Энн из Авонлеи

Lucy MONTGOMERY

ANNE  

OF AVONLEA

CLASSICAL LITERATURE

УДК  372.8 
ББК  81.2 Англ-93 
 
М77

ISBN 978-5-9925-1651-7

Монтгомери, Люси Мод.

М77        Энн из Авонлеи / Л. М. Монтгомери : книга для чте-

ния на английском языке. — Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 
2023. — 320 с. — (Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1651-7.

Перед вами вторая часть истории про Энн из Зеленых 

Мезонинов.

Беззаботное детство Энн кончилось, ей уже 16 лет и она 

работает школьной учительницей. Энн перестала быть нарушительницей 
спокойствия, но осталась такой же веселой, 
яркой и жизнерадостной. Хоть характер девушки и меняется, 
она становится серьезнее, решает жизненные задачи и 
воспитывает своих подопечных, тем не менее это все та же 
Энн. Главное, чему она учит детей в школе, — так же относиться 
к миру, как она сама: с открытым сердцем, надеждой 
и любовью.

История рыжей красавицы-оптимистки Энн из Авонлеи 

понравится всем, кто изучает английский язык. Неадаптированный 
текст печатается без сокращений.

УДК 372.8

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2023
Все права защищены

To my former teacher Hattie Gordon Smith  
in grateful remembrance of her sympathy  

and encouragement.

Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty,
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.

—WHITTIER

Chapter I

An Irate Neighbor

A tall, slim girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray 

eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat 
down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince 
Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, 
firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.

But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing 

the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the 
poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming 
against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the 
cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. 
The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, 
her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on 
the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just 
over Mr. J. A. Harrison’s house like a great white mountain, 
was far away in a delicious world where a certain school-
teacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the desti-
nies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and 
hearts with high and lofty ambitions.

To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts ... which, it 

must be confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to ... it 
did not seem likely that there was much promising mate-
rial for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never 
tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for 

good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher 
might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; 
and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years 
hence, with a famous personage ... just exactly what he 
was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness, but 
Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a col-
lege president or a Canadian premier ... bowing low over 
her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who 
had first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in 
life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago in 
Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was shattered by a 
most unpleasant interruption.

A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the 

lane and five seconds later Mr. Harrison arrived ... if “ar-
rived” be not too mild a term to describe the manner of his 
irruption into the yard.

He bounced over the fence without waiting to open 

the gate, and angrily confronted astonished Anne, who had 
risen to her feet and stood looking at him in some bewil-
derment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand neighbor 
and she had never met him before, although she had seen 
him once or twice.

In early April, before Anne had come home from 

Queen’s, Mr. Robert Bell, whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert 
place on the west, had sold out and moved to Charlotte-
town. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harri-
son, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick 
man, were all that was known about him. But before he 
had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation 
of being an odd person ... “a crank,” Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. 
Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who 

may have already made her acquaintance will remember. 
Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people ... 
and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, as every-
body knows.

In the first place he kept house for himself and had 

publicly stated that he wanted no fools of women around 
his diggings. Feminine Avonlea took its revenge by the 
gruesome tales it related about his house-keeping and 
cooking. He had hired little John Henry Carter of White 
Sands and John Henry started the stories. For one thing, 
there was never any stated time for meals in the Harrison 
establishment. Mr. Harrison “got a bite” when he felt hun-
gry, and if John Henry were around at the time, he came in 
for a share, but if he were not, he had to wait until Mr. Har-
rison’s next hungry spell. John Henry mournfully averred 
that he would have starved to death if it wasn’t that he got 
home on Sundays and got a good filling up, and that his 
mother always gave him a basket of “grub” to take back 
with him on Monday mornings.

As for washing dishes, Mr. Harrison never made any 

pretence of doing it unless a rainy Sunday came. Then he 
went to work and washed them all at once in the rainwater 
hogshead, and left them to drain dry.

Again, Mr. Harrison was “close.” When he was asked 

to subscribe to the Rev. Mr. Allan’s salary he said he’d wait 
and see how many dollars’ worth of good he got out of his 
preaching first ... he didn’t believe in buying a pig in a poke. 
And when Mrs. Lynde went to ask for a contribution to mis-
sions ... and incidentally to see the inside of the house ... he 
told her there were more heathens among the old woman 
gossips in Avonlea than anywhere else he knew of, and he’d 

cheerfully contribute to a mission for Christianizing them 
if she’d undertake it. Mrs. Rachel got herself away and said 
it was a mercy poor Mrs. Robert Bell was safe in her grave, 
for it would have broken her heart to see the state of her 
house in which she used to take so much pride.

