`` Is it settled yet where you are going to live ? '' asked Diana , cuddling Small Anne Cordelia with the inimitable gesture of motherhood which always sent through Anne 's heart , filled with sweet , unuttered dreams and hopes , a thrill that was half pure pleasure and half a strange , ethereal pain . `` Yes . That was what I wanted to tell you when I ` phoned to you to come down today . By the way , I ca n't realize that we really have telephones in Avonlea now . It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish for this darling , leisurely old place . '' `` We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them , '' said Diana . `` We should never have got the line if they had n't taken the matter up and carried it through . There was enough cold water thrown to discourage any society . But they stuck to it , nevertheless . You did a splendid thing for Avonlea when you founded that society , Anne . What fun we did have at our meetings ! Will you ever forget the blue hall and Judson Parker 's scheme for painting medicine advertisements on his fence ? '' `` I do n't know that I 'm wholly grateful to the A. V. I. S. in the matter of the telephone , '' said Anne . `` Oh , I know it 's most convenient -- even more so than our old device of signalling to each other by flashes of candlelight ! And , as Mrs. Rachel says , ` Avonlea must keep up with the procession , that 's what . ' But somehow I feel as if I did n't want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr. Harrison , when he wants to be witty , calls ` modern inconveniences . ' I should like to have it kept always just as it was in the dear old years . That 's foolish -- and sentimental -- and impossible . So I shall immediately become wise and practical and possible .
The telephone , as Mr. XXXXX concedes , is ' a buster of a good thing ' -- even if you do know that probably half a dozen interested people are listening along the line . ''
Anne Avonlea Cordelia Diana Harrison Parker Rachel inconveniences signalling years