Chapter: |WELL, how do you like them?" said Marilla.

Anne was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new
dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which
Marilla had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer
because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered
sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and
one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that
week at a Carmody store.

She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts
fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt
and tight as sleeves could be.

"I'll imagine that I like them," said Anne soberly.

"I don't want you to imagine it," said Marilla, offended. "Oh, I can see
you don't like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren't they
neat and clean and new?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you like them?"

"They're--they're not--pretty," said Anne reluctantly.

"Pretty!" Marilla sniffed. "I didn't trouble my head about getting
pretty dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Anne, I'll
tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable
dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they're all
you'll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do
you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday
school. I'll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear
them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most anything after those
skimpy wincey things you've been wearing."

"Oh, I _am_ grateful," protested Anne. "But I'd be ever so much
gratefuller if--if you'd made just one of them with puffed sleeves.
Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill,
Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves."

"Well, you'll have to do without your thrill. I hadn't any material
to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things
anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones."

"But I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and
sensible all by myself," persisted Anne mournfully.

"Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your
closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got
a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you'll go to Sunday school
tomorrow," said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.

Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.

"I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves," she
whispered disconsolately. "I prayed for one, but I didn't much expect it
on that account. I didn't suppose God would have time to bother about
a little orphan girl's dress. I knew I'd just have to depend on
Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of
snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves."

The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from
going to Sunday-school with Anne.

"You'll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne," she said.
"She'll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave
yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to
show you our pew. Here's a cent for collection. Don't stare at people
and don't fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come
home."

Anne started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white
sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to
the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle
of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the
extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who
had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter,
however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being
confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred
buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne promptly and liberally
garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people
might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped
gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink
and yellow very proudly.

When she had reached Mrs. Lynde's house she found that lady gone.
Nothing daunted, Anne proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch
she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in
whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this
stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea
little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said
she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables,
said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers
like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind
their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later
on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss
Rogerson's class.

Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school
class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed
questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the
particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She
looked very often at Anne, and Anne, thanks to Marilla's drilling,
answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much
about either question or answer.

She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable;
every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Anne felt that
life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.

"Well, how did you like Sunday school?" Marilla wanted to know when Anne
came home. Her wreath having faded, Anne had discarded it in the lane,
so Marilla was spared the knowledge of that for a time.

"I didn't like it a bit. It was horrid."

"Anne Shirley!" said Marilla rebukingly.

Anne sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny's
leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.

"They might have been lonesome while I was away," she explained. "And
now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs.
Lynde was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with
a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the
window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Bell made an awfully
long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through
if I hadn't been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the
Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts
of splendid things."

"You shouldn't have done anything of the sort. You should have listened
to Mr. Bell."

"But he wasn't talking to me," protested Anne. "He was talking to God
and he didn't seem to be very much inter-ested in it, either. I think
he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white
birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through
them, 'way, 'way down, deep into the water. Oh, Marilla, it was like a
beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, 'Thank you for it,
God,' two or three times."

"Not out loud, I hope," said Marilla anxiously.

"Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Bell did get through at last
and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson's class.
There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried
to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn't. Why couldn't I? It was
as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in
the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had
really truly puffs."

"You shouldn't have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school.
You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it."

"Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so
many. I don't think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were
lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn't like to because I didn't think
she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a
paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn't, but I could
recite, 'The Dog at His Master's Grave' if she liked. That's in the
Third Royal Reader. It isn't a really truly religious piece of poetry,
but it's so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it
wouldn't do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next
Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it's splendid. There are
two lines in particular that just thrill me.

   "'Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell
   In Midian's evil day.'

"I don't know what 'squadrons' means nor 'Midian,' either, but it sounds
_so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it.
I'll practice it all the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss
Rogerson--because Mrs. Lynde was too far away--to show me your pew.
I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third
chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a
minister I'd pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long,
too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn't think
he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he
hasn't enough imagination. I didn't listen to him very much. I just let
my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things."

Marilla felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but
she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Anne had
said, especially about the minister's sermons and Mr. Bell's prayers,
were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for
years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that
those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible
and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of
neglected humanity.

 Marilla has sewn Anne three new dresses, which Anne does not like because they are so plain. Anne particularly wishes that they had puffed sleeves, which are fashionable. Anne decides she will imagine that the dresses look the way she wants them to. The next morning, it is time for Anne to go to Sunday school for the first time, but Marilla cannot take her due to a headache. She sends Anne to ask Mrs. Rachel to walk with her to the church and show her how to behave. On her walk, Anne stops to make a garland of flowers and puts it on her hat. When Anne reaches Mrs. Rachel's house, the woman is not there, so Anne walks to the church alone. At Sunday School, Anne meets many other little girls, mostly attired in cute dresses with puffed sleeves. The Sunday School teacher uses the class time to drill the students with questions, which Anne is able to answer since Marilla had made her study ahead of time. Anne goes home after Sunday School and tells Marilla that she didn't like it. Anne says that the sermon was long and boring so she looked outside at a lake and used her imagination. She also says she didn't like that all the other girls had puffed sleeves and that she had to answer the teacher's questions without asking any herself. When Anne finishes her criticisms, Marilla thinks to herself that she actually agrees with Anne but has never let herself express those thoughts before

