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                               XVIII

                    An Adventure on the Tory Road


"Anne," said Davy, sitting up in bed and propping his chin on
his hands, "Anne, where is sleep?  People go to sleep every night,
and  of course I know it's the place where I do the things I dream,
but I want to know WHERE it is and how I get there and back without
knowing anything about it. . .and in my nighty too.  Where is it?"

Anne was kneeling at the west gable window watching the sunset sky that
was like a great flower with petals of crocus and a heart of fiery yellow.
She turned her head at Davy's question and answered dreamily,

    "`Over the mountains of the moon,
    Down the valley of the shadow.'"


Paul Irving would have known the meaning of this, or made a meaning
out of it for himself, if he didn't; but practical Davy, who, as
Anne often despairingly remarked, hadn't a particle of imagination,
was only puzzled and disgusted.

"Anne, I believe you're just talking nonsense."

"Of course, I was, dear boy.  Don't you know that it is only very
foolish folk who talk sense all the time?"

"Well, I think you might give a sensible answer when I ask a
sensible question," said Davy in an injured tone.

"Oh, you are too little to understand," said Anne.  But she felt rather
ashamed of saying it; for had she not, in keen remembrance of many
similar snubs administered in her own early years, solemnly vowed
that she would never tell any child it was too little to understand?
Yet here she was doing it. . .so wide sometimes is the gulf between
theory and practice.

"Well, I'm doing my best to grow," said Davy, "but it's a thing you
can't hurry much.  If Marilla wasn't so stingy with her jam I believe
I'd grow a lot faster."

"Marilla is not stingy, Davy," said Anne severely.  "It is very
ungrateful of you to say such a thing."

"There's another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot
better, but I don't just remember it," said Davy, frowning intently.
"I heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day."

"If you mean ECONOMICAL, it's a VERY different thing from being stingy.
It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical.
If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn't have taken you and Dora
when your mother died.  Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?"

"You just bet I wouldn't!" Davy was emphatic on that point.  "Nor I
don't want to go out to Uncle Richard neither.  I'd far rather live
here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to jam,
'cause YOU'RE here, Anne.  Say, Anne, won't you tell me a story
'fore I go to sleep?  I don't want a fairy story.  They're all
right for girls, I s'pose, but I want something exciting. . .lots
of killing and shooting in it, and a house on fire, and in'trusting
things like that."

Fortunately for Anne, Marilla called out at this moment from her room.

"Anne, Diana's signaling at a great rate.  You'd better see what she wants."

Anne ran to the east gable and saw flashes of light coming through
the twilight from Diana's window in groups of five, which meant,
according to their old childish code, "Come over at once for I have
something important to reveal."  Anne threw her white shawl over her
head and hastened through the Haunted Wood and across Mr. Bell's
pasture corner to Orchard Slope.

"I've good news for you, Anne," said Diana.  "Mother and I have
just got home from Carmody, and I saw Mary Sentner from Spencer
vale in Mr. Blair's store.  She says the old Copp girls on the
Tory Road have a willow-ware platter and she thinks it's exactly
like the one we had at the supper.  She says they'll likely sell it,
for Martha Copp has never been known to keep anything she COULD sell;
but if they won't there's a platter at Wesley Keyson's at Spencervale
and she knows they'd sell it, but she isn't sure it's just the same
kind as Aunt Josephine's."

"I'll go right over to Spencervale after it tomorrow," said Anne
resolutely, "and you must come with me.  It will be such a weight
off my mind, for I have to go to town day after tomorrow and how
can I face your Aunt Josephine without a willow-ware platter?
It would be even worse than the time I had to confess about
jumping on the spare room bed."

Both girls laughed over the old memory. . .concerning which, if
any of my readers are ignorant and curious, I must refer them to
Anne's earlier history.

The next afternoon the girls fared forth on their platter hunting
expedition.  It was ten miles to Spencervale and the day was not
especially pleasant for traveling.  It was very warm and windless,
and the dust on the road was such as might have been expected after
six weeks of dry weather.

"Oh, I do wish it would rain soon," sighed Anne.  "Everything is so
parched up.  The poor fields just seem pitiful to me and the trees
seem to be stretching out their hands pleading for rain.  As for my
garden, it hurts me every time I go into it.  I suppose I shouldn't
complain about a garden when the farmers' crops are suffering so.
Mr. Harrison says his pastures are so scorched up that his poor
cows can hardly get a bite to eat and he feels guilty of cruelty
to animals every time he meets their eyes."

After a wearisome drive the girls reached Spencervale and turned
down the "Tory" Road. . .a green, solitary highway where the strips
of grass between the wheel tracks bore evidence to lack of travel.
Along most of its extent it was lined with thick-set young spruces
crowding down to the roadway, with here and there a break where the
back field of a Spencervale farm came out to the fence or an expanse
of stumps was aflame with fireweed and goldenrod.

"Why is it called the Tory Road?" asked Anne.

"Mr. Allan says it is on the principle of calling a place a grove
because there are no trees in it," said Diana, "for nobody lives
along the road except the Copp girls and old Martin Bovyer at the
further end, who is a Liberal.  The Tory government ran the road
through when they were in power just to show they were doing something."

Diana's father was a Liberal, for which reason she and Anne never
discussed politics.  Green Gables folk had always been Conservatives.

Finally the girls came to the old Copp homestead. . .a place of
such exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have
suffered by contrast.  The house was a very old-fashioned one,
situated on a slope, which fact had necessitated the building of a
stone basement under one end.  The house and out-buildings were all
whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection and not a weed
was visible in the prim kitchen garden surrounded by its white paling.

"The shades are all down," said Diana ruefully.  "I believe that nobody
is home."

This proved to be the case.  The girls looked at each other in perplexity.

"I don't know what to do," said Anne.  "If I were sure the platter
was the right kind I would not mind waiting until they came home.
But if it isn't it may be too late to go to Wesley Keyson's
afterward."

Diana looked at a certain little square window over the basement.

"That is the pantry window, I feel sure," she said, "because this
house is just like Uncle Charles' at Newbridge, and that is their
pantry window.  The shade isn't down, so if we climbed up on the
roof of that little house we could look into the pantry and might
be able to see the platter.  Do you think it would be any harm?"

"No, I don't think so," decided Anne, after due reflection, "since
our motive is not idle curiosity."

This important point of ethics being settled, Anne prepared to mount the
aforesaid "little house," a construction of lathes, with a peaked roof,
which had in times past served as a habitation for ducks.  The Copp girls
had given up keeping ducks. . ."because they were such untidy birds". . .
and the house had not been in use for some years, save as an abode of
correction for setting hens.  Although scrupulously whitewashed it had
become somewhat shaky, and Anne felt rather dubious as she scrambled up
from the vantage point of a keg placed on a box.

"I'm afraid it won't bear my weight," she said as she gingerly
stepped on the roof.

"Lean on the window sill," advised Diana, and Anne accordingly leaned.
Much to her delight, she saw, as she peered through the pane,
a willow-ware platter, exactly such as she was in quest of,
on the shelf in front of the window.  So much she saw before the
catastrophe came.  In her joy Anne forgot the precarious nature
of her footing, incautiously ceased to lean on the window sill,
gave an impulsive little hop of pleasure. . .and the next moment she
had crashed through the roof up to her armpits, and there she hung,
quite unable to extricate herself.  Diana dashed into the duck
house and, seizing her unfortunate friend by the waist, tried to
draw her down.

"Ow. . .don't," shrieked poor Anne.  "There are some long
splinters sticking into me.  See if you can put something under my
feet. . .then perhaps I can draw myself up."

Diana hastily dragged in the previously mentioned keg and Anne
found that it was just sufficiently high to furnish a secure
resting place for her feet.  But she could not release herself.

"Could I pull you out if I crawled up?" suggested Diana.

Anne shook her head hopelessly.

"No. . .the splinters hurt too badly.  If you can find an axe you
might chop me out, though.  Oh dear, I do really begin to believe
that I was born under an ill-omened star."

Diana searched faithfully but no axe was to be found.

"I'll have to go for help," she said, returning to the prisoner.

"No, indeed, you won't," said Anne vehemently.  "If you do the story
of this will get out everywhere and I shall be ashamed to show my face.
No, we must just wait until the Copp girls come home and bind them
to secrecy.  They'll know where the axe is and get me out.
I'm not uncomfortable, as long as I keep perfectly still. . .
not uncomfortable in BODY I mean.  I wonder what the Copp girls
value this house at.  I shall have to pay for the damage I've done,
but I wouldn't mind that if I were only sure they would understand
my motive in peeping in at their pantry window.  My sole comfort is
that the platter is just the kind I want and if Miss Copp will only
sell it to me I shall be resigned to what has happened."

"What if the Copp girls don't come home until after night. . .or
till tomorrow?" suggested Diana.

"If they're not back by sunset you'll have to go for other
assistance, I suppose," said Anne reluctantly, "but you mustn't go
until you really have to.  Oh dear, this is a dreadful predicament.
I wouldn't mind my misfortunes so much if they were romantic, as
Mrs. Morgan's heroines' always are, but they are always just
simply ridiculous.  Fancy what the Copp girls will think when they
drive into their yard and see a girl's head and shoulders sticking
out of the roof of one of their outhouses.  Listen. . .is that a
wagon?  No, Diana, I believe it is thunder."

Thunder it was undoubtedly, and Diana, having made a hasty
pilgrimage around the house, returned to announce that a very black
cloud was rising rapidly in the northwest.

"I believe we're going to have a heavy thunder-shower," she exclaimed
in dismay, "Oh, Anne, what will we do?"

"We must prepare for it," said Anne tranquilly.  A thunderstorm
seemed a trifle in comparison with what had already happened.
"You'd better drive the horse and buggy into that open shed.
Fortunately my parasol is in the buggy.  Here. . .take my hat
with you.  Marilla told me I was a goose to put on my best hat
to come to the Tory Road and she was right, as she always is."

Diana untied the pony and drove into the shed, just as the first
heavy drops of rain fell.  There she sat and watched the resulting
downpour, which was so thick and heavy that she could hardly see
Anne through it, holding the parasol bravely over her bare head.
There was not a great deal of thunder, but for the best part of an
hour the rain came merrily down.  Occasionally Anne slanted back
her parasol and waved an encouraging hand to her friend; But
conversation at that distance was quite out of the question.
Finally the rain ceased, the sun came out, and Diana ventured
across the puddles of the yard.

"Did you get very wet?" she asked anxiously.

"Oh, no," returned Anne cheerfully.  "My head and shoulders are
quite dry and my skirt is only a little damp where the rain beat
through the lathes.  Don't pity me, Diana, for I haven't minded it
at all.  I kept thinking how much good the rain will do and how glad
my garden must be for it, and imagining what the flowers and buds
would think when the drops began to fall.  I imagined out a most
interesting dialogue between the asters and the sweet peas and the
wild canaries in the lilac bush and the guardian spirit of the garden.
When I go home I mean to write it down.  I wish I had a pencil and
paper to do it now, because I daresay I'll forget the best parts
before I reach home."

Diana the faithful had a pencil and discovered a sheet of wrapping
paper in the box of the buggy.  Anne folded up her dripping
parasol, put on her hat, spread the wrapping paper on a shingle
Diana handed up, and wrote out her garden idyl under conditions
that could hardly be considered as favorable to literature.
Nevertheless, the result was quite pretty, and Diana was
"enraptured" when Anne read it to her.

"Oh, Anne, it's sweet. . .just sweet.  DO send it to the `Canadian Woman.'"

Anne shook her head.

"Oh, no, it wouldn't be suitable at all.  There is no PLOT in it,
you see.  It's just a string of fancies.  I like writing such things,
but of course nothing of the sort would ever do for publication,
for editors insist on plots, so Priscilla says.  Oh, there's
Miss Sarah Copp now.  PLEASE, Diana, go and explain."

Miss Sarah Copp was a small person, garbed in shabby black, with a hat
chosen less for vain adornment than for qualities that would wear well.
She looked as amazed as might be expected on seeing the curious tableau
in her yard, but when she heard Diana's explanation she was all sympathy.
She hurriedly unlocked the back door, produced the axe, and with a few
skillfull blows set Anne free.  The latter, somewhat tired and stiff,
ducked down into the interior of her prison and thankfully emerged
into liberty once more.

"Miss Copp," she said earnestly.  "I assure you I looked into your
pantry window only to discover if you had a willow-ware platter.
I didn't see anything else -- I didn't LOOK for anything else."

"Bless you, that's all right," said Miss Sarah amiably.  "You
needn't worry -- there's no harm done.  Thank goodness, we Copps
keep our pantries presentable at all times and don't care who sees
into them.  As for that old duckhouse, I'm glad it's smashed, for
maybe now Martha will agree to having it taken down.  She never
would before for fear it might come in handy sometime and I've had to
whitewash it every spring.  But you might as well argue with a post
as with Martha.  She went to town today -- I drove her to the station.
And you want to buy my platter.  Well, what will you give for it?"

"Twenty dollars," said Anne, who was never meant to match business
wits with a Copp, or she would not have offered her price at the start.

