"you redheaded snippet"
---"Mrs. Lynde was complaining the other day that it wasn't much of a world. She said whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed . . . that nothing ever came up to your expectations. Well, perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either . . . they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think."
---"Marilla, what if I fail!"
"You'll hardly fail completely in one day and there's plenty more days coming," said Marilla.
---"Well, how did you get along?" Marilla wanted to know.
"Ask me that a month later and I may be able to tell you. I can't now . . . I don't know myself . . . I'm too near it. My thoughts feel as if they had been all stirred up until they were thick and muddy."
---"What is the matter?" asked Gilbert, who had arrived at the open kitchen door just in time to hear the sigh.
Anne colored, and thrust her writing out of sight under some school compositions.
"Nothing very dreadful. I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn't get them to please me. They seem so stiff and foolish directly they're written down on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows . . . you can't cage them, they're such wayward, dancing things. But perhaps I'll learn the secret some day if I keep on trying."
---"And she said I was always to be kind to Dora and stand up for her, and I'm going to."
"Do you call pulling her hair being kind to her?"
"Well, I ain't going to let anybody else pull it," said Davy, doubling up his fists and frowning.
---"Dora is too good," said Anne. "She'd behave just as well if there wasn't a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already brought up, so she doesn't need us; and I think," concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, "that we always love best the people who need us. Davy needs us badly."
"He certainly needs something," agreed Marilla. "Rachel Lynde would say it was a good spanking."
---