Sunday, August 7, 2011

Chapter 13: Marilla's first kiss


This chapter is mostly a setup for Chapter 14. The salient details are this: Anne's excited about the Sunday School picnic, and Marilla has a brooch that's her one nice piece of jewelry.

That said, there's still some good stuff here.
  • Good idiom: nineteen to the dozen, as in Marilla's "now she's perched out there on the woodpile talking to Matthew, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well she ought to be at her work." The Annotated Anne claims that this means "for every dozen words a normal person can speak, Anne can cram in nineteen." That seems a bit too specific for a common phrase, and other etymology sources just say it means doing something fast (and may have come out of the mechanization of coal mining -- your trivia tidbit for the evening).
  • Good Anne-phrase: "just little young rainbows that haven't grown big yet." Don't you want to pick them up and cuddle them?
  • Good bonding:"It was the first time in her whole life that childish lips had voluntarily touched Marilla's face. Again that sudden sensation of startling sweetness thrilled her. She was secretly vastly pleased at Anne's impulsive caress, which was probably the reason why she said brusquely..."
  • Good description: Even if you had no idea what an amethyst looked like, you'd understand what Anne's on about: "They are what I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried."
So: picnic and brooch. Remember those.

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