you when you come home at night.”

“I’m going to help Mr. Harrison haul dulse this morning,” announced Davy. “He asked me to, and I guess he’ll ask me to dinner too. Mr. Harrison is an awful kind man. He’s a real sociable man. I hope I’ll be like him when I grow up. I mean behave like him . . . I don’t want to look like him. But I guess there’s no danger, for Mrs. Lynde says I’m a very handsome child. Do you s’pose it’ll last, Anne? I want to know.”

“I daresay it will,” said Anne gravely. “You are a handsome boy, Davy” . . . Marilla looked volumes of disapproval . . . “but you must live up to it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be.”

“And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying ’cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and loving people wouldn’t mind her looks,” said Davy discontentedly. “Seems to me you can’t get out of being good in this world for some reason or ’nother. You just have to behave.”

“Don’t you want to be good?” asked Marilla, who had learned a great deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

226