"Well, I'll see," said Miss Sarah cautiously.  "That platter is mine
fortunately, or I'd never dare to sell it when Martha wasn't here.
As it is, I daresay she'll raise a fuss.  Martha's the boss
of this establishment I can tell you.  I'm getting awful tired of
living under another woman's thumb.  But come in, come in.  You
must be real tired and hungry.  I'll do the best I can for you in
the way of tea but I warn you not to expect anything but bread and
butter and some cowcumbers.  Martha locked up all the cake and
cheese and preserves afore she went.  She always does, because she
says I'm too extravagant with them if company comes."

The girls were hungry enough to do justice to any fare, and they
enjoyed Miss Sarah's excellent bread and butter and "cowcumbers"
thoroughly.  When the meal was over Miss Sarah said,

"I don't know as I mind selling the platter.  But it's worth
twenty-five dollars.  It's a very old platter."

Diana gave Anne's foot a gentle kick under the table, meaning,
"Don't agree -- she'll let it go for twenty if you hold out."
But Anne was not minded to take any chances in regard to that
precious platter.  She promptly agreed to give twenty-five and
Miss Sarah looked as if she felt sorry she hadn't asked for thirty.

"Well, I guess you may have it.  I want all the money I can scare
up just now.  The fact is -- " Miss Sarah threw up her head
importantly, with a proud flush on her thin cheeks -- "I'm going
to be married -- to Luther Wallace.  He wanted me twenty years ago.
I liked him real well but he was poor then and father packed him off.
I s'pose I shouldn't have let him go so meek but I was timid and
frightened of father.  Besides, I didn't know men were so skurse."

When the girls were safely away, Diana driving and Anne holding
the coveted platter carefully on her lap, the green, rain-freshened
solitudes of the Tory Road were enlivened by ripples of girlish laughter.

"I'll amuse your Aunt Josephine with the `strange eventful history'
of this afternoon when I go to town tomorrow.  We've had a rather
trying time but it's over now.  I've got the platter, and that rain
has laid the dust beautifully.  So `all's well that ends well.'"

"We're not home yet," said Diana rather pessimistically, "and
there's no telling what may happen before we are.  You're such
a girl to have adventures, Anne."

"Having adventures comes natural to some people," said Anne
serenely.  "You just have a gift for them or you haven't."




                               XIX

                         Just a Happy Day


"After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and
sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful
or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures,
following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string."

Life at Green Gables was full of just such days, for Anne's adventures
and misadventures, like those of other people, did not all happen at once,
but were sprinkled over the year, with long stretches of harmless, happy
days between, filled with work and dreams and laughter and lessons.
Such a day came late in August.  In the forenoon Anne and Diana rowed
the delighted twins down the pond to the sandshore to pick "sweet grass"
and paddle in the surf, over which the wind was harping an old lyric
learned when the world was young.

In the afternoon Anne walked down to the old Irving place to see Paul.
She found him stretched out on the grassy bank beside the thick fir
grove that sheltered the house on the north, absorbed in a book of
fairy tales.  He sprang up radiantly at sight of her.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come, teacher," he said eagerly, "because
Grandma's away.  You'll stay and have tea with me, won't you?
It's so lonesome to have tea all by oneself.  YOU know, teacher.
I've had serious thoughts of asking Young Mary Joe to sit down
and eat her tea with me, but I expect Grandma wouldn't approve.
She says the French have to be kept in their place.  And anyhow,
it's difficult to talk with Young Mary Joe.  She just laughs and says,
`Well, yous do beat all de kids I ever knowed.'  That isn't my idea
of conversation."

"Of course I'll stay to tea," said Anne gaily.  "I was dying to be
asked.  My mouth has been watering for some more of your grandma's
delicious shortbread ever since I had tea here before."

Paul looked very sober.

"If it depended on me, teacher," he said, standing before Anne with
his hands in his pockets and his beautiful little face shadowed with
sudden care, "You should have shortbread with a right good will.
But it depends on Mary Joe.  I heard Grandma tell her before she
left that she wasn't to give me any shortcake because it was too
rich for little boys' stomachs.  But maybe Mary Joe will cut some
for you if I promise I won't eat any.  Let us hope for the best."

"Yes, let us," agreed Anne, whom this cheerful philosophy suited
exactly, "and if Mary Joe proves hard-hearted and won't give me any
shortbread it doesn't matter in the least, so you are not to worry
over that."

"You're sure you won't mind if she doesn't?" said Paul anxiously.

"Perfectly sure, dear heart."

"Then I won't worry," said Paul, with a long breath of relief,
"especially as I really think Mary Joe will listen to reason.
She's not a naturally unreasonable person, but she has learned
by experience that it doesn't do to disobey Grandma's orders.
Grandma is an excellent woman but people must do as she tells them.
She was very much pleased with me this morning because I managed at
last to eat all my plateful of porridge.  It was a great effort but
I succeeded.  Grandma says she thinks she'll make a man of me yet.
But, teacher, I want to ask you a very important question.
You will answer it truthfully, won't you?"

"I'll try," promised Anne.

"Do you think I'm wrong in my upper story?" asked Paul, as if his
very existence depended on her reply.

"Goodness, no, Paul," exclaimed Anne in amazement.  "Certainly
you're not.  What put such an idea into your head?"

"Mary Joe. . .but she didn't know I heard her.  Mrs. Peter Sloane's
hired girl, Veronica, came to see Mary Joe last evening and I heard
them talking in the kitchen as I was going through the hall.
I heard Mary Joe say, `Dat Paul, he is de queeres' leetle boy.
He talks dat queer.  I tink dere's someting wrong in his upper story.'
I couldn't sleep last night for ever so long, thinking of it, and
wondering if Mary Joe was right.  I couldn't bear to ask Grandma
about it somehow, but I made up my mind I'd ask you.  I'm so glad
you think I'm all right in my upper story."

"Of course you are.  Mary Joe is a silly, ignorant girl, and you
are never to worry about anything she says," said Anne indignantly,
secretly resolving to give Mrs. Irving a discreet hint as to the
advisability of restraining Mary Joe's tongue.

"Well, that's a weight off my mind," said Paul.  "I'm perfectly
happy now, teacher, thanks to you.  It wouldn't be nice to
have something wrong in your upper story, would it, teacher?
I suppose the reason Mary Joe imagines I have is because I tell
her what I think about things sometimes."

"It is a rather dangerous practice," admitted Anne, out of the
depths of her own experience.

"Well, by and by I'll tell you the thoughts I told Mary Joe and you
can see for yourself if there's anything queer in them," said Paul,
"but I'll wait till it begins to get dark.  That is the time I ache
to tell people things, and when nobody else is handy I just HAVE to
tell Mary Joe.  But after this I won't, if it makes her imagine I'm
wrong in my upper story.  I'll just ache and bear it."

"And if the ache gets too bad you can come up to Green Gables and
tell me your thoughts," suggested Anne, with all the gravity that
endeared her to children, who so dearly love to be taken seriously.

"Yes, I will.  But I hope Davy won't be there when I go because he
makes faces at me.  I don't mind VERY much because he is such a
little boy and I am quite a big one, but still it is not pleasant
to have faces made at you.  And Davy makes such terrible ones.
Sometimes I am frightened he will never get his face straightened
out again.  He makes them at me in church when I ought to be thinking
of sacred things.  Dora likes me though, and I like her, but not so
well as I did before she told Minnie May Barry that she meant to
marry me when I grew up.  I may marry somebody when I grow up but
I'm far too young to be thinking of it yet, don't you think, teacher?"

"Rather young," agreed teacher.

"Speaking of marrying, reminds me of another thing that has been
troubling me of late," continued Paul.  "Mrs. Lynde was down here
one day last week having tea with Grandma, and Grandma made me show
her my little mother's picture. . .the one father sent me for my
birthday present.  I didn't exactly want to show it to Mrs. Lynde.
Mrs. Lynde is a good, kind woman, but she isn't the sort of person
you want to show your mother's picture to.  YOU know, teacher.
But of course I obeyed Grandma.  Mrs. Lynde said she was very
pretty ut kind of actressy looking, and must have been an awful lot
younger than father.  Then she said, `Some of these days your pa
will be marrying again likely.  How will you like to have a new ma,
Master Paul? ' Well, the idea almost took my breath away, teacher,
but I wasn't going to let Mrs. Lynde see THAT.  I just looked her
straight in the face. . .like this. . .and I said, `Mrs. Lynde,
father made a pretty good job of picking out my first mother and I
could trust him to pick out just as good a one the second time.'
And I CAN trust him, teacher.  But still, I hope, if he ever does
give me a new mother, he'll ask my opinion about her before it's
too late.  There's Mary Joe coming to call us to tea.  I'll go and
consult with her about the shortbread."

As a result of the "consultation," Mary Joe cut the shortbread and
added a dish of preserves to the bill of fare.  Anne poured the tea
and she and Paul had a very merry meal in the dim old sitting room
whose windows were open to the gulf breezes, and they talked so much
"nonsense" that Mary Joe was quite scandalized and told Veronica
the next evening that "de school mees" was as queer as Paul.
After tea Paul took Anne up to his room to show her his
mother's picture, which had been the mysterious birthday present
kept by Mrs. Irving in the bookcase.  Paul's little low-ceilinged
room was a soft whirl of ruddy light from the sun that was setting
over the sea and swinging shadows from the fir trees that grew
close to the square, deep-set window.  From out this soft glow
and glamor shone a sweet, girlish face, with tender mother eyes,
that was hanging on the wall at the foot of the bed.

"That's my little mother," said Paul with loving pride.  "I got
Grandma to hang it there where I'd see it as soon as I opened my
eyes in the morning.  I never mind not having the light when I go
to bed now, because it just seems as if my little mother was right
here with me.  Father knew just what I would like for a birthday
present, although he never asked me.  Isn't it wonderful how much
fathers DO know?"

"Your mother was very lovely, Paul, and you look a little like her.
But her eyes and hair are darker than yours."

"My eyes are the same color as father's," said Paul, flying
about the room to heap all available cushions on the window seat,
"but father's hair is gray.  He has lots of it, but it is gray.
You see, father is nearly fifty.  That's ripe old age, isn't it?
But it's only OUTSIDE he's old.  INSIDE he's just as young as anybody.
Now, teacher, please sit here; and I'll sit at your feet.  May I lay
my head against your knee?  That's the way my little mother and I
used to sit.  Oh, this is real splendid, I think."

"Now, I want to hear those thoughts which Mary Joe pronounces so queer,"
said Anne, patting the mop of curls at her side.  Paul never needed any
coaxing to tell his thoughts. . .at least, to congenial souls.

"I thought them out in the fir grove one night," he said dreamily.
"Of course I didn't BELIEVE them but I THOUGHT them.  YOU know,
teacher.  And then I wanted to tell them to somebody and there was
nobody but Mary Joe.  Mary Joe was in the pantry setting bread and
I sat down on the bench beside her and I said, `Mary Joe, do you
know what I think?  I think the evening star is a lighthouse on the
land where the fairies dwell.'  And Mary Joe said, `Well, yous are
de queer one.  Dare ain't no such ting as fairies.'  I was very much
provoked.  Of course, I knew there are no fairies; but that needn't
prevent my thinking there is.  You know, teacher.  But I tried
again quite patiently.  I said, `Well then, Mary Joe, do you know
what I think?  I think an angel walks over the world after the sun
sets. . .a great, tall, white angel, with silvery folded wings. . .
and sings the flowers and birds to sleep.  Children can hear him
if they know how to listen.'  Then Mary Joe held up her hands
all over flour and said, `Well, yous are de queer leetle boy.
Yous make me feel scare.'  And she really did looked scared.
I went out then and whispered the rest of my thoughts to the garden.
There was a little birch tree in the garden and it died.  Grandma says
the salt spray killed it; but I think the dryad belonging to it was
a foolish dryad who wandered away to see the world and got lost.
And the little tree was so lonely it died of a broken heart."

"And when the poor, foolish little dryad gets tired of the world
and comes back to her tree HER heart will break," said Anne.

"Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences,
just as if they were real people," said Paul gravely.  "Do you know
what I think about the new moon, teacher?  I think it is a little
golden boat full of dreams."

"And when it tips on a cloud some of them spill out and fall into
your sleep."

"Exactly, teacher.  Oh, you DO know.  And I think the violets are
little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out
holes for the stars to shine through.  And the buttercups are made
out of old sunshine; and I think the sweet peas will be butterflies
when they go to heaven.  Now, teacher, do you see anything so very
queer about those thoughts?"

"No, laddie dear, they are not queer at all; they are strange and
beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who
couldn't think anything of the sort themselves, if they tried for a
hundred years, think them queer.  But keep on thinking them, Paul
. . .some day you are going to be a poet, I believe."

When Anne reached home she found a very different type of boyhood
waiting to be put to bed.  Davy was sulky; and when Anne had
undressed him he bounced into bed and buried his face in the pillow.

"Davy, you have forgotten to say your prayers," said Anne rebukingly.

"No, I didn't forget," said Davy defiantly, "but I ain't going to
say my prayers any more.  I'm going to give up trying to be good,
'cause no matter how good I am you'd like Paul Irving better.
So I might as well be bad and have the fun of it."

"I don't like Paul Irving BETTER," said Anne seriously.  "I like
you just as well, only in a different way."

"But I want you to like me the same way," pouted Davy.

"You can't like different people the same way.  You don't like Dora
and me the same way, do you?"

Davy sat up and reflected.

"No. . .o. . .o," he admitted at last, "I like Dora because she's
my sister but I like you because you're YOU."

