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Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906


Lucy Maud Montgomery was born at Clifton (now New London), Prince
Edward Island, Canada, on November 30, 1874. She achieved
international fame in her lifetime, putting Prince Edward Island and
Canada on the world literary map. Best known for her "Anne of Green
Gables" books, she was also a prolific writer of short stories and
poetry. She published some 500 short stories and poems and twenty
novels before her death in 1942. The Project Gutenberg collection of
her short stories was gathered from numerous sources and is presented
in chronological publishing order:

Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922


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Short Stories 1905 to 1906

    A Correspondence and a Climax                            1905
    An Adventure on Island Rock                              1906
    At Five O'Clock in the Morning                           1905
    Aunt Susanna's Birthday Celebration                      1905
    Bertie's New Year                                        1905
    Between the Hill and the Valley                          1905
    Clorinda's Gifts                                         1906
    Cyrilla's Inspiration                                    1905
    Dorinda's Desperate Deed                                 1906
    Her Own People                                           1905
    Ida's New Year Cake                                      1905
    In the Old Valley                                        1906
    Jane Lavinia                                             1906
    Mackereling Out in the Gulf                              1905
    Millicent's Double                                       1905
    The Blue North Room                                      1906
    The Christmas Surprise At Enderly Road                   1905
    The Dissipation of Miss Ponsonby                         1906
    The Falsoms' Christmas Dinner                            1906
    The Fraser Scholarship                                   1905
    The Girl at the Gate                                     1906
    The Light on the Big Dipper                              1906
    The Prodigal Brother                                     1906
    The Redemption of John Churchill                         1906
    The Schoolmaster's Letter                                1905
    The Story of Uncle Dick                                  1906
    The Understanding of Sister Sara                         1905
    The Unforgotten One                                      1906
    The Wooing of Bessy                                      1906
    Their Girl Josie                                         1906
    When Jack and Jill Took a Hand                           1905




A Correspondence and A Climax


At sunset Sidney hurried to her room to take off the soiled and faded
cotton dress she had worn while milking. She had milked eight cows and
pumped water for the milk-cans afterward in the fag-end of a hot
summer day. She did that every night, but tonight she had hurried more
than usual because she wanted to get her letter written before the
early farm bedtime. She had been thinking it out while she milked the
cows in the stuffy little pen behind the barn. This monthly letter was
the only pleasure and stimulant in her life. Existence would have
been, so Sidney thought, a dreary, unbearable blank without it. She
cast aside her milking-dress with a thrill of distaste that tingled to
her rosy fingertips. As she slipped into her blue-print afternoon
dress her aunt called to her from below. Sidney ran out to the dark
little entry and leaned over the stair railing. Below in the kitchen
there was a hubbub of laughing, crying, quarrelling children, and a
reek of bad tobacco smoke drifted up to the girl's disgusted nostrils.

Aunt Jane was standing at the foot of the stairs with a lamp in one
hand and a year-old baby clinging to the other. She was a big
shapeless woman with a round good-natured face--cheerful and vulgar as
a sunflower was Aunt Jane at all times and occasions.

"I want to run over and see how Mrs. Brixby is this evening, Siddy,
and you must take care of the baby till I get back."

Sidney sighed and went downstairs for the baby. It never would have
occurred to her to protest or be petulant about it. She had all her
aunt's sweetness of disposition, if she resembled her in nothing else.
She had not grumbled because she had to rise at four that morning, get
breakfast, milk the cows, bake bread, prepare seven children for
school, get dinner, preserve twenty quarts of strawberries, get tea,
and milk the cows again. All her days were alike as far as hard work
and dullness went, but she accepted them cheerfully and
uncomplainingly. But she did resent having to look after the baby when
she wanted to write her letter.

She carried the baby to her room, spread a quilt on the floor for him
to sit on, and gave him a box of empty spools to play with.
Fortunately he was a phlegmatic infant, fond of staying in one place,
and not given to roaming about in search of adventures; but Sidney
knew she would have to keep an eye on him, and it would be distracting
to literary effort.

She got out her box of paper and sat down by the little table at the
window with a small kerosene lamp at her elbow. The room was small--a
mere box above the kitchen which Sidney shared with two small cousins.
Her bed and the cot where the little girls slept filled up almost all
the available space. The furniture was poor, but everything was
neat--it was the only neat room in the house, indeed, for tidiness was
no besetting virtue of Aunt Jane's.

Opposite Sidney was a small muslined and befrilled toilet-table, above
which hung an eight-by-six-inch mirror, in which Sidney saw herself
reflected as she devoutly hoped other people did not see her. Just at
that particular angle one eye appeared to be as large as an orange,
while the other was the size of a pea, and the mouth zigzagged from
ear to ear. Sidney hated that mirror as virulently as she could hate
anything. It seemed to her to typify all that was unlovely in her
life. The mirror of existence into which her fresh young soul had
looked for twenty years gave back to her wistful gaze just such
distortions of fair hopes and ideals.

Half of the little table by which she sat was piled high with
books--old books, evidently well read and well-bred books, classics of
fiction and verse every one of them, and all bearing on the flyleaf
the name of Sidney Richmond, thereby meaning not the girl at the
table, but her college-bred young father who had died the day before
she was born. Her mother had died the day after, and Sidney thereupon
had come into the hands of good Aunt Jane, with those books for her
dowry, since nothing else was left after the expenses of the double
funeral had been paid.

One of the books had Sidney Richmond's name printed on the title-page
instead of written on the flyleaf. It was a thick little volume of
poems, published in his college days--musical, unsubstantial, pretty
little poems, every one of which the girl Sidney loved and knew by
heart.

Sidney dropped her pointed chin in her hands and looked dreamily out
into the moonlit night, while she thought her letter out a little more
fully before beginning to write. Her big brown eyes were full of
wistfulness and romance; for Sidney was romantic, albeit a faithful
and understanding acquaintance with her father's books had given to
her romance refinement and reason, and the delicacy of her own nature
had imparted to it a self-respecting bias.

Presently she began to write, with a flush of real excitement on her
face. In the middle of things the baby choked on a small twist spool
and Sidney had to catch him up by the heels and hold him head downward
until the trouble was ejected. Then she had to soothe him, and finally
write the rest of her letter holding him on one arm and protecting the
epistle from the grabs of his sticky little fingers. It was certainly
letter-writing under difficulties, but Sidney seemed to deal with them
mechanically. Her soul and understanding were elsewhere.

Four years before, when Sidney was sixteen, still calling herself a
schoolgirl by reason of the fact that she could be spared to attend
school four months in the winter when work was slack, she had been
much interested in the "Maple Leaf" department of the Montreal weekly
her uncle took. It was a page given over to youthful Canadians and
filled with their contributions in the way of letters, verses, and
prize essays. Noms de plume were signed to these, badges were sent to
those who joined the Maple Leaf Club, and a general delightful sense
of mystery pervaded the department.

Often a letter