Original subtitles

What sort of people will I be living with from now on?

The Cuthberts, a brother and sister.

Their homestead is called Green Gables, and it's surrounded by big trees.

How wonderful! I adore trees.

Don't worry.

Be a good girl, and they're sure to keep you.

You don't want to go back to the orphan asylum, do you?

No.

Green Gables is on Prince Edward Island!

I've heard it's the prettiest place in the world!

What are you doing?

Hurry along!

Oh, sorry!

I can't believe it!

I'm really going to live on an island blooming with flowers!

Chapter 1

It's Such an Interesting World

Excuse me! Stationmaster!

How can I help you, ma'am?

May this child wait in the station house? Mr. Cuthbert will come for her soon.

Yes, that's quite all right.

Be a good girl and wait.

Oh, Mrs. Spencer, how can I possibly thank you?

You can sit in the waiting room.

If you don't mind...

Stationmaster.

Oh, Matthew.

Where's the train?

It's come and gone.

More importantly, that girl's been waiting on you a long time.

I said should could sit in the waiting room,

but she said she had "more scope for imagination" outside.

She's a case, I'd say.

Excuse me!

Are you Mr. Cuthbert?

I... I am.

I'm very glad to meet you!

I was afraid you weren't coming,

and then I imagined what might have happened!

I decided I'd spend the night in that big cherry tree if you didn't come today.

I wouldn't be a bit afraid,

and it would be lovely to sleep

in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don't you think?

And I was quite sure you would come for me tomorrow if you couldn't today!

I'm sorry I was late.

The buggy's over...

Oh, I'll take your bag.

That's fine. I can carry it.

It's all my worldly goods, but it isn't heavy!

Oh, I'll be living with you from now on, won't I?

Ah, Rachel.

I saw Matthew riding out earlier.

Is he going to the doctor's?

No, to the station.

We're getting a little boy from an orphan asylum.

Are you in earnest, Marilla?

You've never raised a child!

We've been thinking about it for some time.

Matthew is getting up in years, and it's desperate hard to get hired help.

Marilla! To think you'd do such a mighty foolish thing,

bringing a strange child into your house and home!

With discipline, I daresay he'll turn out all right.

One orphan asylum girl put strychnine in the well. I read it in the paper!

No fear of that!

We're getting a boy,

not a girl.

Mr. Cuthbert, Mr. Cuthbert.

What does that tree—the white and lacy one leaning out from the bank—make you think of?

I dunno.

A bride, of course!

A bride all in white with a lovely, misty veil.

Aren't these roads funny?

What makes them red?

Well now, I dunno.

Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime.

Isn't it splendid to think of everything there is to know?

It just makes me feel glad to be alive.

It's such an interesting world.

It wouldn't be half as interesting if we knew all about everything.

There'd be no scope for imagination.

Am I talking too much?

I can stop when I make up my mind to it.

I don't mind.

Oh, I know you and I are going to get along just fine!

People laugh at me because I use big words.

But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, don't you think?

That seems reasonable.

I heard your place is named Green Gables.

Is there a brook anywhere near it?

There's one right below the house.

Fancy! It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook.

Right now, I feel pretty nearly perfectly happy.

But I can never feel exactly perfectly happy.

What color would you call this?

It's red, ain't it?

Yes. Now you see, don't you?

I can imagine my skinniness away, but not that red hair.

"Now my hair is a glorious, wavy black!" I tell myself...

But I know it's just plain red.

Mr. Cuthbert?

Mr. Cuthbert! Mr. Cuthbert!

I guess you're getting to feeling pretty hungry.

Mr. Cuthbert, that white place we came through—what was it?

You must mean the Avenue.

It is kind of pretty.

Oh, "pretty" doesn't go far enough.

Nor beautiful, either.

It's the first thing I ever saw that imagination couldn't improve.

They shouldn't call that lovely place the Avenue.

How about the White Way of Delight?