"And I like Paul because he is Paul and Davy because he is Davy,"
said Anne gaily.

"Well, I kind of wish I'd said my prayers then," said Davy, convinced
by this logic.  "But it's too much bother getting out now to say them.
I'll say them twice over in the morning, Anne.  Won't that do as well?"

No, Anne was positive it would not do as well.  So Davy scrambled
out and knelt down at her knee.  When he had finished his devotions
he leaned back on his little, bare, brown heels and looked up at her.

"Anne, I'm gooder than I used to be."

"Yes, indeed you are, Davy," said Anne, who never hesitated to give
credit where credit was due.

"I KNOW I'm gooder," said Davy confidently, "and I'll tell you how
I know it.  Today Marilla give me two pieces of bread and jam, one
for me and one for Dora.  One was a good deal bigger than the other
and Marilla didn't say which was mine.  But I give the biggest
piece to Dora.  That was good of me, wasn't it?"

"Very good, and very manly, Davy."

"Of course," admitted Davy, "Dora wasn't very hungry and she only et
half her slice and then she give the rest to me.  But I didn't know
she was going to do that when I give it to her, so I WAS good, Anne."

In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad's Bubble and saw
Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood.  She had
a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer.  And
how manly he looked -- the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the
clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders.  Anne thought
Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn't look at all
like her ideal man.  She and Diana had long ago decided what kind
of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar.  He
must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy,
inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice.  There was
nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert's physiognomy,
but of course that didn't matter in friendship!

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and
looked approvingly at Anne.  If Gilbert had been asked to describe
his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point
to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence
still continued to vex her soul.  Gilbert was as yet little more
than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in
Gilbert's future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray
eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower.  He had made up
his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess.
Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced.
White Sands youth were a rather "fast" set, and Gilbert was popular
wherever he went.  But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne's
friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched
over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes
were to pass in judgment on it.  She held over him the unconscious
influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields
over her friends; an influence which would endure as long as she
was faithful to those ideals and which she would as certainly lose
if she were ever false to them.  In Gilbert's eyes Anne's greatest
charm was the fact that she never stooped to the petty practices of
so many of the Avonlea girls -- the small jealousies, the little
deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favor.  Anne held
herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but
simply because anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her
transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in its motives and
aspirations.

But Gilbert did not attempt to put his thoughts into words, for he
had already too good reason to know that Anne would mercilessly and
frostily nip all attempts at sentiment in the bud -- or laugh at him,
which was ten times worse.

"You look like a real dryad under that birch tree," he said teasingly.

"I love birch trees," said Anne, laying her cheek against the creamy
satin of the slim bole, with one of the pretty, caressing gestures
that came so natural to her.

"Then you'll be glad to hear that Mr. Major Spencer has decided
to set out a row of white birches all along the road front of
his farm, by way of encouraging the A.V.I.S.," said Gilbert.
"He was talking to me about it today.  Major Spencer is the most
progressive and public-spirited man in Avonlea.  And Mr. William
Bell is going to set out a spruce hedge along his road front and up
his lane.  Our Society is getting on splendidly, Anne.  It is past
the experimental stage and is an accepted fact.  The older folks
are beginning to take an interest in it and the White Sands people
are talking of starting one too.  Even Elisha Wright has come
around since that day the Americans from the hotel had the picnic
at the shore.  They praised our roadsides so highly and said they
were so much prettier than in any other part of the Island.  And
when, in due time, the other farmers follow Mr. Spencer's good
example and plant ornamental trees and hedges along their road
fronts Avonlea will be the prettiest settlement in the province."

"The Aids are talking of taking up the graveyard," said Anne, "and I
hope they will, because there will have to be a subscription for that,
and it would be no use for the Society to try it after the hall affair.
But the Aids would never have stirred in the matter if the Society
hadn't put it into their thoughts unofficially.  Those trees we
planted on the church grounds are flourishing, and the trustees
have promised me that they will fence in the school grounds next year.
If they do I'll have an arbor day and every scholar shall plant a tree;
and we'll have a garden in the corner by the road."

"We've succeeded in almost all our plans so far, except in getting the old
Boulter house removed," said Gilbert, "and I've given THAT up in despair.
Levi won't have it taken down just to vex us.  There's a contrary streak
in all the Boulters and it's strongly developed in him."

"Julia Bell wants to send another committee to him, but I think the
better way will just be to leave him severely alone," said Anne sagely.

"And trust to Providence, as Mrs. Lynde says," smiled Gilbert.
"Certainly, no more committees.  They only aggravate him.
Julia Bell thinks you can do anything, if you only have a committee
to attempt it.  Next spring, Anne, we must start an agitation for
nice lawns and grounds.  We'll sow good seed betimes this winter.
I've a treatise here on lawns and lawnmaking and I'm going to prepare
a paper on the subject soon.  Well, I suppose our vacation is almost
over.  School opens Monday.  Has Ruby Gillis got the Carmody school?"

"Yes; Priscilla wrote that she had taken her own home school, so
the Carmody trustees gave it to Ruby.  I'm sorry Priscilla is not
coming back, but since she can't I'm glad Ruby has got the school.
She will be home for Saturdays and it will seem like old times,
to have her and Jane and Diana and myself all together again."

Marilla, just home from Mrs. Lynde's, was sitting on the back
porch step when Anne returned to the house.

"Rachel and I have decided to have our cruise to town tomorrow,"
she said.  "Mr. Lynde is feeling better this week and Rachel wants
to go before he has another sick spell."

"I intend to get up extra early tomorrow morning, for I've ever so
much to do," said Anne virtuously.  "For one thing, I'm going to
shift the feathers from my old bedtick to the new one.  I ought to
have done it long ago but I've just kept putting it off. . .
it's such a detestable task.  It's a very bad habit to put off
disagreeable things, and I never mean to again, or else I can't
comfortably tell my pupils not to do it.  That would be inconsistent.
Then I want to make a cake for Mr. Harrison and finish my paper
on gardens for the A.V.I.S., and write Stella, and wash and starch
my muslin dress, and make Dora's new apron."

"You won't get half done," said Marilla pessimistically.  "I never yet
planned to do a lot of things but something happened to prevent me."




                                XX

                    The Way It Often Happens


Anne rose betimes the next morning and blithely greeted the fresh day,
when the banners of the sunrise were shaken triumphantly across the
pearly skies.  Green Gables lay in a pool of sunshine, flecked with
the dancing shadows of poplar and willow.  Beyond the land was
Mr. Harrison's wheatfield, a great, windrippled expanse of pale gold.
The world was so beautiful that Anne spent ten blissful minutes
hanging idly over the garden gate drinking the loveliness in.

After breakfast Marilla made ready for her journey.  Dora was to go
with her, having been long promised this treat.

"Now, Davy, you try to be a good boy and don't bother Anne," she
straitly charged him.  "If you are good I'll bring you a striped
candy cane from town."

For alas, Marilla had stooped to the evil habit of bribing people
to be good!

"I won't be bad on purpose, but s'posen I'm bad zacksidentally?"
Davy wanted to know.

"You'll have to guard against accidents," admonished Marilla.
"Anne, if Mr. Shearer comes today get a nice roast and some steak.
If he doesn't you'll have to kill a fowl for dinner tomorrow."

Anne nodded.

"I'm not going to bother cooking any dinner for just Davy and myself today,"
she said.  "That cold ham bone will do for noon lunch and I'll have some
steak fried for you when you come home at night."

"I'm going to help Mr. Harrison haul dulse this morning," announced Davy.
"He asked me to, and I guess he'll ask me to dinner too.  Mr. Harrison is
an awful kind man.  He's a real sociable man.  I hope I'll be like him
when I grow up.  I mean BEHAVE like him. . .I don't want to LOOK like him.
But I guess there's no danger, for Mrs. Lynde says I'm a very handsome child.
Do you s'pose it'll last, Anne?  I want to know"

"I daresay it will," said Anne gravely.  "You ARE a handsome boy, Davy,"
. . .Marilla looked volumes of disapproval. . ."but you must live up to
it and be just as nice and gentlemanly as you look to be."

"And you told Minnie May Barry the other day, when you found her crying
'cause some one said she was ugly, that if she was nice and kind and
loving people wouldn't mind her looks," said Davy discontentedly.
"Seems to me you can't get out of being good in this world for
some reason or 'nother.  You just HAVE to behave."

"Don't you want to be good?" asked Marilla, who had learned a great
deal but had not yet learned the futility of asking such questions.

"Yes, I want to be good but not TOO good," said Davy cautiously.
"You don't have to be very good to be a Sunday School superintendent.
Mr. Bell's that, and he's a real bad man."

"Indeed he's not," said Marila indignantly.

"He is. . .he says he is himself," asseverated Davy.  "He said it
when he prayed in Sunday School last Sunday.  He said he was a vile
worm and a miserable sinner and guilty of the blackest 'niquity.
What did he do that was so bad, Marilla?  Did he kill anybody?
Or steal the collection cents?  I want to know."

Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and
Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of
the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so
highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the
hearing of small boys who were always "wanting to know."

Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will.  The floor was
swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and
hung out on the line.  Then Anne prepared for the transfer of
feathers.  She mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress
that came to hand. . .a navy blue cashmere she had worn at
fourteen.  It was decidedly on the short side and as "skimpy" as
the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the occasion of her debut at
Green Gables; but at least it would not be materially injured by
down and feathers.  Anne completed her toilet by tying a big red
and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over
her head, and, thus accoutred, betook herself to the kitchen
chamber, whither Marilla, before her departure, had helped her
carry the feather bed.

A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky
moment Anne looked into it.  There were those seven freckles on her
nose, more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light
from the unshaded window.

"Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night," she thought.
"I'd better run down to the pantry and do it now."

Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles.
On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the
freckles remained.  A few days previously she had found a recipe
for a freckle lotion in a magazine and, as the ingredients were
within her reach, she straightway compounded it, much to the disgust
of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on
your nose it was your bounden duty to leave them there.

Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big
willow growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason
of the shade drawn to exclude flies.  Anne caught the bottle
containing the lotion from the shelf and copiously anointed her
nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose.
This important duty done, she returned to her work.  Any one who
has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to
be told that when Anne finished she was a sight to behold.  Her
dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair, escaping from
under the handkerchief, was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers.
At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door.

"That must be Mr. Shearer," thought Anne.  "I'm in a dreadful mess
but I'll have to run down as I am, for he's always in a hurry."

Down flew Anne to the kitchen door.  If ever a charitable floor did
open to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the Green Gables
porch floor should promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment.
On the doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant, golden and fair
in silk attire, a short, stout gray-haired lady in a tweed suit,
and another lady, tall stately, wonderfully gowned, with a
beautiful, highbred face and large, black-lashed violet eyes,
whom Anne "instinctively felt," as she would have said in her
earlier days, to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan.

In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the
confusion of Anne's mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial
straw.  All Mrs. Morgan's heroines were noted for "rising to the
occasion."  No matter what their troubles were, they invariably rose
to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time,
space, and quantity.  Anne therefore felt it was HER duty to rise
to the occasion and she did it, so perfectly that Priscilla
afterward declared she never admired Anne Shirley more than
at that moment.  No matter what her outraged feelings were
she did not show them.  She greeted Priscilla and was introduced
to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had been
arrayed in purple and fine linen.  To be sure, it was somewhat
of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt
to be Mrs. Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all, but an unknown
Mrs. Pendexter, while the stout little gray-haired woman was
Mrs. Morgan; but in the greater shock the lesser lost its power.
Anne ushered her guests to the spare room and thence into the parlor,
where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla
unharness her horse.

"It's dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this,"
apologized Priscilla, "but I did not know till last night that we
were coming.  Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday and she had
promised to spend today with a friend in town.  But last night her
friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined
for scarlet fever.  So I suggested we come here instead, for I knew
you were longing to see her.  We called at the White Sands Hotel and
brought Mrs. Pendexter with us.  She is a friend of aunt's and lives
in New York and her husband is a millionaire.  We can't stay very long,
for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back at the hotel by five o'clock."

Several times while they were putting away the horse Anne caught
Priscilla looking at her in a furtive, puzzled way.

"She needn't stare at me so," Anne thought a little resentfully.
"If she doesn't KNOW what it is to change a feather bed she might
IMAGINE it."

When Priscilla had gone to the parlor, and before Anne could escape
upstairs, Diana walked into the kitchen.  Anne caught her astonished
friend by the arm.

"Diana Barry, who do you suppose is in that parlor at this very
moment?  Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan. . .and a New York millionaire's
wife. . .and here I am like THIS. . .and NOT A THING IN THE HOUSE
FOR DINNER BUT A COLD HAM BONE, Diana!"

By this time Anne had become aware that Diana was staring at her
in precisely the same bewildered fashion as Priscilla had done.
It was really too much.

"Oh, Diana, don't look at me so," she implored.  "YOU, at least,
must know that the neatest person in the world couldn't empty
feathers from one tick into another and remain neat in the process."

"It. . .it. . .isn't the feathers," hesitated Diana.  "It's. . .
it's. . .your nose, Anne."

"My nose?  Oh, Diana, surely nothing has gone wrong with it!"

Anne rushed to the little looking glass over the sink.  One glance
revealed the fatal truth.  Her nose was a brilliant scarlet!

