"It’s five miles; and as you’re evidently bent on talking you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself."
"Oh, what I know about myself isn’t really worth telling," said Anne eagerly. "If you’ll only let me tell you what I imagine about myself you’ll think it ever so much more interesting."
"No, I don’t want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you"
"I was eleven last March," said Anne, resigning herself to bald facts with a little sigh. "And I was born in Bolingbroke. My father’s name was Walter Jerry, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High School. My mother’s name was Bertha Jerry. I’m so glad my parents had nice names. "
"I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as he behaves himself," said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.
"Well, my mother was a teacher in the high school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Thomas said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a weeny-y little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I’ve never seen that house, but I’ve imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeyle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. I was born in that house. Mrs. Thomas said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say ’mother’, don’t you And father died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits’ end, so Mrs. Thomas said, what to do with me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate. Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well known they hadn’t any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Thomas said she’d take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. "
"Mr. and Mrs. Thomas moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight years old. Then Mr. Thomas was killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Thomas and the children, but she didn’t want me. Mrs. Thomas was at her wits’ end, so she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Hammond from up the river came down and said she’d take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps. I lived up river with Mrs. Hammond over two years, and then Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping. She divided her children among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum, because nobody would take me. They didn’t want me at the asylum, either; they said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Spencer came. "
Anne finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.
"Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you" asked Marilla, looking at Anne out of the corner of her eye.
"O-o-o-h," faltered Anne. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. "Oh, they MEANT to be—I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people mean to be good to you, you don’t mind very much when they’re not quite—always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know It’s very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don’t you think But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.\
Anne can be described as all of the following EXCEPT ______.