CHAPTER XIV
ANNE’S CONFESSION
On the Monday evening before the picnic Marilla came down from her room with a troubled face.
“Anne,” she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing “Nelly of the Hazel Dell” with a vigour and expression that did credit to Diana’s teaching, “did you see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can’t find it anywhere.”
“I—I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,” said Anne, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.”
“Did you touch it?” said Marilla sternly.
“Y-e-e-s,” admitted Anne, “I took it up and I pinned it on my breast just to see how it would look.”
“You had no business to do anything of the sort. It’s very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?”
“Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on
134
