Where’s Phil off to tonight?”
“She’s going to a dance, and she’s got the sweetest dress for it — creamy yellow silk and cobwebby lace. It just suits those brown tints of hers.”
“There’s magic in the words ‘silk’ and ‘lace,’ isn’t there?” said Aunt Jamesina. “The very sound of them makes me feel like skipping off to a dance. And YELLOW silk. It makes one think of a dress of sunshine. I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but first my mother and then my husband wouldn’t hear of it. The very first thing I’m going to do when I get to heaven is to get a yellow silk dress.”
Amid Anne’s peal of laughter Phil came downstairs, trailing clouds of glory, and surveyed herself in the long oval mirror on the wall.
“A flattering looking glass is a promoter of amiability,” she said. “The one in my room does certainly make me green. Do I look pretty nice, Anne?”
“Do you really know how pretty you are, Phil?” asked Anne, in honest admiration.
“Of course I do. What are looking glasses and men for? That wasn’t what I meant. Are all my ends tucked in? Is my skirt straight? And would this rose look better lower down? I’m afraid it’s too high — it will make me look lopsided. But I hate things tickling my ears.”
“Everything is just right, and that southwest dimple of yours is lovely.”
“Anne, there’s one thing in particular I like about you — you’re so ungrudging. There isn’t a particle of envy in you.”
“Why should she be envious?” demanded Aunt Jamesina. “She’s not quite as goodlooking as you, maybe, but she’s got a far handsomer nose.”
“I know it,” conceded Phil.
“My nose always has been a great comfort to me,” confessed Anne.
“And I love the way your hair grows on your forehead, Anne. And that one wee curl, always looking as if it were going to drop, but never dropping, is delicious. But as for noses, mine is a dreadful worry to me. I know by the time I’m forty it will be Byrney. What do you think I’ll look like when I’m forty, Anne?”
“Like an old, matronly, married woman,” teased Anne.
“I won’t,” said Phil, sitting down comfortably to wait for her escort. “Joseph, you calico beastie, don’t you dare jump on my lap. I won’t go to a dance all over cat hairs. No, Anne, I WON’T look matronly. But no doubt I’ll be married.”
“To Alec or Alonzo?” asked Anne.
“To one of them, I suppose,” sighed Phil, “if I can ever decide which.”
“It shouldn’t be hard to decide,” scolded Aunt Jamesina.
“I was born a see-saw Aunty, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering.”
“You ought to be more levelheaded, Philippa.”
“It’s best to be levelheaded, of course,” agreed Philippa, “but you miss lots of fun. As for Alec and Alonzo, if you knew them you’d understand why it’s difficult to choose between them. They’re equally nice.”
“Then take somebody who is nicer” suggested Aunt Jamesina. “There’s that Senior who is so devoted to you — Will Leslie. He has such nice, large, mild eyes.”
“They’re a little bit too large and too mild — like a cow’s,” said Phil cruelly.
“What do you say about George Parker?”
“There’s nothing to say about him except that he always looks as if he had just been starched and ironed.”
“Marr Holworthy then. You can’t find a fault with him.”
“No, he would do if he wasn’t poor. I must marry a rich man, Aunt Jamesina. That — and good looks — is an indispensable qualification. I’d marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich.”
“Oh, would you?” said Anne, rather viciously.
“We don’t like that idea a little bit, although we don’t want Gilbert ourselves, oh, no,” mocked Phil. “But don’t let’s talk of disagreeable subjects. I’ll have to marry sometime, I suppose, but I shall put off the evil day as long as I can.”
“You mustn’t marry anybody you don’t love, Phil, when all’s said and done,” said Aunt Jamesina.
“‘Oh, hearts that loved in the good old way
Have been out o’ the fashion this many a day.’”
trilled Phil mockingly. “There’s the carriage. I fly — Bi-bi, you two old-fashioned darlings.”
When Phil had gone Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly at Anne.
“That girl is pretty and sweet and goodhearted, but do you think she is quite right in her mind, by spells, Anne?”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything the matter with Phil’s mind,” said Anne, hiding a smile. “It’s just her way of talking.”
Aunt Jamesina shook her head.
“Well, I hope so, Anne. I do hope so, because I love her. But I can’t understand her — she beats me. She isn’t like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself.”
“How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?”
“About half a dozen, my dear.”
Chapter XX
Gilbert Speaks
“This has been a dull, prosy day,” yawned Phil, stretching herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two exceedingly indignant cats.
Anne looked up from Pickwick Papers. Now that spring examinations were over she was treating herself to Dickens.
“It has been a prosy day for us,” she said thoughtfully, “but to some people it has been a wonderful day. Some one has been rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today — or a great poem written — or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil.”
“Why did you spoil your pretty thought by tagging that last sentence on, honey?” grumbled Phil. “I don’t like to think of broken hearts — or anything unpleasant.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to shirk unpleasant things all your life, Phil?”
“Dear me, no. Am I not up against them now? You don’t call Alec and Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they simply plague my life out?”
“You never take anything seriously, Phil.”
“Why should I? There are enough folks who do. The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it. It would be a terrible place if EVERYBODY were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest. MY mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm and allure.’ Confess now. Hasn’t life at Patty’s Place been really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter because I’ve been here to leaven you?”
“Yes, it has,” owned Anne.
“And you all love me — even Aunt Jamesina, who thinks I’m stark mad. So why should I try to be different? Oh, dear, I’m so sleepy. I was awake until one last night, reading a harrowing ghost story. I read it in bed, and after I had finished it do you suppose I could get out of bed to put the light out? No! And if Stella had not fortunately come in late that lamp would have burned good and bright till morning. When I heard Stella I called her in, explained my predicament, and got her to put out the light. If I had got out myself