“Why, she scrubbed the kitchen floor every second day,” 

Mrs. Lynde told Marilla Cuthbert indignantly, “and if you 
could see it now! I had to hold up my skirts as I walked 
across it.”

Finally, Mr. Harrison kept a parrot called Ginger. No-

body in Avonlea had ever kept a parrot before; consequent-
ly that proceeding was considered barely respectable. And 
such a parrot! If you took John Henry Carter’s word for it, 
never was such an unholy bird. It swore terribly. Mrs. Cart-
er would have taken John Henry away at once if she had 
been sure she could get another place for him. Besides, Gin-
ger had bitten a piece right out of the back of John Henry’s 
neck one day when he had stooped down too near the cage. 
Mrs. Carter showed everybody the mark when the luckless 
John Henry went home on Sundays.

All these things flashed through Anne’s mind as 

Mr. Harrison stood, quite speechless with wrath appar-
ently, before her. In his most amiable mood Mr. Harrison 
could not have been considered a handsome man; he was 
short and fat and bald; and now, with his round face purple 
with rage and his prominent blue eyes almost sticking out 
of his head, Anne thought he was really the ugliest person 
she had ever seen.

All at once Mr. Harrison found his voice.
“I’m not going to put up with this,” he spluttered, “not 

a day longer, do you hear, miss. Bless my soul, this is the 

third time, miss ... the third time! Patience has ceased to be 
a virtue, miss. I warned your aunt the last time not to let it 
occur again ... and she’s let it ... she’s done it ... what does 
she mean by it, that is what I want to know. That is what 
I’m here about, miss.”

“Will you explain what the trouble is?” asked Anne, 

in her most dignified manner. She had been practicing it 
considerably of late to have it in good working order when 
school began; but it had no apparent effect on the irate 
J. A. Harrison.

“Trouble, is it? Bless my soul, trouble enough, I should 

think. The trouble is, miss, that I found that Jersey cow of 
your aunt’s in my oats again, not half an hour ago. The third 
time, mark you. I found her in last Tuesday and I found her 
in yesterday. I came here and told your aunt not to let it 
occur again. She has let it occur again. Where’s your aunt, 
miss? I just want to see her for a minute and give her a 
piece of my mind ... a piece of J. A. Harrison’s mind, miss.”

“If you mean Miss Marilla Cuthbert, she is not my aunt, 

and she has gone down to East Grafton to see a distant rela-
tive of hers who is very ill,” said Anne, with due increase 
of dignity at every word. “I am very sorry that my cow 
should have broken into your oats ... she is my cow and not 
Miss Cuthbert’s ... Matthew gave her to me three years ago 
when she was a little calf and he bought her from Mr. Bell.”

“Sorry, miss! Sorry isn’t going to help matters any. You’d 

better go and look at the havoc that animal has made in my 
oats ... trampled them from center to circumference, miss.”

“I am very sorry,” repeated Anne firmly, “but perhaps if 

you kept your fences in better repair Dolly might not have 
broken in. It is your part of the line fence that separates 

your oatfield from our pasture and I noticed the other day 
that it was not in very good condition.”

“My fence is all right,” snapped Mr. Harrison, angrier 

than ever at this carrying of the war into the enemy’s 
country. “The jail fence couldn’t keep a demon of a cow 
like that out. And I can tell you, you redheaded snippet, 
that if the cow is yours, as you say, you’d be better em-
ployed in watching her out of other people’s grain than 
in sitting round reading yellow-covered novels,” ... with 
a scathing glance at the innocent tan-colored Virgil by 
Anne’s feet.

Something at that moment was red besides Anne’s 

hair ... which had always been a tender point with her.

“I’d rather have red hair than none at all, except a little 

fringe round my ears,” she flashed.

The shot told, for Mr. Harrison was really very sensitive 

about his bald head. His anger choked him up again and he 
could only glare speechlessly at Anne, who recovered her 
temper and followed up her advantage.

“I can make allowance for you, Mr. Harrison, because 

I have an imagination. I can easily imagine how very trying 
it must be to find a cow in your oats and I shall not cherish 
any hard feelings against you for the things you’ve said. 
I promise you that Dolly shall never break into your oats 
again. I give you my word of honor on that point.”

“Well, mind you she doesn’t,” muttered Mr. Harrison 

in a somewhat subdued tone; but he stamped off angrily 
enough and Anne heard him growling to himself until he 
was out of earshot.

Grievously disturbed in mind, Anne marched across 

the yard and shut the naughty Jersey up in the milking pen.