Isn't that a nice, poetic name?

Sure.

Other people may call that place the Avenue,

but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight.

What's that?

That's Barry's pond.

I shall call it...

the Lake of Shining Waters.

What a jolly sound.

I love the way the wheels rumble.

Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like?

Home's just over this hill.

Oh, I'm so happy, but I'm sad too.

Our wonderful ride is nearly over.

There. You can see it now.

That's Green Gables over—

Wait! Let me guess.

There!

That's it, isn't it?

Yes, you've guessed it.

As soon as I saw it, I felt it was home.

Oh, it seems as if I must be in a dream!

That's going to be my home, isn't it?

Where is the boy?

Who's that?

Matthew!

There wasn't any boy.

There was only her.

But why?

I don't know. A mistake came in somewhere.

But I couldn't leave her there, even if it was a mistake.

Good heavens.

You don't want me!

I might have expected it!

All because I'm not a boy.

It was all too beautiful.

I might have known it wouldn't last.

Nobody ever did want me.

I've never had anybody waiting for me.

Oh, what shall I do?

Well, well, there's no need to cry about it.

Yes, there is!

If you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home,

only for them to say, "Who's that? We don't want her because she isn't a boy."

You would cry, too!

Well, don't cry any more.

We're not going to turn you out-of-doors tonight.

What's your name?

Will you please call me Cordelia?

Cordelia? Is that your name?

No, but I would love to be called Cordelia.

It's such a perfectly elegant name.

I don't know what you mean.

Please do call me Cordelia!

What's your real name?

Anne.

Anne Shirley.

Anne. A good, plain, sensible name.

It's so unromantic.

If you do call me Anne,

please call me Anne spelled with an e.

What difference does it make how it's spelled?

Such a difference. It looks so much more distinguished.

Tell me, then, Anne spelled with an e.

Were there no boys at the asylum?

There were, but Mrs. Spencer said that you wanted a girl.

Why didn't you tell me at the station that you didn't want me?!

It wouldn't be so hard if I hadn't seen the White Way of Delight

and the Lake of Shining Waters!

What on earth is she talking about?

She... She's just referring to some conversation we had on the road.

She must be hungry. Would you get supper ready?

You're not eating anything.

I'm in the depths of despair.

Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?

I can't say.

I've never been in the depths of despair.

Did you ever try to imagine you were?

No.

Then I don't think you can understand what it's like.

When you try to eat, a lump goes in your throat, and you...

I suppose you have a nightgown?

Y-Yes.

It's fearfully skimpy.

But one can dream just as well in any nightgown.

That's one consolation.

No more chatter.

Undress as quick as you can and go to bed.

Really. She just threw them on the floor.

Goodnight.

Goodnight?!

You know it must be the very worst night I've ever had!

I thought you gave that up.

I can't stand this without it.

I'll drive over and see Mrs. Spencer tomorrow.

We must send this girl back to the asylum.

I suppose so, though she's a real interesting little thing.

Matthew! You don't mean to say you think we ought to keep her!

What good would she be to us?

None, but we might be some good to her.

Matthew, I believe that child has bewitched you!

Well now, you should have heard her talk on our way from the station.

She'd be company for you.

I'm not suffering for company!

And I'm not going to keep her.

You always talk sense.

Goodnight.

The world seemed such a howling wilderness last night.

I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning.

But I like rainy mornings, too.

All sorts of mornings are interesting.

There's scope to imagine what's going to happen through the day.

Mm-hmm.

For pity's sake, hold your tongue and eat.

I'll wash the dishes.

Oh? Can you wash them right?

Pretty well. I'm better at looking after children, though.

It's such a pity you haven't any here.

More children? You're problem enough.

Good enough. Go amuse yourself out-of-doors till we leave.

Thank you!

What's the matter?

I don't dare go out.

If I can't stay here, there is no use in me loving Green Gables.

If I go out and get acquainted with the flowers and the brook and the Snow Queen,

I'll not be able to help loving it.

