Altogether, Anne went to bed that night in a rather pessimistic mood.  She slept poorly and was so pale and tragic at breakfast next morning that Marilla was alarmed and insisted on making her take a cup of scorching ginger tea.  Anne sipped it patiently, although she could not imagine what good ginger tea would do.  Had it been some magic brew, potent to confer age and experience, Anne would have swallowed a quart of it without flinching.

“Marilla, what if I fail!”

“You’ll hardly fail completely in one day and there’s plenty more days coming,” said Marilla.  “The trouble with you, Anne, is that you’ll expect to teach those children everything and reform all their faults right off, and if you can’t you’ll think you’ve failed.”

V

A Full-fledged Schoolma’am

When Anne reached the school that morning . . . for the first time in her life she had traversed the Birch Path deaf and blind to its beauties . . . all was quiet and still.  The preceding teacher had trained the children to be in their places at her arrival, and when Anne entered the schoolroom she was confronted by prim rows of “shining morning faces” and bright, inquisitive eyes.  She hung up her hat and faced her pupils, hoping that she did not look as frightened and foolish as she felt and that they would not perceive how she was trembling.

She had sat up until nearly twelve the preceding night composing a speech she meant to make to her pupils upon opening the school.  She had revised and improved it painstakingly, and then she had learned it off by heart.  It was a very good speech and had some very fine ideas in it, especially about mutual help and earnest striving after knowledge.  The only trouble was that she could not now remember a word of it.

After what seemed to her a year . . . about ten seconds in reality . . . she said faintly, “Take your Testaments, please,” and sank breathlessly into her chair under cover of the rustle and clatter of desk lids that followed.  While the children read their verses Anne marshalled her shaky wits into order and looked over the array of little pilgrims to the Grownup Land.

Most of them were, of course, quite well known to her.  Her own classmates had passed out in the preceding year but the rest had all gone to school with her, excepting the primer class and ten newcomers to Avonlea.  Anne secretly felt more interest in these ten than in those whose possibilities were already fairly well mapped out to her.  To be sure, they might be just as commonplace as the rest; but on the other hand there might be a genius among them.  It was a thrilling idea.

Sitting by himself at a corner desk was Anthony Pye.  He had a dark, sullen little face, and was staring at Anne with a hostile expression in his black eyes.  Anne instantly made up her mind that she would win that boy’s affection and discomfit the Pyes utterly.