Settle in, soften your breathing and let this gentle, heartwarming short story by L. M. Montgomery, the beloved author of Anne of Green Gables, carry you softly towards sleep. A Fortunate Mistake is a sweet summer tale of friendship, kindness and a misaddressed note, read slowly and calmly as a bedtime story for adults who want to wind down, ease insomnia and drift into deep, restful sleep.
Lively Nan Wallace has sprained her ankle, and on the very day of the long-awaited school picnic she's stuck on the sofa with nothing but a vase of pink climbing roses for company. So she asks her sister Maude to write a quick note inviting her friend Florrie Hastings to come and cheer up a poor invalid for the afternoon.
Meanwhile, quiet Florrie Hamilton, the new girl in Winboro and the only one at Miss Braxton's school left off the picnic list, walks home feeling more hurt than she would ever admit. Then a dainty, perfumed note arrives for her, and she decides to be brave and accept. What follows is a tender story about shyness, snobbery and how one small slip of the pen can open the door to a friendship that lasts a lifetime.
The story
Transcribed from the audio, so the odd word may be off. Tap any line while it plays to keep the words in step with Martin's voice.
Books at bedtime by Calming Anxiety. A fortunate mistake by Lucy M. Montgomery.
"O dear, o dear," fretted Nan Wallis, twisting herself about uneasily on the sofa in her pretty room. "I never thought before that the days could be so long as they are now." "Poor you," said her sister Mord sympathetically. Mord was moving briskly about the room, putting it into beautiful order that Mother insisted on. It was Nan's week to care for their room, but Nan had sprained her ankle three days ago and could do nothing but lie on the sofa ever since, and very tired of it too, was wide awake, active Nan. "And the picnic this afternoon too," she said, "I've looked forward to it all summer, and it's a perfect day, and I've got to stay here and nurse this foot." Nan looked vindictively at a bandaged member, while Mord leaned out of the window to pull a pink climbing rose, as she did so. She nodded to someone in the village street below. "Who is passing?" asked Nan. "Flaury Hamilton. Is she going to the picnic?" asked Nan inn differently.
"No." She hasn't asked, of course, "I don't suppose she expected to be." She knows she isn't in our set. She must feel horribly out of place at school. A lot of the girls say it is ridiculous of her father to send her to Miss Brackton's private school, a factory overseer's daughter. She ought to have been asked to the picnic all the same," said Nan shortly. "She is in our class, if she isn't in our set." Of course, "I don't suppose she would have enjoyed herself, or even gone at all that matter." She certainly doesn't push herself in a mungus.
One would think she hasn't a tongue in her head. "She is the best student in the class," admitted Mord, arranging her roses in a vase, and putting them on the table at Nan's elbow. But Patty Morrison and Willa Mina, Paiserson, have the most to say about the invitations, and they wouldn't have her. There, Nan idea, aren't those lovely? I'll leave them here to company for you. "I'm going to have more company than that," said Nan, thumping up pillow energetically.
"I'm not going to mope here all alone, all afternoon, with you off having a jolly time at the picnic." "Right a little late for me, to flurry Hastings will you. I'll do as much for you when you spray your foot." "What shall I put in it," said Mord, rummaging throughout through her portfolio ablightingly. "Oh, just ask her if she will come down and cheer a port invalid up this afternoon." "She'll come, I know, and she is such a good company. Get dicky to run right out of it and mail it." "I do wonder if Flory Hamilton will feel hurt over not being asked to the picnic," speculated Mord, absently, as she slipped her note into an envelope and addressed it.
Flory Hamilton herself could best advance that question as she walked along the street in the fresh morning sun-rate. She did feel hurt much more keenly than she would acknowledge even to herself. It was not that she cared about the picnic itself, as now Mord, as said, she would not have been likely to enjoy herself if she had gone among a crowd of girls many of whom looked down on her and ignored her. But to be left out, when every other girl in the school was invited, Flory's lip quivered as she thought of it. "I'll get father to let me go to the public school after vacations," she murmured. "I hate going to Miss Braxton's." Flory was a newcomer in Windbara, her father had recently come to take a position in the largest factory of the small town. For this reason, Flory was slighted at school by some of the ruder girls and severely left alone by most of the others. Some, it is true, tried at the start to be friends, but Flory, too keenly sensitive to the atmosphere around her to respond, was believed to be decidedly dull and moppy. She retreated further and further into herself and was almost as solitary as Miss Braxton's as if she had been on a desert island. They don't like me, because I am plainly dressed and because my father is not a wealthy man, thought Flory bitterly. And there was enough truth in this regard to many of Miss Braxton's girls to make a very uncomfortable state of affairs. "Here's a letter for you, Flo," said her brother Jack at noon, "got it at the office on my way home. Who is your swell correspondent?" Flory opened the dainty, perfumed note and read it with a face that puzzled at first and suddenly grew radiant.
"Listen, Jack," she said decidedly. "Dear Flory, Namb is confined to house, room and safer with a sprained ankle. As she will be alone all this afternoon, wouldn't you come down and spend it with her?" "She very much wants you to come. She is so loathe and thinks you'll be just the one to cheer her up." "You're courtyly, Lord Wallace." "Are you going, ask Jack?"