Anne sat down on the sofa, her dauntless spirit subdued at last.

"What is the matter with it?" asked Diana, curiosity overcoming delicacy.

"I thought I was rubbing my freckle lotion on it, but I must have
used that red dye Marilla has for marking the pattern on her rugs,"
was the despairing response.  "What shall I do?"

"Wash it off," said Diana practically.

"Perhaps it won't wash off.  First I dye my hair; then I dye my nose.
Marilla cut my hair off when I dyed it but that remedy would hardly be
practicable in this case.  Well, this is another punishment for vanity
and I suppose I deserve it. . .though there's not much comfort in THAT.
It is really almost enough to make one believe in ill-luck, though Mrs.
Lynde says there is no such thing, because everything is foreordained."

Fortunately the dye washed off easily and Anne, somewhat consoled,
betook herself to the east gable while Diana ran home.  Presently
Anne came down again, clothed and in her right mind.  The muslin
dress she had fondly hoped to wear was bobbing merrily about on the
line outside, so she was forced to content herself with her black
lawn.  She had the fire on and the tea steeping when Diana
returned; the latter wore HER muslin, at least, and carried a
covered platter in her hand.

"Mother sent you this," she said, lifting the cover and displaying
a nicely carved and jointed chicken to Anne's greatful eyes.

The chicken was supplemented by light new bread, excellent butter
and cheese, Marilla's fruit cake and a dish of preserved plums,
floating in their golden syrup as in congealed summer sunshine.
There was a big bowlful of pink-and-white asters also, by way of
decoration; yet the spread seemed very meager beside the elaborate
one formerly prepared for Mrs. Morgan.

Anne's hungry guests, however, did not seem to think anything was
lacking and they ate the simple viands with apparent enjoyment.
But after the first few moments Anne thought no more of what was
or was not on her bill of fare.  Mrs. Morgan's appearance might be
somewhat disappointing, as even her loyal worshippers had been
forced to admit to each other; but she proved to be a delightful
conversationalist.  She had traveled extensively and was an
excellent storyteller.  She had seen much of men and women, and
crystalized her experiences into witty little sentences and
epigrams which made her hearers feel as if they were listening to
one of the people in clever books.  But under all her sparkle there
was a strongly felt undercurrent of true, womanly sympathy and
kindheartedness which won affection as easily as her brilliancy won
admiration.  Nor did she monopolize the conversation.  She could
draw others out as skillfully and fully as she could talk herself,
and Anne and Diana found themselves chattering freely to her.  Mrs.
Pendexter said little; she merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips,
and ate chicken and fruit cake and preserves with such exquisite grace
that she conveyed the impression of dining on ambrosia and honeydew.
But then, as Anne said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely beautiful
as Mrs. Pendexter didn't need to talk; it was enough for her just to LOOK.

After dinner they all had a walk through Lover's Lane and Violet
Vale and the Birch Path, then back through the Haunted Wood to the
Dryad's Bubble, where they sat down and talked for a delightful
last half hour.  Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the Haunted Wood
came by its name, and laughed until she cried when she heard the
story and Anne's dramatic account of a certain memorable walk
through it at the witching hour of twilight.

"It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn't it?"
said Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again.
"I don't know which I enjoyed more. . .listening to Mrs. Morgan or
gazing at Mrs. Pendexter.  I believe we had a nicer time than if
we'd known they were coming and been cumbered with much serving.
You must stay to tea with me, Diana, and we'll talk it all over."

"Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter's husband's sister is married to an
English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves,"
said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

"I daresay even the English earl himself wouldn't have turned up his
aristocratic nose at Marilla's plum preserves," said Anne proudly.

Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen HER nose when she
related the day's history to Marilla that evening.  But she took the
bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.

"I shall never try any beautifying messes again," she said, darkly
resolute.  "They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for
anyone so hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be
it's tempting fate to meddle with them."




                               XXI

                        Sweet Miss Lavendar


School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience.  She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder.
Among them were Davy and Dora.  Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been
going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world.
Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit
with Lily Sloane; but Lily Sloane not coming the first day, she was
temporarily assigned to Mirabel Cotton, who was ten years old and
therefore, in Dora's eyes, one of the "big girls."

"I think school is great fun," Davy told Marilla when he got home
that night.  "You said I'd find it hard to sit still and I did. . .
you mostly do tell the truth, I notice. . .but you can wriggle
your legs about under the desk and that helps a lot.  It's splendid
to have so many boys to play with.  I sit with Milty Boulter and
he's fine.  He's longer than me but I'm wider.  It's nicer to sit
in the back seats but you can't sit there till your legs grow long
enough to touch the floor.  Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his
slate and it was awful ugly and I told him if he made pictures of
Anne like that I'd lick him at recess.  I thought first I'd draw
one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it
would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt
anyone's feelings.  It seems it's dreadful to have your feelings
hurt.  It's better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if
you MUST do something.  Milty said he wasn't scared of me but he'd
just as soon call it somebody else to 'blige me, so he rubbed out
Anne's name and printed Barbara Shaw's under it.  Milty doesn't
like Barbara 'cause she calls him a sweet little boy and once she
patted him on his head."

Dora said primly that she liked school; but she was very quiet,
even for her; and when at twilight Marilla bade her go upstairs to
bed she hesitated and began to cry.

"I'm. . .I'm frightened," she sobbed.  "I. . .I don't want to go
upstairs alone in the dark."

"What notion have you got into your head now?" demanded Marilla.
"I'm sure you've gone to bed alone all summer and never been
frightened before."

Dora still continued to cry, so Anne picked her up, cuddled her
sympathetically, and whispered,

"Tell Anne all about it, sweetheart.  What are you frightened of?"

"Of. . .of Mirabel Cotton's uncle," sobbed Dora.  "Mirabel Cotton told
me all about her family today in school.  Nearly everybody in her
family has died. . .all her grandfathers and grandmothers and ever
so many uncles and aunts.  They have a habit of dying, Mirabel says.
Mirabel's awful proud of having so many dead relations, and she told
me what they all died of, and what they said, and how they looked in
their coffins.  And Mirabel says one of her uncles was seen walking
around the house after he was buried.  Her mother saw him.  I don't
mind the rest so much but I can't help thinking about that uncle."

Anne went upstairs with Dora and sat by her until she fell asleep.
The next day Mirabel Cotton was kept in at recess and "gently but
firmly" given to understand that when you were so unfortunate as to
possess an uncle who persisted in walking about houses after he had
been decently interred it was not in good taste to talk about that
eccentric gentleman to your deskmate of tender years.  Mirabel
thought this very harsh.  The Cottons had not much to boast of.
How was she to keep up her prestige among her schoolmates if she
were forbidden to make capital out of the family ghost?

September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.
One Friday evening Diana came over.

"I'd a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over
to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town.
But we can't get one of our horses to go, for they'll all be in use
tomorrow, and your pony is lame. . .so I suppose we can't go."

"Why can't we walk?" suggested Anne.  "If we go straight back
through the woods we'll strike the West Grafton road not far from
the Kimball place.  I was through that way last winter and I know
the road.  It's no more than four miles and we won't have to walk
home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us.  He'll be only
too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they
say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse."

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the
following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover's Lane to
the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into
the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were
all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple
stillness and peace.

"It's as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full
of mellow stained light, isn't it?" said Anne dreamily.  "It doesn't
seem right to hurry through it, does it?  It seems irreverent,
like running in a church."

"We MUST hurry though," said Diana, glancing at her watch.
"We've left ourselves little enough time as it is."

"Well, I'll walk fast but don't ask me to talk," said Anne, quickening
her pace.  "I just want to drink the day's loveliness in. . .I feel as
if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and
I'll take a sip at every step."

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in "drinking it in" that
Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road.
She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it
the most fortunate mistake of her life.  They came out finally to a
lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of
spruce saplings.

"Why, where are we?" exclaimed Diana in bewilderment.  "This isn't
the West Grafton road."

"No, it's the base line road in Middle Grafton," said Anne, rather
shamefacedly.  "I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.
I don't know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles
from Kimballs' still."

"Then we can't get there by five, for it's half past four now,"
said Diana, with a despairing look at her watch.  "We'll arrive
after they have had their tea, and they'll have all the bother of
getting ours over again."

"We'd better turn back and go home," suggested Anne humbly.
But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.

"No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we
have come this far"

A few yards further on the girls came to a place where
the road forked again.

"Which of these do we take?" asked Diana dubiously.

Anne shook her head.

"I don't know and we can't afford to make any more mistakes.  Here
is a gate and a lane leading right into the wood.  There must be a
house at the other side.  Let us go down and inquire."

"What a romantic old lane this it," said Diana, as they walked
along its twists and turns.  It ran under patriarchal old firs
whose branches met above, creating a perpetual gloom in which
nothing except moss could grow.  On either hand were brown wood
floors, crossed here and there by fallen lances of sunlight.
All was very still and remote, as if the world and the cares
of the world were far away.

"I feel as if we were walking through an enchanted forest," said
Anne in a hushed tone.  "Do you suppose we'll ever find our way
back to the real world again, Diana?  We shall presently come to a
palace with a spellbound princess in it, I think."

Around the next turn they came in sight, not indeed of a palace,
but of a little house almost as surprising as a palace would have
been in this province of conventional wooden farmhouses, all as
much alike in general characteristics as if they had grown from the
same seed.  Anne stopped short in rapture and Diana exclaimed,
"Oh, I know where we are now.  That is the little stone house where
Miss Lavendar Lewis lives. . .Echo Lodge, she calls it, I think.
I've often heard of it but I've never seen it before.  Isn't it a
romantic spot?"

"It's the sweetest, prettiest place I ever saw or imagined," said
Anne delightedly.  "It looks like a bit out of a story book or a dream."

The house was a low-eaved structure built of undressed blocks of
red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered
two dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two
great chimneys.  The whole house was covered with a luxuriant
growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and
turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and wine-red tints.

Before the house was an oblong garden into which the lane gate
where the girls were standing opened.  The house bounded it on
one side; on the three others it was enclosed by an old stone dyke,
so overgrown with moss and grass and ferns that it looked like a high,
green bank.  On the right and left the tall, dark spruces spread
their palm-like branches over it; but below it was a little meadow,
green with clover aftermath, sloping down to the blue loop of the
Grafton River.  No other house or clearing was in sight. . .nothing
but hills and valleys covered with feathery young firs.

"I wonder what sort of a person Miss Lewis is," speculated Diana as
they opened the gate into the garden.  "They say she is very peculiar."

"She'll be interesting then," said Anne decidedly.  "Peculiar people
are always that at least, whatever else they are or are not.
Didn't I tell you we would come to an enchanted palace?
I knew the elves hadn't woven magic over that lane for nothing."

"But Miss Lavendar Lewis is hardly a spellbound princess," laughed
Diana.  "She's an old maid. . .she's forty-five and quite gray,
I've heard."

"Oh, that's only part of the spell," asserted Anne confidently.
"At heart she's young and beautiful still. . .and if we only knew
how to unloose the spell she would step forth radiant and fair again.
But we don't know how. . .it's always and only the prince who knows that
. . .and Miss Lavendar's prince hasn't come yet.  Perhaps some fatal
mischance has befallen him. . .though THAT'S against the law of all
fairy tales."

"I'm afraid he came long ago and went away again," said Diana.
"They say she used to be engaged to Stephan Irving. . .Paul's
father. . .when they were young.  But they quarreled and parted."

"Hush," warned Anne.  "The door is open."

The girls paused in the porch under the tendrils of ivy and knocked
at the open door.  There was a patter of steps inside and a rather
odd little personage presented herself. . .a girl of about
fourteen, with a freckled face, a snub nose, a mouth so wide that
it did really seem as if it stretched "from ear to ear," and two
long braids of fair hair tied with two enormous bows of blue ribbon.

"Is Miss Lewis at home?" asked Diana.

"Yes, ma'am.  Come in, ma'am.  I'll tell Miss Lavendar you're here,
ma'am.  She's upstairs, ma'am."

With this the small handmaiden whisked out of sight and the girls,
left alone, looked about them with delighted eyes.  The interior of
this wonderful little house was quite as interesting as its exterior.

The room had a low ceiling and two square, small-paned windows,
curtained with muslin frills.  All the furnishings were old-fashioned,
but so well and daintily kept that the effect was delicious.
But it must be candidly admitted that the most attractive feature,
to two healthy girls who had just tramped four miles through autumn air,
was a table, set out with pale blue china and laden with delicacies,
while little golden-hued ferns scattered over the cloth gave it what
Anne would have termed "a festal air."

"Miss Lavendar must be expecting company to tea," she whispered.
"There are six places set.  But what a funny little girl she has.
She looked like a messenger from pixy land.  I suppose she could
have told us the road, but I was curious to see Miss Lavendar.
S. . .s. . .sh, she's coming."

And with that Miss Lavendar Lewis was standing in the doorway.
The girls were so surprised that they forgot good manners and
simply stared.  They had unconsciously been expecting to see
the usual type of elderly spinster as known to their experience
. . .a rather angular personage, with prim gray hair and spectacles.
Nothing more unlike Miss Lavendar could possibly be imagined.

She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and
thick, and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils.  Beneath
it was an almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with
big soft brown eyes and dimples. . .actually dimples.  She wore a
very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it. . .a
gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of
her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never
thought about it at all.

