When I tell you to do a thing I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and discourse about it.

Just you go and do as I bid you." Anne promptly departed for the sitting-room across the hall; she failed to return; after waiting ten minutes Marilla laid down her knitting and marched after her with a grim expression.

She found Anne standing motionless before a picture hanging on the wall between the two windows, with her eyes astar with dreams.

The white and green light strained through apple trees and clustering vines outside fell over the rapt little figure with a half-unearthly radiance.
"Anne, whatever are you thinking of ?" demanded Marilla sharply.
Anne came back to earth with a start.
"That," she said, pointing to the picture--a rather vivid chromo entitled, "Christ Blessing Little Children"-- "and I was just imagining I was one of them--that I was the little girl in the blue dress, standing off by herself in the corner as if she didn't belong to anybody, like me.

She looks lonely and sad, don't you think?
I guess she hadn't any father or mother of her own.