“I only wish I were.  There’s no dream about it, though it’s very like a nightmare.  And Mr. Harrison’s cow is in Charlottetown by this time.  Oh, Marilla, I thought I’d finished getting into scrapes, and here I am in the very worst one I ever was in in my life.  What can I do?”

“Do?  There’s nothing to do, child, except go and see Mr. Harrison about it.  We can offer him our Jersey in exchange if he doesn’t want to take the money.  She is just as good as his.”

“I’m sure he’ll be awfully cross and disagreeable about it, though,” moaned Anne.

“I daresay he will.  He seems to be an irritable sort of a man.  I’ll go and explain to him if you like.”

“No, indeed, I’m not as mean as that,” exclaimed Anne.  “This is all my fault and I’m certainly not going to let you take my punishment.  I’ll go myself and I’ll go at once.  The sooner it’s over the better, for it will be terribly humiliating.”

Poor Anne got her hat and her twenty dollars and was passing out when she happened to glance through the open pantry door.  On the table reposed a nut cake which she had baked that morning . . . a particularly toothsome concoction iced with pink icing and adorned with walnuts.  Anne had intended it for Friday evening, when the youth of Avonlea were to meet at Green Gables to organize the Improvement Society.  But what were they compared to the justly offended Mr. Harrison?  Anne thought that cake ought to soften the heart of any man, especially one who had to do his own cooking, and she promptly popped it into a box.  She would take it to Mr. Harrison as a peace offering.

“That is, if he gives me a chance to say anything at all,” she thought ruefully, as she climbed the lane fence and started on a short cut across the fields, golden in the light of the dreamy August evening.  “I know now just how people feel who are being led to execution.”

III

Mr. Harrison at Home

Mr. Harrison’s house was an old-fashioned, low-eaved, whitewashed structure, set against a thick spruce grove.

Mr. Harrison himself was sitting on his vineshaded veranda, in his shirt sleeves, enjoying his evening pipe.  When he realized who was coming up the path he sprang suddenly to his feet, bolted into the house, and shut the door.  This was merely the uncomfortable result of his surprise, mingled with a good deal of shame over his outburst of temper the day before.  But it nearly swept the remnant of her courage from Anne’s heart.

“If he’s so cross now what will he be when he hears what I’ve done,” she reflected miserably, as she rapped at the door.

But Mr. Harrison opened it, smiling sheepishly, and invited her to enter in a tone quite mild and friendly, if somewhat nervous.  He had laid aside his pipe and donned his coat; he offered Anne a very dusty chair very politely, and her reception would have passed off pleasantly enough if it had not been for the telltale of a parrot who was peering through the bars of his cage with wicked golden eyes.  No sooner had Anne seated herself than Ginger exclaimed,