"Charlotta the Fourth says that you wished to see me," she said,
in a voice that matched her appearance.

"We wanted to ask the right road to West Grafton," said Diana.
"We are invited to tea at Mr. Kimball's, but we took the wrong path
coming through the woods and came out to the base line instead of the
West Grafton road.  Do we take the right or left turning at your gate?"

"The left," said Miss Lavendar, with a hesitating glance at her tea table.
Then she exclaimed, as if in a sudden little burst of resolution,

"But oh, won't you stay and have tea with me?  Please, do.
Mr. Kimball's will have tea over before you get there.
And Charlotta the Fourth and I will be so glad to have you."

Diana looked mute inquiry at Anne.

"We'd like to stay," said Anne promptly, for she had made up her mind that
she wanted to know more of this surprising Miss Lavendar, "if it won't
inconvenience you.  But you are expecting other guests, aren't you?"

Miss Lavendar looked at her tea table again, and blushed.

"I know you'll think me dreadfully foolish," she said.  "I AM
foolish. . .and I'm ashamed of it when I'm found out, but never
unless I AM found out.  I'm not expecting anybody. . .I was just
pretending I was.  You see, I was so lonely.  I love company. . .
that is, the right kind of company. . .but so few people ever
come here because it is so far out of the way.  Charlotta the
Fourth was lonely too.  So I just pretended I was going to have a
tea party.  I cooked for it. . .and decorated the table for it. . .
and set it with my mother's wedding china . . .and I dressed up
for it."  Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as
report had pictured her.  The idea of a woman of forty-five
playing at having a tea party, just as if she were a little girl!
But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly, "Oh, do YOU imagine
things too?"

That "too" revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.

"Yes, I do," she confessed, boldly.  "Of course it's silly in anybody
as old as I am.  But what is the use of being an independent old maid
if you can't be silly when you want to, and when it doesn't hurt anybody?
A person must have some compensations.  I don't believe I could live
at times if I didn't pretend things.  I'm not often caught at it though,
and Charlotta the Fourth never tells.  But I'm glad to be caught today,
for you have really come and I have tea all ready for you.  Will you
go up to the spare room and take off your hats?  It's the white door
at the head of the stairs.  I must run out to the kitchen and see that
Charlotta the Fourth isn't letting the tea boil.  Charlotta the Fourth
is a very good girl but she WILL let the tea boil."

Miss Lavendar tripped off to the kitchen on hospitable thoughts intent
and the girls found their way up to the spare room, an apartment as
white as its door, lighted by the ivy-hung dormer window and looking,
as Anne said, like the place where happy dreams grew.

"This is quite an adventure, isn't it?" said Diana.  "And isn't
Miss Lavendar sweet, if she IS a little odd?  She doesn't look a bit
like an old maid."

"She looks just as music sounds, I think," answered Anne.

When they went down Miss Lavendar was carrying in the teapot,
and behind her, looking vastly pleased, was Charlotta the Fourth,
with a plate of hot biscuits.

"Now, you must tell me your names," said Miss Lavendar.  "I'm so
glad you are young girls.  I love young girls.  It's so easy to
pretend I'm a girl myself when I'm with them.  I do hate". . .with
a little grimace. . ."to believe I'm old.  Now, who are you. . .
just for convenience' sake?  Diana Barry?  And Anne Shirley?  May I
pretend that I've known you for a hundred years and call you Anne
and Diana right away?"

"You, may" the girls said both together.

"Then just let's sit comfily down and eat everything," said Miss Lavendar
happily.  "Charlotta, you sit at the foot and help with the chicken.
It is so fortunate that I made the sponge cake and doughnuts.
Of course, it was foolish to do it for imaginary guests. . .
I know Charlotta the Fourth thought so, didn't you, Charlotta?
But you see how well it has turned out.  Of course they wouldn't have
been wasted, for Charlotta the Fourth and I could have eaten them
through time.  But sponge cake is not a thing that improves with time."

That was a merry and memorable meal; and when it was over they all
went out to the garden, lying in the glamor of sunset.

"I do think you have the loveliest place here," said Diana,
looking round her admiringly.

"Why do you call it Echo Lodge?" asked Anne.

"Charlotta," said Miss Lavendar, "go into the house and bring out
the little tin horn that is hanging over the clock shelf."

Charlotta the Fourth skipped off and returned with the horn.

"Blow it, Charlotta," commanded Miss Lavendar.

Charlotta accordingly blew, a rather raucous, strident blast.
There was moment's stillness. . .and then from the woods over the
river came a multitude of fairy echoes, sweet, elusive, silvery,
as if all the "horns of elfland" were blowing against the sunset.
Anne and Diana exclaimed in delight.

"Now laugh, Charlotta. . .laugh loudly."

Charlotta, who would probably have obeyed if Miss Lavendar had told
her to stand on her head, climbed upon the stone bench and laughed
loud and heartily.  Back came the echoes, as if a host of pixy
people were mimicking her laughter in the purple woodlands and
along the fir-fringed points.

"People always admire my echoes very much," said Miss Lavendar,
as if the echoes were her personal property.  "I love them myself.
They are very good company. . .with a little pretending.  On calm
evenings Charlotta the Fourth and I often sit out here and amuse
ourselves with them.  Charlotta, take back the horn and hang it
carefully in its place."

"Why do you call her Charlotta the Fourth?" asked Diana, who was
bursting with curiosity on this point.

"Just to keep her from getting mixed up with other Charlottas in
my thoughts," said Miss Lavendar seriously.  "They all look so much
alike there's no telling them apart.  Her name isn't really
Charlotta at all.  It is. . .let me see. . .what is it?  I THINK
it's Leonora. . .yes, it IS Leonora.  You see, it is this way.
When mother died ten years ago I couldn't stay here alone. . .
and I couldn't afford to pay the wages of a grown-up girl.
So I got little Charlotta Bowman to come and stay with me for
board and clothes.  Her name really was Charlotta. . .she was
Charlotta the First.  She was just thirteen.  She stayed with me
till she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston, because she
could do better there.  Her sister came to stay with me then.
Her name was Julietta. . .Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy
names I think. . .but she looked so like Charlotta that I
kept calling her that all the time. . .and she didn't mind.
So I just gave up trying to remember her right name.
She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away Evelina
came and she was Charlotta the Third.  Now I have Charlotta
the Fourth; but when she is sixteen. . .she's fourteen now. . .
she will want to go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I
really do not know.  Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the
Bowman girls, and the best.  The other Charlottas always let
me see that they thought it silly of me to pretend things but
Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she may really think.
I don't care what people think about me if they don't let me see it."

"Well," said Diana looking regretfully at the setting sun.
"I suppose we must go if we want to get to Mr. Kimball's before dark.
We've had a lovely time, Miss Lewis."

"Won't you come again to see me?" pleaded Miss Lavendar.

Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady.

"Indeed we shall," she promised.  "Now that we have discovered you
we'll wear out our welcome coming to see you.  Yes, we must go. . .
'we must tear ourselves away,' as Paul Irving says every time he
comes to Green Gables."

"Paul Irving?"  There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar's voice.
"Who is he?  I didn't think there was anybody of that name in Avonlea."

Anne felt vexed at her own heedlessness.  She had forgotten about
Miss Lavendar's old romance when Paul's name slipped out.

"He is a little pupil of mine," she explained slowly.  "He came
from Boston last year to live with his grandmother, Mrs. Irving
of the shore road."

"Is he Stephen Irving's son?" Miss Lavendar asked, bending over her
namesake border so that her face was hidden.

"Yes."

"I'm going to give you girls a bunch of lavendar apiece," said Miss
Lavendar brightly, as if she had not heard the answer to her question.
"It's very sweet, don't you think?  Mother always loved it.
She planted these borders long ago.  Father named me Lavendar
because he was so fond of it.  The very first time he saw mother
was when he visited her home in East Grafton with her brother.  He
fell in love with her at first sight; and they put him in the spare
room bed to sleep and the sheets were scented with lavendar and he
lay awake all night and thought of her.  He always loved the scent
of lavendar after that. . .and that was why he gave me the name.
Don't forget to come back soon, girls dear.  We'll be looking for
you, Charlotta the Fourth and I."

She opened the gate under the firs for them to pass through.  She looked
suddenly old and tired; the glow and radiance had faded from her face;
her parting smile was as sweet with ineradicable youth as ever, but when
the girls looked back from the first curve in the lane they saw her sitting
on the old stone bench under the silver poplar in the middle of the garden
with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

"She does look lonely," said Diana softly.  "We must come often to see her."

"I think her parents gave her the only right and fitting name that
could possibly be given her," said Anne.  "If they had been so
blind as to name her Elizabeth or Nellie or Muriel she must have
been called Lavendar just the same, I think.  It's so suggestive of
sweetness and old-fashioned graces and `silk attire.'  Now, my name
just smacks of bread and butter, patchwork and chores."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Diana.  "Anne seems to me real stately
and like a queen.  But I'd like Kerrenhappuch if it happened to be
your name.  I think people make their names nice or ugly just by
what they are themselves.  I can't bear Josie or Gertie for names
now but before I knew the Pye girls I thought them real pretty."

"That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically.
"Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't
beautiful to begin with. . .making it stand in people's
thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they
never think of it by itself.  Thank you, Diana."




                              XXII

                         Odds and Ends


"So you had tea at the stone house with Lavendar Lewis?" said Marilla
at the breakfast table next morning.  "What is she like now?
It's over fifteen years since I saw her last. . .it was one
Sunday in Grafton church.  I suppose she has changed a great deal.
Davy Keith, when you want something you can't reach, ask to have it
passed and don't spread yourself over the table in that fashion.
Did you ever see Paul Irving doing that when he was here to meals?"

"But Paul's arms are longer'n mine," brumbled Davy.  "They've had
eleven years to grow and mine've only had seven.  'Sides, I DID ask,
but you and Anne was so busy talking you didn't pay any 'tention.
'Sides, Paul's never been here to any meal escept tea, and it's easier
to be p'lite at tea than at breakfast.  You ain't half as hungry.
It's an awful long while between supper and breakfast.  Now, Anne,
that spoonful ain't any bigger than it was last year and I'M ever
so much bigger."

"Of course, I don't know what Miss Lavendar used to look like but I
don't fancy somehow that she has changed a great deal," said Anne,
after she had helped Davy to maple syrup, giving him two spoonfuls
to pacify him.  "Her hair is snow-white but her face is fresh and
almost girlish, and she has the sweetest brown eyes. . .such a
pretty shade of wood-brown with little golden glints in them. . .
and her voice makes you think of white satin and tinkling water
and fairy bells all mixed up together."

"She was reckoned a great beauty when she was a girl," said Marilla.
"I never knew her very well but I liked her as far as I did know her.
Some folks thought her peculiar even then.  DAVY, if ever I catch you
at such a trick again you'll be made to wait for your meals till
everyone else is done, like the French."

Most conversations between Anne and Marilla in the presence of the
twins, were punctuated by these rebukes Davy-ward.  In this instance,
Davy, sad to relate, not being able to scoop up the last drops of
his syrup with his spoon, had solved the difficulty by lifting his
plate in both hands and applying his small pink tongue to it.
Anne looked at him with such horrified eyes that the little
sinner turned red and said, half shamefacedly, half defiantly,

"There ain't any wasted that way."

"People who are different from other people are always called
peculiar," said Anne.  "And Miss Lavendar is certainly different,
though it's hard to say just where the difference comes in.
Perhaps it is because she is one of those people who never grow old."

"One might as well grow old when all your generation do," said
Marilla, rather reckless of her pronouns.  "If you don't, you don't
fit in anywhere.  Far as I can learn Lavendar Lewis has just
dropped out of everything.  She's lived in that out of the way
place until everybody has forgotten her.  That stone house is one
of the oldest on the Island.  Old Mr. Lewis built it eighty years
ago when he came out from England.  Davy, stop joggling Dora's elbow.
Oh, I saw you!  You needn't try to look innocent.  What does make you
behave so this morning?"

"Maybe I got out of the wrong side of the bed," suggested Davy.
"Milty Boulter says if you do that things are bound to go wrong
with you all day.  His grandmother told him.  But which is the
right side?  And what are you to do when your bed's against the
wall?  I want to know."

"I've always wondered what went wrong between Stephen Irving and
Lavendar Lewis," continued Marilla, ignoring Davy.  "They were
certainly engaged twenty-five years ago and then all at once it was
broken off.  I don't know what the trouble was but it must have
been something terrible, for he went away to the States and never
come home since."

"Perhaps it was nothing very dreadful after all.  I think the
little things in life often make more trouble than the big things,"
said Anne, with one of those flashes of insight which experience
could not have bettered.  "Marilla, please don't say anything about
my being at Miss Lavendar's to Mrs. Lynde.  She'd be sure to ask a
hundred questions and somehow I wouldn't like it. . .nor Miss
Lavendar either if she knew, I feel sure."

"I daresay Rachel would be curious," admitted Marilla, "though she
hasn't as much time as she used to have for looking after other
people's affairs.  She's tied home now on account of Thomas; and
she's feeling pretty downhearted, for I think she's beginning to
lose hope of his ever getting better.  Rachel will be left pretty
lonely if anything happens to him, with all her children settled
out west, except Eliza in town; and she doesn't like her husband."

