WELL, how do you like them?” said Marilla.  
Anne was in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Marilla had been to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store.
 
She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike—plain skirts fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and tight as sleeves could be.
 
“I’ll imagine that I like them,” said Anne soberly.
 
“I don’t want you to imagine it,” said Marilla, offended. “Oh, I can see you don’t like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren’t they neat and clean and new?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Then why don’t you like them?”
 
“They’re—they’re not—pretty,” said Anne reluctantly.
 
“Pretty!” Marilla . “I didn’t trouble my head about getting pretty dresses for you. I don’t believe in vanity, Anne, I’ll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they’re all you’ll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I’ll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear them. I should think you’d be grateful to get most anything after those skimpy wincey things you’ve been wearing.”
 
“Oh, I am grateful,” protested Anne. “But I’d be ever so much gratefuller if—if you’d made just one of them with sleeves. Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill, Marilla, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.”
 
“Well, you’ll have to do without your thrill. I hadn’t any material to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.”
 
“But I’d rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself,” persisted Anne mournfully.
 
“Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got a quarterly from Mr. Bell for you and you’ll go to Sunday school tomorrow,” said Marilla, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.
 
Anne clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.
 
“I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,” she whispered . “I prayed for one, but I didn’t much expect it on that account. I didn’t suppose God would have time to bother about a little girl’s dress. I knew I’d just have to depend on Marilla for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.”
 
The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Marilla from going to Sunday-school with Anne.
 
“You’ll have to go down and call for Mrs. Lynde, Anne,” she said. “She’ll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Lynde to show you our pew. Here’s a cent for collection. Don’t stare at people and don’t fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come home.”
 
Anne started off , arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of skimpiness, to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, , new sailor, the extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Anne, who had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter, however, were supplied before Anne reached the main road, for being confronted down the lane with a golden of wind-stirred buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Anne and liberally garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people might have thought of the result it satisfied Anne, and she tripped down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink and yellow very proudly.
 
When she had reached Mrs. Lynde’s house she found that lady gone. Nothing , Anne proceeded to the church alone. In the porch she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily in whites and and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head . Avonlea little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne. Mrs. Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advance............