He has no bad habits and he's a great worker, and you can depend on him. `A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.' He told me to tell you he'd be quite willing to wait till you got through college, if you insisted, though he'd RATHER get married this spring before the planting begins. He'd always be very good to you, I'm sure, and you know, Anne, I'd love to have you for a sister.""I can't marry Billy," said Anne decidedly. She had recovered her wits, and was even feeling a little angry. It was all so ridiculous. "There is no use thinking of it, Jane. I don't care anything for him in that way, and you must tell him so.""Well, I didn't suppose you would," said Jane with a resigned sigh, feeling that she had done her best. "I told Billy I didn't believe it was a bit of use to ask you, but he insisted. Well, you've made your decision, Anne, and I hope you won't regret it."Jane spoke rather coldly. She had been perfectly sure that the enamored Billy had no chance at all of inducing Anne to marry him.
Nevertheless, she felt a little resentment that Anne Shirley, who was, after all, merely an adopted orphan, without kith or kin, should refuse her brother -- one of the Avonlea Andrews. Well, pride sometimes goes before a fall, Jane reflected ominously.
Anne permitted herself to smile in the darkness over the idea that she might ever regret not marrying Billy Andrews.
"I hope Billy won't feel very badly over it," she said nicely.
Jane made a movement as if she were tossing her head on her pillow.
"Oh, he won't break his heart. Billy has too much good sense for that.
He likes Nettie Blewett pretty well, too, and mother would rather he married her than any one. She's such a good manager and saver.
I think, when Billy is once sure you won't have him, he'll take Nettie.
Please don't mention this to any one, will you, Anne?""Certainly not," said Anne, who had no desire whatever to publish abroad the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry her, preferring her, when all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett. Nettie Blewett!
"And now I suppose we'd better go to sleep," suggested Jane.
To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but, though very unlike MacBeth in most respects, she had certainly contrived to murder sleep for Anne. That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow until the wee sma's, but her meditations were far from being romantic.
It was not, however, until the next morning that she had an opportunity to indulge in a good laugh over the whole affair. When Jane had gone home -- still with a hint of frost in voice and manner because Anne had declined so ungratefully and decidedly the honor of an alliance with the House of Andrews -- Anne retreated to the porch room, shut the door, and had her laugh out at last.
"If I could only share the joke with some one!" she thought.
"But I can't. Diana is the only one I'd want to tell, and, even if I hadn't sworn secrecy to Jane, I can't tell Diana things now.
She tells everything to Fred -- I know she does. Well, I've had my first proposal. I supposed it would come some day -- but Icertainly never thought it would be by proxy. It's awfully funny -- and yet there's a sting in it, too, somehow."Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not put it into words. She had had her secret dreams of the first time some one should ask her the great question.
And it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful:
and the "some one" was to be very handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with "yes," or one to whom a regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be given. If the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, life-long devotion. And it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad about, also.
And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque.
Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn't "have him" Nettie Blewett would.
There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne laughed -- and then sighed.
The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and hum-drum?