Marilla's pronouns slandered Eliza, who was very fond of her husband.

"Rachel says if he'd only brace up and exert his will power he'd
get better.  But what is the use of asking a jellyfish to sit up
straight?" continued Marilla.  "Thomas Lynde never had any will
power to exert.  His mother ruled him till he married and then
Rachel carried it on.  It's a wonder he dared to get sick without
asking her permission.  But there, I shouldn't talk so.  Rachel has
been a good wife to him.  He'd never have amounted to anything
without her, that's certain.  He was born to be ruled; and it's
well he fell into the hands of a clever, capable manager like Rachel.
He didn't mind her way.  It saved him the bother of ever making up
his own mind about anything.  Davy, do stop squirming like an eel."

"I've nothing else to do," protested Davy.  "I can't eat any more,
and it's no fun watching you and Anne eat."

"Well, you and Dora go out and give the hens their wheat," said
Marilla.  "And don't you try to pull any more feathers out of the
white rooster's tail either."

"I wanted some feathers for an Injun headdress," said Davy sulkily.
"Milty Boulter has a dandy one, made out of the feathers his mother
give him when she killed their old white gobbler.  You might let me
have some.  That rooster's got ever so many more'n he wants."

"You may have the old feather duster in the garret," said Anne,
"and I'll dye them green and red and yellow for you."

"You do spoil that boy dreadfully," said Marilla, when Davy, with a
radiant face, had followed prim Dora out.  Marilla's education had
made great strides in the past six years; but she had not yet been
able to rid herself of the idea that it was very bad for a child to
have too many of its wishes indulged.

"All the boys of his class have Indian headdresses, and Davy wants
one too," said Anne.  "_I_ know how it feels. . .I'll never forget how
I used to long for puffed sleeves when all the other girls had them.
And Davy isn't being spoiled.  He is improving every day.  Think what
a difference there is in him since he came here a year ago."

"He certainly doesn't get into as much mischief since he began to
go to school," acknowledged Marilla.  "I suppose he works off the
tendency with the other boys.  But it's a wonder to me we haven't
heard from Richard Keith before this.  Never a word since last May."

"I'll be afraid to hear from him," sighed Anne, beginning to clear
away the dishes.  "If a letter should come I'd dread opening it,
for fear it would tell us to send the twins to him."

A month later a letter did come.  But it was not from Richard Keith.
A friend of his wrote to say that Richard Keith had died of consumption
a fortnight previously.  The writer of the letter was the executor of
his will and by that will the sum of two thousand dollars was left to
Miss Marilla Cuthbert in trust for David and Dora Keith until they
came of age or married.  In the meantime the interest was to be used
for their maintenance.

"It seems dreadful to be glad of anything in connection with a death,"
said Anne soberly.  "I'm sorry for poor Mr. Keith; but I AM glad that
we can keep the twins."

"It's a very good thing about the money," said Marilla practically.
"I wanted to keep them but I really didn't see how I could afford
to do it, especially when they grew older.  The rent of the farm
doesn't do any more than keep the house and I was bound that not a
cent of your money should be spent on them.  You do far too much
for them as it is.  Dora didn't need that new hat you bought her
any more than a cat needs two tails.  But now the way is made clear
and they are provided for."

Davy and Dora were delighted when they heard that they were to live
at Green Gables, "for good."  The death of an uncle whom they had
never seen could not weigh a moment in the balance against that.
But Dora had one misgiving.

"Was Uncle Richard buried?" she whispered to Anne.

"Yes, dear, of course."

"He. . .he. . .isn't like Mirabel Cotton's uncle, is he?" in a
still more agitated whisper.  "He won't walk about houses after
being buried, will he, Anne?"




                              XXIII

                    Miss Lavendar's Romance


"I think I'll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this evening," said Anne,
one Friday afternoon in December.

"It looks like snow," said Marilla dubiously.

"I'll be there before the snow comes and I mean to stay all night.
Diana can't go because she has company, and I'm sure Miss Lavendar will
be looking for me tonight.  It's a whole fortnight since I was there."

Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day.
Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road; sometimes they
walked through the woods.  When Diana could not go Anne went alone.
Between her and Miss Lavendar had sprung up one of those fervent,
helpful friendships possible only between a woman who has kept the
freshness of youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose
imagination and intuition supplied the place of experience.
Anne had at last discovered a real "kindred spirit," while into
the little lady's lonely, sequestered life of dreams Anne and Diana
came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence,
which Miss Lavendar, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot,"
had long ceased to share; they brought an atmosphere of youth
and reality to the little stone house.  Charlotta the Fourth
always greeted them with her very widest smile. . .and Charlotta's
smiles WERE fearfully wide. . .loving them for the sake of her
adored mistress as well as for their own.  Never had there been
such "high jinks" held in the little stone house as were held there
that beautiful, late-lingering autumn, when November seemed October
over again, and even December aped the sunshine and hazes of summer.

But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered
that it was time for winter and had turned suddenly dull and
brooding, with a windless hush predictive of coming snow.
Nevertheless, Anne keenly enjoyed her walk through the great gray
maze of the beechlands; though alone she never found it lonely; her
imagination peopled her path with merry companions, and with these
she carried on a gay, pretended conversation that was wittier and
more fascinating than conversations are apt to be in real life,
where people sometimes fail most lamentably to talk up to the
requirements.  In a "make believe" assembly of choice spirits
everybody says just the thing you want her to say and so gives you
the chance to say just what YOU want to say.  Attended by this
invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir
lane just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly.

At the first bend she came upon Miss Lavendar, standing under a
big, broad-branching fir.  She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and
her head and shoulders were wrapped in a silvery gray silk shawl.

"You look like the queen of the fir wood fairies," called Anne merrily.

"I thought you would come tonight, Anne," said Miss Lavendar,
running forward.  "And I'm doubly glad, for Charlotta the Fourth
is away.  Her mother is sick and she had to go home for the night.
I should have been very lonely if you hadn't come. . .even the
dreams and the echoes wouldn't have been enough company.  Oh, Anne,
how pretty you are," she added suddenly, looking up at the tall,
slim girl with the soft rose-flush of walking on her face.  "How
pretty and how young!  It's so delightful to be seventeen, isn't it?
I do envy you," concluded Miss Lavendar candidly.

"But you are only seventeen at heart," smiled Anne.

"No, I'm old. . .or rather middle-aged, which is far worse,"
sighed Miss Lavendar.  "Sometimes I can pretend I'm not, but at
other times I realize it.  And I can't reconcile myself to it as
most women seem to.  I'm just as rebellious as I was when I
discovered my first gray hair.  Now, Anne, don't look as if you
were trying to understand.  Seventeen CAN'T understand.  I'm going
to pretend right away that I am seventeen too, and I can do it, now
that you're here.  You always bring youth in your hand like a gift.
We're going to have a jolly evening.  Tea first. . .what do you
want for tea?  We'll have whatever you like.  Do think of something
nice and indigestible."

There were sounds of riot and mirth in the little stone house
that night.  What with cooking and feasting and making candy and
laughing and "pretending," it is quite true that Miss Lavendar and
Anne comported themselves in a fashion entirely unsuited to the
dignity of a spinster of forty-five and a sedate schoolma'am.
Then, when they were tired, they sat down on the rug before the
grate in the parlor, lighted only by the soft fireshine and
perfumed deliciously by Miss Lavendar's open rose-jar on the mantel.
The wind had risen and was sighing and wailing around the eaves and
the snow was thudding softly against the windows, as if a hundred
storm sprites were tapping for entrance.

"I'm so glad you're here, Anne," said Miss Lavendar, nibbling at
her candy.  "If you weren't I should be blue. . .very blue. . .
almost navy blue.  Dreams and make-believes are all very well in
the daytime and the sunshine, but when dark and storm come they
fail to satisfy.  One wants real things then.  But you don't know
this. . .seventeen never knows it.  At seventeen dreams DO satisfy
because you think the realities are waiting for you further on.
When I was seventeen, Anne, I didn't think forty-five would find me
a white-haired little old maid with nothing but dreams to fill my life."

"But you aren't an old maid," said Anne, smiling into Miss Lavendar's
wistful woodbrown eyes.  "Old maids are BORN. . .they don't BECOME."

"Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have
old maidenhood thrust upon them," parodied Miss Lavendar whimsically.

"You are one of those who have achieved it then," laughed Anne,
"and you've done it so beautifully that if every old maid were
like you they would come into the fashion, I think."

"I always like to do things as well as possible," said Miss
Lavendar meditatively, "and since an old maid I had to be I was
determined to be a very nice one.  People say I'm odd; but it's
just because I follow my own way of being an old maid and refuse to
copy the traditional pattern.  Anne, did anyone ever tell you
anything about Stephen Irving and me?"

"Yes," said Anne candidly, "I've heard that you and he were engaged once."

"So we were. . .twenty-five years ago. . .a lifetime ago.  And we
were to have been married the next spring.  I had my wedding
dress made, although nobody but mother and Stephen ever knew THAT.
We'd been engaged in a way almost all our lives, you might say.
When Stephen was a little boy his mother would bring him here when
she came to see my mother; and the second time he ever came. . .
he was nine and I was six. . .he told me out in the garden that
he had pretty well made up his mind to marry me when he grew up.
I remember that I said `Thank you'; and when he was gone I told
mother very gravely that there was a great weight off my mind,
because I wasn't frightened any more about having to be an old
maid.  How poor mother laughed!"

"And what went wrong?" asked Anne breathlessly.

"We had just a stupid, silly, commonplace quarrel.  So commonplace
that, if you'll believe me, I don't even remember just how it began.
I hardly know who was the more to blame for it.  Stephen did really
begin it, but I suppose I provoked him by some foolishness of mine.
He had a rival or two, you see.  I was vain and coquettish and liked
to tease him a little.  He was a very high-strung, sensitive fellow.
Well, we parted in a temper on both sides.  But I thought it would all
come right; and it would have if Stephen hadn't come back too soon.
Anne, my dear, I'm sorry to say". . .Miss Lavendar dropped her voice
as if she were about to confess a predilection for murdering people,
"that I am a dreadfully sulky person.  Oh, you needn't smile,. . .
it's only too true.  I DO sulk; and Stephen came back before I had
finished sulking.  I wouldn't listen to him and I wouldn't forgive him;
and so he went away for good.  He was too proud to come again.  And
then I sulked because he didn't come.  I might have sent for him
perhaps, but I couldn't humble myself to do that.  I was just as
proud as he was. . .pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination,
Anne.  But I could never care for anybody else and I didn't want to.
I knew I would rather be an old maid for a thousand years than marry
anybody who wasn't Stephen Irving.  Well, it all seems like a dream now,
of course.  How sympathetic you look, Anne. . .as sympathetic as only
seventeen can look.  But don't overdo it.  I'm really a very happy,
contented little person in spite of my broken heart.  My heart did break,
if ever a heart did, when I realized that Stephen Irving was not coming back.
But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn't half as dreadful as it is
in books.  It's a good deal like a bad tooth. . .though you won't
think THAT a very romantic simile.  It takes spells of aching and
gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets
you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there
were nothing the matter with it.  And now you're looking disappointed.
You don't think I'm half as interesting a person as you did five minutes
ago when you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely
hidden beneath external smiles.  That's the worst. . .or the best. . .
of real life, Anne.  It WON'T let you be miserable.  It keeps on trying
to make you comfortable. . .and succeeding...even when you're determined
to be unhappy and romantic.  Isn't this candy scrumptious?  I've eaten
far more than is good for me already but I'm going to keep recklessly on."

After a little silence Miss Lavendar said abruptly,

"It gave me a shock to hear about Stephen's son that first day you
were here, Anne.  I've never been able to mention him to you since,
but I've wanted to know all about him.  What sort of a boy is he?"

"He is the dearest, sweetest child I ever knew, Miss Lavendar. . .
and he pretends things too, just as you and I do."

"I'd like to see him," said Miss Lavendar softly, as if talking to herself.
"I wonder if he looks anything like the little dream-boy who lives here
with me. . .MY little dream-boy."

"If you would like to see Paul I'll bring him through with me sometime,"
said Anne.

"I would like it. . .but not too soon.  I want to get used to the thought.
There might be more pain than pleasure in it. . .if he looked too much
like Stephen. . .or if he didn't look enough like him.  In a month's time
you may bring him."

Accordingly, a month later Anne and Paul walked through the woods
to the stone house, and met Miss Lavendar in the lane.  She had
not been expecting them just then and she turned very pale.

"So this is Stephen's boy," she said in a low tone, taking Paul's
hand and looking at him as he stood, beautiful and boyish, in his
smart little fur coat and cap.  "He. . .he is very like his father."

"Everybody says I'm a chip off the old block," remarked Paul,
quite at his ease.

Anne, who had been watching the little scene, drew a relieved breath.
She saw that Miss Lavendar and Paul had "taken" to each other, and
that there would be no constraint or stiffness.  Miss Lavendar
was a very sensible person, in spite of her dreams and romance,
and after that first little betrayal she tucked her feelings
out of sight and entertained Paul as brightly and naturally
as if he were anybody's son who had come to see her.
They all had a jolly afternoon together and such a feast of fat
things by way of supper as would have made old Mrs. Irving hold up
her hands in horror, believing that Paul's digestion would be
ruined for ever.