"Yes, I don't know. I'll think about it," said Flory, absolutely. Then she hurried upstairs to her room. "Shall I go?" she thought. "Yes, I will. I dare say, Nan, has asked me just out of pity because I was not invited to the picnic." But even so, it was sweet of her. I always thought I would like those Wallace girls if I could get really acquainted with them. They've always been so nice to me, too. I don't know why, I'm always so tongue tied and stupid with them, but I'll go anyway."
That afternoon, Miss was Wallace came into Nan's room. "Nan dear, Flory Hamilton is downstairs asking for you." "Flory Hamilton?" "Yes," she said something about a note you sent her this morning. "Shall I ask her to come up?"
"Yes, of course," said Nan lately. When her mother had gone out, she fell back on her pillows and thought rapidly. "Flory Hamilton?" "Mord must have addressed that note to her by mistake, but she mustn't know it was a mistake. mustn't suspect it. Oh dear, watch what I even find to talk to her about. She's so quiet and shy." Further reflections were cut short by Flory's entrance. "Nan held out her hand with a chummy smile. It's good of you to give me your afternoon up or visiting a cranky invalid," she said heartily. "You don't know how lonesome my bean since Mord went away. Take off your hat and pick out the nicest chair you can find and let's be comfy." Somehow Nan's frank greeting did away with Flory's embarrassment and made her feel at home. She sat down in more trocker, then glancing over to a vase filled with roses, her eyes kindled with pleasure. "See this," Nan said, " aren't they lovely?"
We Wallace is a very fond of our climbing roses and a great grandmother brought the roots out from England with her 60 years ago and they grew nowhere else in the country. "I know," said Flory, "with a smile. I recognise them as soon as I came into the room. They are the same kind of roses of those which grow about grandmother's Hamilton's houses in England. I used to love them so. In England? Were you ever in England?"
"Oh yes, laugh, Flory. And I've been in a pretty nearly every other country upon Earth except one that a ship couldn't get to at least." "Why, Flory Hamilton, are you in earnest?" "Indeed yes. Perhaps you don't know that our now mother," as Jack says sometimes, "is father's second wife. My own mother died when I was a baby and my aunt who had no children of her own took me to bring up. Her husband was a sea captain and she always went on his sea voyages with him. So I went to. I almost grew up on shipboard. We had delightful times. I never went to school.
Auntie had been a teacher before her marriage and she taught me two years ago when I was 14, father married again and then he wanted me to go home to him and Jack and our new mother. So I did. Although at first I was very sorry to leave Auntie and a dear old ship and our lovely wonderings. "Oh tell me about them," demanded Nann. "Why, Flory Hamilton, to think you've never said a word about your wonderful experiences. I love to hear about foreign countries from people who have really been there. Please just talk and I'll listen and then ask questions." Flory did talk. "I'm not sure whether she or Nann was the more surprised to find that she could talk so well and describe her travels so brightly and humorously." The afternoon passed quickly and when Flory went away at dusk after a dainty tea served up in Nann's room, it was with a cordial invitation to come again soon.
"I've enjoyed your visit so much," said Nann sincerely. "I'm going down to see you on as soon as I can walk, but don't wait for that. Let us be good, chummy friends without any ceremony." When Flory, with a light heart and a happy smile had gone, came more, some burned and glowing from her picnic. Such a nice time as we had she explained wasn't I sorry to think you cooked up here? Did Flory come? "Oh, one flory did, Ward. You addressed that note to Flory Hamilton today instead of Flory Hastings." "Nann, surely not, I'm sure, yes, you did." And she came here.
"Was I not taken aback at first, Ward?" I was thinking about her when I addressed it and I must have put her name down by mistake. "I'm so sorry, that you needn't be. I haven't been entertained so charmingly for a long while. Why, Ward, she has travelled almost everywhere and is so bright and witty when she thaws out.
She didn't seem like the little girl at all. She is just perfectly lovely." "Well, I'm glad you had such a nice time together." "Did you know some of the girls were very vexed because she wasn't asked to the picnic?" They said that it was such sheer rudeness not to ask her and that it reflected on all. Even if patty and were vellumina were responsible for it. I'm afraid we girls that make spraxins have been getting snobbish. And some of us are beginning to find it out and be ashamed of it.
"Just wait until school opens," said Nann vaguely enough. "It would seem, but Ward understood." However, they did not have to wait until school reopened. Long before that time, Winbergillhood discovered that the Wallace Girls were taking flurry Hamilton into their lives. If the Wallace Girls liked her, there must be something in the girl more than what they had first thought. Thus, more than one of Miss Braxton Girls reason. And gradually, the other girls found, as Nann had found, that flurry was full of fun and an all-round good companion when drawn out of her different ends.
When Miss Braxton's school reopened, flurry was the class favorite. Between her and Nann Wallace, a beautiful and helpful friendship had been formed which was now to grow and deepen through their whole lives. And all because, Ward, in a fit of abstraction wrote Hamilton for Hastings, said Nann to herself one day. But that is something flurry Hamilton will never know.
THANK YOU.