"Montgomery, Lucy Maud - Anne Of Green Gables" - читать интересную книгу автора (Montgomery Lucy Maud)

Lucy Maud Montgomery

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES




1. Mrs. Rachel Lynde is Surprised

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down
into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and
traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old
Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its
earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade;
but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted
little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's
door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious
that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on
everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she
noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had
ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend
closely to their neighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own; but
Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage their
own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable
housewife; her work was always done and well done; she "ran" the Sewing
Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the
Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs.
Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window,
knitting "cotton warp" quilts-she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea
housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices-and keeping a sharp eye on
the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill
beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out
into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who
went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the
unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's all-seeing eye.
She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming
in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house
was in a bridal flush of pinkywhite bloom, hummed over by a myriad of
bees. Thomas Lyndea meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel
Lynde's husband"-was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond
the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on the big
red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel know that he ought
because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in
William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip
seed the afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for Matthew Cuthbert
had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole
life.
And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the