"Come again, laddie," said Miss Lavendar, shaking hands with him
at parting.

"You may kiss me if you like," said Paul gravely.

Miss Lavendar stooped and kissed him.

"How did you know I wanted to?" she whispered.

"Because you looked at me just as my little mother used to do
when she wanted to kiss me.  As a rule, I don't like to be kissed.
Boys don't.  You know, Miss Lewis.  But I think I rather like to
have you kiss me.  And of course I'll come to see you again.
I think I'd like to have you for a particular friend of mine,
if you don't object."

"I. . .I don't think I shall object," said Miss Lavendar.
She turned and went in very quickly; but a moment later she
was waving a gay and smiling good-bye to them from the window.

"I like Miss Lavendar," announced Paul, as they walked through the
beech woods.  "I like the way she looked at me, and I like her
stone house, and I like Charlotta the Fourth.  I wish Grandma
Irving had a Charlotta the Fourth instead of a Mary Joe.  I feel
sure Charlotta the Fourth wouldn't think I was wrong in my upper
story when I told her what I think about things.  Wasn't that a
splendid tea we had, teacher?  Grandma says a boy shouldn't be
thinking about what he gets to eat, but he can't help it sometimes
when he is real hungry.  YOU know, teacher.  I don't think Miss
Lavendar would make a boy eat porridge for breakfast if he didn't
like it.  She'd get things for him he did like.  But of course". . .
Paul was nothing if not fair-minded. . ."that mightn't be very good
for him.  It's very nice for a change though, teacher.  YOU know."




                               XXIV

                  A Prophet in His Own Country


One May day Avonlea folks were mildly excited over some "Avonlea Notes,"
signed "Observer," which appeared in the Charlottetown `Daily Enterprise.'
Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloane, partly because
the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary flights in times past,
and partly because one of the notes seemed to embody a sneer at Gilbert
Blythe.  Avonlea juvenile society persisted in regarding Gilbert Blythe
and Charlie Sloane as rivals in the good graces of a certain damsel with
gray eyes and an imagination.

Gossip, as usual, was wrong.  Gilbert Blythe, aided and abetted by
Anne, had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a
blind.  Only two of the notes have any bearing on this history:

"Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the
daisies are in bloom.  A new and highly respected citizen will lead
to the hymeneal altar one of our most popular ladies.

"Uncle Abe, our well-known weather prophet, predicts a violent
storm of thunder and lightning for the evening of the twenty-third
of May, beginning at seven o'clock sharp.  The area of the storm
will extend over the greater part of the Province.  People traveling
that evening will do well to take umbrellas and mackintoshes with them."

"Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for sometime this spring,"
said Gilbert, "but do you suppose Mr. Harrison really does go to
see Isabella Andrews?"

"No," said Anne, laughing, "I'm sure he only goes to play checkers with
Mr. Harrison Andrews, but Mrs. Lynde says she knows Isabella Andrews
must be going to get married, she's in such good spirits this spring."

Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes.  He suspected
that "Observer" was making fun of him.  He angrily denied having
assigned any particular date for his storm but nobody believed him.

Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way.
The "planting" was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day.
Each Improver set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees.
As the society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of
two hundred young trees.  Early oats greened over the red fields;
apple orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses
and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband.
Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the cherry
fragrance blow over her face all night.  She thought it very
poetical.  Marilla thought she was risking her life.

"Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring," said Anne
one evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and
listened to the silver-sweet chorus of the frogs.  "I think it
would be ever so much better than having it in November when
everything is dead or asleep.  Then you have to remember to be
thankful; but in May one simply can't help being thankful. . .
that they are alive, if for nothing else.  I feel exactly as Eve
must have felt in the garden of Eden before the trouble began.
IS that grass in the hollow green or golden?  It seems to me,
Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are
out and the winds don't know where to blow from next for sheer
crazy delight must be pretty near as good as heaven."

Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to
make sure the twins were not within earshot.  They came around the
corner of the house just then.

"Ain't it an awful nice-smelling evening?" asked Davy, sniffing
delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands.  He had been
working in his garden.  That spring Marilla, by way of turning
Davy's passion for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels,
had given him and Dora a small plot of ground for a garden.
Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic fashion.
Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully, systematically,
and dispassionately.  As a result, her plot was already green
with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals.
Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion; he dug
and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so energetically
that his seeds had no chance for their lives.

"How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?" asked Anne.

"Kind of slow," said Davy with a sigh.  "I don't know why the
things don't grow better.  Milty Boulter says I must have
planted them in the dark of the moon and that's the whole trouble.
He says you must never sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or
do any 'portant thing in the wrong time of the moon.  Is that true,
Anne?  I want to know."

"Maybe if you didn't pull your plants up by the roots every other day
to see how they're getting on `at the other end,' they'd do better,"
said Marilla sarcastically.

"I only pulled six of them up," protested Davy.  "I wanted to see
if there was grubs at the roots.  Milty Boulter said if it wasn't
the moon's fault it must be grubs.  But I only found one grub.
He was a great big juicy curly grub.  I put him on a stone and got
another stone and smashed him flat.  He made a jolly SQUISH I tell you.
I was sorry there wasn't more of them.  Dora's garden was planted same
time's mine and her things are growing all right.  It CAN'T be the moon,"
Davy concluded in a reflective tone.

"Marilla, look at that apple tree," said Anne."  Why, the thing is human.
It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts daintily up and
provoke us to admiration."

"Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well," said Marilla complacently.
"That tree'll be loaded this year.  I'm real glad. . .they're great for pies."

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make
pies out of Yellow Duchess apples that year.

The twenty-third of May came. . .an unseasonably warm day, as none
realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils,
sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom.
A hot breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away
into a heavy stillness.  At half past three Anne heard a low rumble
of thunder.  She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the
children might get home before the storm came.

As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow
and gloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was
still shining brightly.  Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.

"Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!"

Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay.  In the northwest a
mass of cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before,
was rapidly rolling up.  It was dead black, save where its curled
and fringed edges showed a ghastly, livid white.  There was
something about it indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the
clear blue sky; now and again a bolt of lightning shot across it,
followed by a savage growl.  It hung so low that it almost seemed
to be touching the tops of the wooded hills.

Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon,
urging his team of grays to their utmost speed.  He pulled them to
a halt opposite the school.

"Guess Uncle Abe's hit it for once in his life, Anne," he shouted.
"His storm's coming a leetle ahead of time.  Did ye ever see the
like of that cloud?  Here, all you young ones, that are going my
way, pile in, and those that ain't scoot for the post office if
ye've more'n a quarter of a mile to go, and stay there till the
shower's over."

Anne caught Davy and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill,
along the Birch Path, and past Violet Vale and Willowmere, as fast
as the twins' fat legs could go.  They reached Green Gables not a
moment too soon and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been
hustling her ducks and chickens under shelter.  As they dashed into
the kitchen the light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some
mighty breath; the awful cloud rolled over the sun and a darkness
as of late twilight fell across the world.  At the same moment,
with a crash of thunder and a blinding glare of lightning, the
hail swooped down and blotted the landscape out in one white fury.

Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branches
striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass.  In three
minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the
hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones,
the smallest of which was as big as a hen's egg.  For three quarters
of an hour the storm raged unabated and no one who underwent it ever
forgot it.  Marilla, for once in her life shaken out of her composure
by sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen,
gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peals.  Anne, white
as paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with
a twin on either side.  Davy at the first crash had howled, "Anne, Anne,
is it the Judgment Day?  Anne, Anne, I never meant to be naughty," and
then had buried his face in Anne's lap and kept it there, his little
body quivering.  Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her
hand clasped in Anne's, quiet and motionless.  It is doubtful if an
earthquake would have disturbed Dora.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased.  The hail
stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and
the sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it
seemed an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an
hour could have effected such a transformation.

Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her rocker.
Her face was haggard and she looked ten years older.

"Have we all come out of that alive?" she asked solemnly.

"You bet we have," piped Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again.
"I wasn't a bit scared either. . .only just at the first.  It come on
a fellow so sudden.  I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn't
fight Teddy Sloane Monday as I'd promised; but now maybe I will.
Say, Dora, was you scared?"

"Yes, I was a little scared," said Dora primly, "but I held tight
to Anne's hand and said my prayers over and over again."

"Well, I'd have said my prayers too if I'd have thought of it,"
said Davy; "but," he added triumphantly, "you see I came through
just as safe as you for all I didn't say them."

Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine. . .HOW
potent it was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good
reason to know. . .and then they went to the door to look out on
the strange scene.

Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts
of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps.  When,
three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they
had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the
field or garden was cut off.  Not only was every blossom stripped
from the apple trees but great boughs and branches were wrenched
away.  And out of the two hundred trees set out by the Improvers by
far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.

"Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?" asked Anne,
dazedly.  "It MUST have taken longer than that to play such havoc."

"The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,"
said Marilla, "never.  I remember when I was a girl there was a
bad storm, but it was nothing to this.  We'll hear of terrible
destruction, you may be sure."

"I do hope none of the children were caught out in it," murmured
Anne anxiously.  As it was discovered later, none of the children
had been, since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr.
Andrews' excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.

"There comes John Henry Carter," said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.

"Oh, ain't this awful, Miss Cuthbert?  Mr. Harrison sent me over to
see if yous had come out all right."

"We're none of us killed," said Marilla grimly, "and none of the
buildings was struck.  I hope you got off equally well."

"Yas'm.  Not quite so well, ma'am.  We was struck.  The lightning
knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked
over Ginger's cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the
sullar.  Yas'm."

"Was Ginger hurt?" queried Anne.

"Yas'm.  He was hurt pretty bad.  He was killed."  Later on Anne
went over to comfort Mr. Harrison.  She found him sitting by the
table, stroking Ginger's gay dead body with a trembling hand.

"Poor Ginger won't call you any more names, Anne," he said mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger's account,
but the tears came into her eyes.

"He was all the company I had, Anne. . .and now he's dead. Well,
well, I'm an old fool to care so much.  I'll let on I don't care.
I know you're going to say something sympathetic as soon as I
stop talking. . .but don't.  If you did I'd cry like a baby.
Hasn't this been a terrible storm?  I guess folks won't laugh
at Uncle Abe's predictions again.  Seems as if all the storms
that he's been prophesying all his life that never happened came
all at once.  Beats all how he struck the very day though, don't it?
Look at the mess we have here.  I must hustle round and get some
boards to patch up that hole in the floor."

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and
compare damages.  The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of
the hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback.  The mail came
late with ill tidings from all over the province.  Houses had been
struck, people killed and injured; the whole telephone and
telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young
stock exposed in the fields had perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith's forge early in the morning
and spent the whole day there.  It was Uncle Abe's hour of triumph
and he enjoyed it to the full.  It would be doing Uncle Abe an
injustice to say that he was glad the storm had happened; but since
it had to be he was very glad he had predicted it. . .to the very
day, too.  Uncle Abe forgot that he had ever denied setting the day.
As for the trifling discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing.

Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla
and Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the
broken windows.

"Goodness only knows when we'll get glass for them," said Marilla.
"Mr. Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon but not a pane
could he get for love or money.  Lawson and Blair were cleaned out
by the Carmody people by ten o'clock.  Was the storm bad at White
Sands, Gilbert?"

"I should say so.  I was caught in the school with all the children
and I thought some of them would go mad with fright.  Three of them
fainted, and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did
nothing but shriek at the top of his voice the whole time."

"I only squealed once," said Davy proudly.  "My garden was all
smashed flat," he continued mournfully, "but so was Dora's," he
added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.

Anne came running down from the west gable.

"Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news?  Mr. Levi Boulter's old
house was struck and burned to the ground.  It seems to me that I'm
dreadfully wicked to feel glad over THAT, when so much damage has
been done.  Mr. Boulter says he believes the A.V.I.S. magicked up
that storm on purpose."

"Well, one thing is certain," said Gilbert, laughing, "`Observer'
has made Uncle Abe's reputation as a weather prophet.  `Uncle Abe's
storm' will go down in local history.  It is a most extraordinary
coincidence that it should have come on the very day we selected.
I actually have a half guilty feeling, as if I really had `magicked'
it up.  We may as well rejoice over the old house being removed, for
there's not much to rejoice over where our young trees are concerned.
Not ten of them have escaped."

"Ah, well, we'll just have to plant them over again next spring,"
said Anne philosophically.  "That is one good thing about this
world. . .there are always sure to be more springs."




                               XXV

                        An Avonlea Scandal


One blithe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe's storm, Anne
came slowly through the Green Gables yard from the garden, carrying
in her hands two blighted stalks of white narcissus.

"Look, Marilla," she said sorroly, holding up the flowers before
the eyes of a grim lady, with her hair coifed in a green gingham
apron, who was going into the house with a plucked chicken, "these
are the only buds the storm spared. . .and even they are imperfect.
I'm so sorry. . .I wanted some for Matthew's grave.  He was always
so fond of June lilies."

"I kind of miss them myself," admitted Marilla, "though it doesn't
seem right to lament over them when so many worse things have
happened. . .all the crops destroyed as well as the fruit."

"But people have sown their oats over again," said Anne comfortingly,
"and Mr. Harrison says he thinks if we have a good summer they will
come out all right though late.  And my annuals are all coming up again
. . .but oh, nothing can replace the June lilies.  Poor little Hester
Gray will have none either.  I went all the way back to her garden
last night but there wasn't one.  I'm sure she'll miss them."

