Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then.

She kept me in at recess and talked to me.

She said I had done very wrong in two respects.

First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead.

I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful.

I was shocked.

I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I'd never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out.

But Miss Stacy said she wouldn't require that, and she forgave me freely.

So I think it wasn't very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all."

"Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your guilty conscience that's the matter with you. You have no business to be taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn't so much as allowed to look at a novel."

"Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it's really such a religious book?" protested Anne.

"Of course it's a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays.

And I never read ANY book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read.

Miss Stacy made me promise that.

She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall.

It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy.

It just curdled the blood in my veins.

But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it.

I didn't mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was AGONIZING to give back that book without knowing how it turned out.

But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did.

It's really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you're truly anxious to please a certain person."

"Well, I guess I'll light the lamp and get to work," said Marilla. "I see plainly that you don't want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say. You're more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else."

"Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it," cried Anne contritely.

"I won't say another word-not one.

I know I talk too much, but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't, you'd give me some credit for it.

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