What Snow Queen?

The cherry tree outside my bedroom window. I named it.

Where's the sense in naming a tree?

Sense? There isn't any.

Only that I feel I can get to know them better that way.

Would you like to be called nothing but a woman all the time?

She is kind of interesting.

I'm already wondering what on earth she'll say next.

But I can't let her cast a spell over me, too.

Matthew!

I've made up my mind to enjoy this drive!

I can always enjoy things if I make up my mind to. It's one of my virtues.

Look!

There's an early wild rose out!

Isn't it lovely? Isn't pink the most bewitching color in the world?

But it's such a shame! Redheaded people can't wear pink.

Has there ever been a case where a redheaded girl's hair changes when she grows up?

Not that I've ever heard of.

Well, that is another hope gone.

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters today?

We're going by the shore road.

As you're bent on talking, you might as well tell me about yourself.

My history isn't worth telling.

It's better than your imaginings.

Where were you born, and how old are you?

I turned eleven last March.

I was born in Nova Scotia.

My father's name was Walter Shirley, and my mother's was Bertha.

They kept a little house in Bolingbroke,

Mother and Father died soon after I was born, so I don't remember it,

but I've imagined it thousands of times.

When I was washing dishes in Mrs. Thomas's house,

when I looked after Mrs. Hammond's three pairs of twins...

Thousands of times.

Thousands of times.

Thousands.

That little house must have had lilies of the valley just inside the gate,

with honeysuckle over the windows and muslin curtains in all of them.

I was born in that house.

Mr. Hammond died and Mrs. Hammond broke up housekeeping.

Nobody would take me after that, so I had to go to the asylum.

Were those women—Mrs. Thomas and Mrs. Hammond—good to you?

Yes, but...

It's trying to have a drunken husband and all the rest.

Still, I know they meant to be good and kind to me.

Aren't those gulls splendid?

The way they swoop away out over the water.

Would you like to be a gull?

I think I would.

Dear, dear. You don't say so!

My brother Robert sent the word down by his daughter Nancy,

and she said you wanted a girl.

Didn't she, Flora?

She certainly did!

Oh, that Nancy!

Can we still send the child back to the asylum?

Oh, Mrs. Blewett was saying how much she wanted a little girl to help her.

Anne will be the very girl for her.

And Mrs. Blewett is here again today!

Take a seat there, Miss Cuthbert.

Anne, you sit here.

Mrs. Blewett, we've found just the girl for you.

How old are you?

I'm eleven years old.

And your name is?

Anne Shirley.

Heh. You don't look as if there's much to you. But you're wiry.

If I take you, you'll have to be good and smart and respectful.

I'll be feeding you,

so I'll expect you to earn your keep.

That's settled, then.

I'll take her off your hands, Miss Cuthbert.

If you like, I can take her home right now.

Well, I don't know.

I didn't say that Matthew and I had decided that we wouldn't keep her.

I just came over to find out how the mistake had occurred.

Oh, really.

I think I'd better take her home again and talk it over with Matthew.

Will that suit you, Mrs. Blewett?

I s-suppose it'll have to.

Did you really say you'll talk with Mr. Cuthbert?

Or did I only imagine that you did?

You'd better control your imagination if you can't tell what's real and what isn't.

Yes, I did say just that.

It isn't decided yet, mind you.

I wouldn't give a dog I liked to that Blewett woman!

But it's that or keeping her ourselves.

I've never brought up a child, especially not a girl.

True enough, but she's such an interesting little thing.

I'd rather she was a useful little thing.

You've got that backwards.

We're going to be useful to her.

Gracious Heavenly Father,

I thank Thee for all Thy blessings.

As for the things I want, I only have time to name two.

First, please let me be good-looking when I grow up,

and please let me stay here at wonderful Green Gables!

Yours respectfully, Anne Shirley.

Next Time

I Love Pretty Things