The thing is impossible . '' `` Well , I 'm going to try my way first , '' said Anne , who had a fairly strong will of her own and was apt to cling very tenaciously to her theories . `` You 're pretty stubborn , I reckon , '' was Mr. Harrison 's way of putting it . `` Well , well , we 'll see . Someday when you get riled up ... and people with hair like yours are desperate apt to get riled ... you 'll forget all your pretty little notions and give some of them a whaling . You 're too young to be teaching anyhow ... far too young and childish . '' Altogether , Anne went to bed that night in a rather pessimistic mood . She slept poorly and was so pale and tragic at breakfast next morning that Marilla was alarmed and insisted on making her take a cup of scorching ginger tea . Anne sipped it patiently , although she could not imagine what good ginger tea would do . Had it been some magic brew , potent to confer age and experience , Anne would have swallowed a quart of it without flinching . `` Marilla , what if I fail ! '' `` You 'll hardly fail completely in one day and there 's plenty more days coming , '' said Marilla . `` The trouble with you , Anne , is that you 'll expect to teach those children everything and reform all their faults right off , and if you ca n't you 'll think you 've failed . '' V A Full-fledged Schoolma'am When Anne reached the school that morning ... for the first time in her life she had traversed the Birch Path deaf and blind to its beauties ... all was quiet and still . The preceding teacher had trained the children to be in their places at her arrival , and when Anne entered the schoolroom she was confronted by prim rows of `` shining morning faces '' and bright , inquisitive eyes . She hung up her hat and faced her pupils , hoping that she did not look as frightened and foolish as she felt and that they would not perceive how she was trembling . She had sat up until nearly twelve the preceding night composing a speech she meant to make to her pupils upon opening the school . She had revised and improved it painstakingly , and then she had learned it off by heart . It was a very good speech and had some very fine ideas in it , especially about mutual help and earnest striving after knowledge . The only trouble was that she could not now remember a word of it .
After what seemed to her a year ... about ten seconds in reality ... she XXXXX faintly , `` Take your Testaments , please , '' and sank breathlessly into her chair under cover of the rustle and clatter of desk lids that followed .
's Had coming faced learned reckon said sat striving trained