Thank you very much for inviting me to write to you. It is extravagantly kind of you, and I feel grateful all the way to my bones.
It is very chilly here, today, and there is rather a lot of snow, but the sun came out about halfway through the afternoon as though it wanted to say it had only been joking about all the winds and clouds, and wouldn't we forgive it and play with it again? So I went outside and climbed in the trees even though they were very snowy. Marilla scolded me for getting soaking wet, but I felt it would be rude to scorn such a graceful apology on the sun's part. Don't you think so?
This morning, Marilla opened a jar of Mrs. Lynde's preserved peaches. They smelled divine, but they were so beautiful I didn't want to eat them at first. However, Marilla said this was nonsense and that Mrs. Lynde would be offended if I didn't eat them, and of course I would rather be tortured excruciatingly than offend Mrs. Lynde, so eat them I did. It wasn't actually a hardship, because they were extremely good. It's always so nice when fulfilling an obligation is pleasant, isn't it? It happens so rarely, I like to point it out so that I'll be sure to remember.
I hope you and your family are well, and that you have pleasant weather. I would be enraptured if it were ever possible for us to meet, but unfortunately I think that fate will not be mine. I won't think about this for very long if you don't mind, because it makes me unhappy, not in a romantically tragic kind of way but with a very pragmatic kind of unhappiness which is very hard to get pleasure from, although of course I do try.
I think I'll pretend that we are only separated for a short time, and that someday soon we will meet. Perhaps I may be walking down a path and there will be a bridge across a stream, and on the far side of the bridge there will be a beautiful lady with a tall, shining girl on either side, and I'll get closer and closer, thinking that I must be imagining things, and finally I'll be right there and it will truly be you and your daughters, laughing at me for having taken so long to believe you are real.
Won't that be nice?
Let's both pretend it. It's so much nicer than being lonesome, don't you think? I don't need to wonder if we would be kindred spirits. I already know it intimately.
Until that time I beg to remain,
your obedient servant,
Anne Shirley
(Diana says all the perfectly elegant letters her grandfather wrote to her grandmother ended that way, except with his name, of course, not hers.)
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Date: 2006-01-24 02:36 am (UTC)Thank you very much for inviting me to write to you. It is extravagantly kind of you, and I feel grateful all the way to my bones.
It is very chilly here, today, and there is rather a lot of snow, but the sun came out about halfway through the afternoon as though it wanted to say it had only been joking about all the winds and clouds, and wouldn't we forgive it and play with it again? So I went outside and climbed in the trees even though they were very snowy. Marilla scolded me for getting soaking wet, but I felt it would be rude to scorn such a graceful apology on the sun's part. Don't you think so?
This morning, Marilla opened a jar of Mrs. Lynde's preserved peaches. They smelled divine, but they were so beautiful I didn't want to eat them at first. However, Marilla said this was nonsense and that Mrs. Lynde would be offended if I didn't eat them, and of course I would rather be tortured excruciatingly than offend Mrs. Lynde, so eat them I did. It wasn't actually a hardship, because they were extremely good. It's always so nice when fulfilling an obligation is pleasant, isn't it? It happens so rarely, I like to point it out so that I'll be sure to remember.
I hope you and your family are well, and that you have pleasant weather. I would be enraptured if it were ever possible for us to meet, but unfortunately I think that fate will not be mine. I won't think about this for very long if you don't mind, because it makes me unhappy, not in a romantically tragic kind of way but with a very pragmatic kind of unhappiness which is very hard to get pleasure from, although of course I do try.
I think I'll pretend that we are only separated for a short time, and that someday soon we will meet. Perhaps I may be walking down a path and there will be a bridge across a stream, and on the far side of the bridge there will be a beautiful lady with a tall, shining girl on either side, and I'll get closer and closer, thinking that I must be imagining things, and finally I'll be right there and it will truly be you and your daughters, laughing at me for having taken so long to believe you are real.
Won't that be nice?
Let's both pretend it. It's so much nicer than being lonesome, don't you think? I don't need to wonder if we would be kindred spirits. I already know it intimately.
Until that time I beg to remain,
your obedient servant,
Anne Shirley
(Diana says all the perfectly elegant letters her grandfather wrote to her grandmother ended that way, except with his name, of course, not hers.)