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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.

It was not until the next Friday that Marilla heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Lynde's and called Anne to account.

"Anne, Mrs. Rachel says you went to church last Sunday with your hat rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!"

"Oh. I know pink and yellow aren't becoming to me," began Anne.

"Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most aggravating child!"

"I don't see why it's any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat than on your dress," protested Anne. "Lots of little girls there had bouquets pinned on their dresses. What's the difference?"

Marilla was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the abstract.

"Don't answer me back like that, Anne.

It was very silly of you to do such a thing.

Never let me catch you at such a trick again.

Mrs. Rachel says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all rigged out like that.

She couldn't get near enough to tell you to take them off till it was too late.

She says people talked about it something dreadful.

Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go decked out like that."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne, tears welling into her eyes.

"I never thought you'd mind.

CHAPTER XII. A Solemn Vow and Promise

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