The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Autobiography and Letters (Including Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy). Lucy Maud Montgomery
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“I don’t want to be too hard on the child,” said Marilla. “I daresay nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those Sprott children were no fit companions for him. Poor Mary was too sick to train him properly and I presume you couldn’t expect a six-year-old child to know things like that by instinct. I suppose we’ll just have to assume he doesn’t know ANYTHING right and begin at the beginning. But he’ll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can’t think of any way except to send him to bed without his supper and we’ve done that so often. Can’t you suggest something else, Anne? I should think you ought to be able to, with that imagination you’re always talking of.”
“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy. “There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.”
In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until noon next day. He evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went up to her room a little later she heard him calling her name softly. Going in, she found him sitting up in bed, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped on his hands.
“Anne,” he said solemnly, “is it wrong for everybody to tell whop … falsehoods? I want to know?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Is it wrong for a grownup person?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Davy decidedly, “Marilla is bad, for SHE tells them. And she’s worse’n me, for I didn’t know it was wrong but she does.”
“Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life,” said Anne indignantly.
“She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something dreadful WOULD happen to me if I didn’t say my prayers every night. And I haven’t said them for over a week, just to see what would happen … and nothing has,” concluded Davy in an aggrieved tone.
Anne choked back a mad desire to laugh with the conviction that it would be fatal, and then earnestly set about saving Marilla’s reputation.
“Why, Davy Keith,” she said solemnly, “something dreadful HAS happened to you this very day.”
Davy looked sceptical.
“I s’pose you mean being sent to bed without any supper,” he said scornfully, “but THAT isn’t dreadful. Course, I don’t like it, but I’ve been sent to bed so much since I come here that I’m getting used to it. And you don’t save anything by making me go without supper either, for I always eat twice as much for breakfast.”
“I don’t mean your being sent to bed. I mean the fact that you told a falsehood today. And, Davy,” … Anne leaned over the footboard of the bed and shook her finger impressively at the culprit … “for a boy to tell what isn’t true is almost the worst thing that could HAPPEN to him … almost the very worst. So you see Marilla told you the truth.”
“But I thought the something bad would be exciting,” protested Davy in an injured tone.
“Marilla isn’t to blame for what you thought. Bad things aren’t always exciting. They’re very often just nasty and stupid.”
“It was awful funny to see Marilla and you looking down the well, though,” said Davy, hugging his knees.
Anne kept a sober face until she got downstairs and then she collapsed on the sitting room lounge and laughed until her sides ached.
“I wish you’d tell me the joke,” said Marilla, a little grimly. “I haven’t seen much to laugh at today.”
“You’ll laugh when you hear this,” assured Anne. And Marilla did laugh, which showed how much her education had advanced since the adoption of Anne. But she sighed immediately afterwards.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have told him that, although I heard a minister say it to a child once. But he did aggravate me so. It was that night you were at the Carmody concert and I was putting him to bed. He said he didn’t see the good of praying until he got big enough to be of some importance to God. Anne, I do not know what we are going to do with that child. I never saw his beat. I’m feeling clean discouraged.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Marilla. Remember how bad I was when I came here.”
“Anne, you never were bad … NEVER. I see that now, when I’ve learned what real badness is. You were always getting into terrible scrapes, I’ll admit, but your motive was always good. Davy is just bad from sheer love of it.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think it is real badness with him either,” pleaded Anne. “It’s just mischief. And it is rather quiet for him here, you know. He has no other boys to play with and his mind has to have something to occupy it. Dora is so prim and proper she is no good for a boy’s playmate. I really think it would be better to let them go to school, Marilla.”
“No,” said Marilla resolutely, “my father always said that no child should be cooped up in the four walls of a school until it was seven years old, and Mr. Allan says the same thing. The twins can have a few lessons at home but go to school they shan’t till they’re seven.”
“Well, we must try to reform Davy at home then,” said Anne cheerfully. “With all his faults he’s really a dear little chap. I can’t help loving him. Marilla, it may be a dreadful thing to say, but honestly, I like Davy better than Dora, for all she’s so good.”
“I don’t know but that I do, myself,” confessed Marilla, “and it isn’t fair, for Dora isn’t a bit of trouble. There couldn’t be a better child and you’d hardly know she was in the house.”
“Dora is too good,” said Anne. “She’d behave just as well if there wasn’t a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already brought up, so she doesn’t need us; and I think,” concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, “that we always love best the people who need us. Davy needs us badly.”
“He certainly needs something,” agreed Marilla. “Rachel Lynde would say it was a good spanking.”
XI. Facts and Fancies
“Teaching is really very interesting work,” wrote Anne to a Queen’s Academy chum. “Jane says she thinks it is monotonous but I don’t find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day, and the children say such amusing things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when they make funny speeches, which is probably why she finds teaching monotonous. This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell ‘speckled’ and couldn’t manage it. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘I can’t spell it but I know what it means.’
“‘What?’ I asked.
“‘St. Clair Donnell’s face, miss.’
“St. Clair is certainly very much freckled, although I try to prevent the others from commenting on it … for I was freckled once and well do I remember it. But I don’t think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy called him ‘St. Clair’ that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don’t think I’ll take any notice of it.
“Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said, ‘If you had three candies in one hand and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?’ ‘A mouthful,’ said Lottie. And in the nature study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads shouldn’t be killed, Benjie Sloane gravely answered, ‘Because it would rain the next day.’
“It’s so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusement until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the east gable without any apparent