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"Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla,
honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben
Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying
my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading
it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when
school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out--
although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn't be
poetical justice if he didn't--so I spread the history open on
my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee.
I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know,
while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so
interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the
aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was
looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can't tell you how
ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye
giggling. 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."
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