"I don't think it's right for you to say such things, Anne, I
really don't," said Marilla severely.  "Hester Gray has been dead
for thirty years and her spirit is in heaven. . .I hope."

"Yes, but I believe she loves and remembers her garden here still,"
said Anne.  "I'm sure no matter how long I'd lived in heaven I'd like to
look down and see somebody putting flowers on my grave.  If I had had a
garden here like Hester Gray's it would take me more than thirty years,
even in heaven, to forget being homesick for it by spells."

"Well, don't let the twins hear you talking like that," was Marilla's
feeble protest, as she carried her chicken into the house.

Anne pinned her narcissi on her hair and went to the lane gate,
where she stood for awhile sunning herself in the June brightness
before going in to attend to her Saturday morning duties.  The world
was growing lovely again; old Mother Nature was doing her best
to remove the traces of the storm, and, though she was not to
succeed fully for many a moon, she was really accomplishing wonders.

"I wish I could just be idle all day today," Anne told a bluebird,
who was singing and swinging on a willow bough, "but a schoolma'am,
who is also helping to bring up twins, can't indulge in laziness,
birdie.  How sweet you are singing, little bird.  You are just
putting the feelings of my heart into song ever so much better than
I could myself.  Why, who is coming?"

An express wagon was jolting up the lane, with two people on the
front seat and a big trunk behind.  When it drew near Anne
recognized the driver as the son of the station agent at Bright
River; but his companion was a stranger. . .a scrap of a woman who
sprang nimbly down at the gate almost before the horse came to a
standstill.  She was a very pretty little person, evidently nearer
fifty than forty, but with rosy cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and
shining black hair, surmounted by a wonderful beflowered and
beplumed bonnet.  In spite of having driven eight miles over a
dusty road she was as neat as if she had just stepped out of the
proverbial bandbox.

"Is this where Mr. James A. Harrison lives?" she inquired briskly.

"No, Mr. Harrison lives over there," said Anne, quite lost in astonishment.

"Well, I DID think this place seemed too tidy. . .MUCH too tidy for James A.
to be living here, unless he has greatly changed since I knew him," chirped
the little lady.  "Is it true that James A. is going to be married to some
woman living in this settlement?"

"No, oh no," cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger looked
curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs on
Mr. Harrison.

"But I saw it in an Island paper," persisted the Fair Unknown.  "A
friend sent a marked copy to me. . .friends are always so ready to
do such things.  James A.'s name was written in over `new citizen.'"

"Oh, that note was only meant as a joke," gasped Anne.  "Mr. Harrison
has no intention of marrying ANYBODY.  I assure you he hasn't."

"I'm very glad to hear it," said the rosy lady, climbing nimbly back
to her seat in the wagon, "because he happens to be married already.
_I_ am his wife.  Oh, you may well look surprised.  I suppose he has
been masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left.
Well, well, James A.," nodding vigorously over the fields at the
long white house, "your fun is over.  I am here. . .though I wouldn't
have bothered coming if I hadn't thought you were up to some mischief.
I suppose," turning to Anne, "that parrot of his is as profane as ever?"

"His parrot. . .is dead. . .I THINK," gasped poor Anne, who
couldn't have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.

"Dead!  Everything will be all right then," cried the rosy lady
jubilantly.  "I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way."

With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne
flew to the kitchen door to meet Marilla.

"Anne, who was that woman?"

"Marilla," said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, "do I look as
if I were crazy?"

"Not more so than usual," said Marilla, with no thought of being sarcastic.

"Well then, do you think I am awake?"

"Anne, what nonsense has got into you?  Who was that woman, I say?"

"Marilla, if I'm not crazy and not asleep she can't be such stuff as dreams
are made of. . .she must be real.  Anyway, I'm sure I couldn't have
imagined such a bonnet.  She says she is Mr. Harrison's wife, Marilla."

Marilla stared in her turn.

"His wife!  Anne Shirley!  Then what has he been passing himself off
as an unmarried man for?"

"I don't suppose he did, really," said Anne, trying to be just.
"He never said he wasn't married.  People simply took it for
granted.  Oh Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?"

They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that
evening.  Mrs. Lynde wasn't surprised!  Mrs. Lynde had always
expected something of the sort!  Mrs. Lynde had always known there
was SOMETHING about Mr. Harrison!

"To think of his deserting his wife!" she said indignantly.
"It's like something you'd read of in the States, but who
would expect such a thing to happen right here in Avonlea?"

"But we don't know that he deserted her," protested Anne,
determined to believe her friend innocent till he was proved
guilty.  "We don't know the rights of it at all."

"Well, we soon will.  I'm going straight over there," said Mrs.
Lynde, who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy
in the dictionary.  "I'm not supposed to know anything about her
arrival, and Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas
from Carmody today, so that will be a good excuse.  I'll find out
the whole story and come in and tell you on the way back."

Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread.  Nothing
would have induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place;
but she had her natural and proper share of curiosity and she
felt secretly glad that Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery.
She and Marilla waited expectantly for that good lady's return, but
waited in vain.  Mrs. Lynde did not revisit Green Gables that night.
Davy, arriving home at nine o'clock from the Boulter place, explained why.

"I met Mrs. Lynde and some strange woman in the Hollow," he said,
"and gracious, how they were talking both at once!  Mrs. Lynde
said to tell you she was sorry it was too late to call tonight.
Anne, I'm awful hungry.  We had tea at Milty's at four and I think
Mrs. Boulter is real mean.  She didn't give us any preserves or cake
. . .and even the bread was skurce."

"Davy, when you go visiting you must never criticize anything you
are given to eat," said Anne solemnly.  "It is very bad manners."

"All right. . .I'll only think it," said Davy cheerfully.
"Do give a fellow some supper, Anne."

Anne looked at Marilla, who followed her into the pantry and shut
the door cautiously.

"You can give him some jam on his bread, I know what tea at Levi
Boulter's is apt to be."

Davy took his slice of bread and jam with a sigh.

"It's a kind of disappointing world after all," he remarked.
"Milty has a cat that takes fits. . .she's took a fit regular
every day for three weeks.  Milty says it's awful fun to watch her.
I went down today on purpose to see her have one but the mean old
thing wouldn't take a fit and just kept healthy as healthy, though
Milty and me hung round all the afternoon and waited.  But never mind"
. . .Davy brightened up as the insidious comfort of the plum jam
stole into his soul. . ."maybe I'll see her in one sometime yet.
It doesn't seem likely she'd stop having them all at once when she's
been so in the habit of it, does it?  This jam is awful nice."

Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.

Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by
Monday everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story.  The
school buzzed with it and Davy came home, full of information.

"Marilla, Mr. Harrison has a new wife. . .well, not ezackly new,
but they've stopped being married for quite a spell, Milty says.
I always s'posed people had to keep on being married once they'd
begun, but Milty says no, there's ways of stopping if you can't agree.
Milty says one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that's
what Mr. Harrison did.  Milty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because
she throwed things at him. . .HARD things. . .and Arty Sloane says
it was because she wouldn't let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it
was 'cause she never let up scolding him.  I wouldn't leave MY
wife for anything like that.  I'd just put my foot down and say,
`Mrs. Davy, you've just got to do what'll please ME 'cause I'm a MAN.'
THAT'D settle her pretty quick I guess.  But Annetta Clay says SHE left
HIM because he wouldn't scrape his boots at the door and she doesn't
blame her.  I'm going right over to Mr. Harrison's this minute to see
what she's like."

Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down.

"Mrs. Harrison was away. . .she's gone to Carmody with Mrs. Rachel
Lynde to get new paper for the parlor.  And Mr. Harrison said to
tell Anne to go over and see him `cause he wants to have a talk
with her.  And say, the floor is scrubbed, and Mr. Harrison is
shaved, though there wasn't any preaching yesterday."

The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne.  The floor
was indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every
article of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she
could see her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window
panes sparkled in the sunlight.  By the table sat Mr. Harrison in
his working clothes, which on Friday had been noted for sundry
rents and tatters but which were now neatly patched and brushed.
He was sprucely shaved and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.

"Sit down, Anne, sit down," said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two
degrees removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals.
"Emily's gone over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde. . .she's struck
up a lifelong friendship already with Rachel Lynde.  Beats all how
contrary women are.  Well, Anne, my easy times are over. . .all over.
It's neatness and tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life,
I suppose."

Mr. Harrison did his best to speak dolefully, but an irrepressible
twinkle in his eye betrayed him.

"Mr. Harrison, you are glad your wife is come back," cried Anne,
shaking her finger at him.  "You needn't pretend you're not,
because I can see it plainly."

Mr. Harrison relaxed into a sheepish smile.

"Well. . .well. . .I'm getting used to it," he conceded.  "I can't
say I was sorry to see Emily.  A man really needs some protection
in a community like this, where he can't play a game of checkers
with a neighbor without being accused of wanting to marry that
neighbor's sister and having it put in the paper."

"Nobody would have supposed you went to see Isabella Andrews if you
hadn't pretended to be unmarried," said Anne severely.

"I didn't pretend I was.  If anybody'd have asked me if I was
married I'd have said I was.  But they just took it for granted.
I wasn't anxious to talk about the matter. . .I was feeling too
sore over it.  It would have been nuts for Mrs. Rachel Lynde if
she had known my wife had left me, wouldn't it now?"

"But some people say that you left her."

"She started it, Anne, she started it.  I'm going to tell you
the whole story, for I don't want you to think worse of me than I
deserve. . .nor of Emily neither.  But let's go out on the veranda.
Everything is so fearful neat in here that it kind of makes me homesick.
I suppose I'll get used to it after awhile but it eases me up to look
at the yard.  Emily hasn't had time to tidy it up yet."

As soon as they were comfortably seated on the veranda Mr. Harrison
began his tale of woe.

"I lived in Scottsford, New Brunswick, before I came here, Anne.
My sister kept house for me and she suited me fine; she was just
reasonably tidy and she let me alone and spoiled me. . .so Emily says.
But three years ago she died.  Before she died she worried a lot about
what was to become of me and finally she got me to promise I'd get married.
She advised me to take Emily Scott because Emily had money of her own and was
a pattern housekeeper.  I said, says I, `Emily Scott wouldn't look at me.'
`You ask her and see,' says my sister; and just to ease her mind I promised
her I would. . .and I did.  And Emily said she'd have me.  Never was so
surprised in my life, Anne. . .a smart pretty little woman like her and
an old fellow like me.  I tell you I thought at first I was in luck.
Well, we were married and took a little wedding trip to St. John for
a fortnight and then we went home.  We got home at ten o'clock at night,
and I give you my word, Anne, that in half an hour that woman was at
work housecleaning.  Oh, I know you're thinking my house needed it. . .
you've got a very expressive face, Anne; your thoughts just come out
on it like print. . .but it didn't, not that bad.  It had got pretty
mixed up while I was keeping bachelor's hall, I admit, but I'd got a
woman to come in and clean it up before I was married and there'd
been considerable painting and fixing done.  I tell you if you
took Emily into a brand new white marble palace she'd be into the
scrubbing as soon as she could get an old dress on.  Well, she
cleaned house till one o'clock that night and at four she was up
and at it again.  And she kept on that way. . .far's I could see
she never stopped.  It was scour and sweep and dust everlasting,
except on Sundays, and then she was just longing for Monday to
begin again.  But it was her way of amusing herself and I could
have reconciled myself to it if she'd left me alone.  But that she
wouldn't do.  She'd set out to make me over but she hadn't caught
me young enough.  I wasn't allowed to come into the house unless I
changed my boots for slippers at the door.  I darsn't smoke a pipe
for my life unless I went to the barn.  And I didn't use good
enough grammar.  Emily'd been a schoolteacher in her early life and
she'd never got over it.  Then she hated to see me eating with my
knife.  Well, there it was, pick and nag everlasting.  But I
s'pose, Anne, to be fair, _I_ was cantankerous too.  I didn't
try to improve as I might have done. . .I just got cranky and
disagreeable when she found fault.  I told her one day she hadn't
complained of my grammar when I proposed to her.  It wasn't an
overly tactful thing to say.  A woman would forgive a man for
beating her sooner than for hinting she was too much pleased to
get him.  Well, we bickered along like that and it wasn't exactly
pleasant, but we might have got used to each other after a spell if
it hadn't been for Ginger.  Ginger was the rock we split on at
last.  Emily didn't like parrots and she couldn't stand Ginger's
profane habits of speech.  I was attached to the bird for my
brother the sailor's sake.  My brother the sailor was a pet of
mine when we were little tads and he'd sent Ginger to me when he
was dying.  I didn't see any sense in getting worked up over his
swearing.  There's nothing I hate worse'n profanity in a human
being, but in a parrot, that's just repeating what it's heard with
no more understanding of it than I'd have of Chinese, allowances
might be made.  But Emily couldn't see it that way.  Women ain't
logical.  She tried to break Ginger of swearing but she hadn't any
better success than she had in trying to make me stop saying `I
seen' and `them things.'  Seemed as if the more she tried the worse
Ginger got, same as me.

"Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier, till
the CLIMAX came.  Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea,
and another minister and HIS wife that was visiting them.  I'd
promised to put Ginger away in some safe place where nobody would
hear him. . .Emily wouldn't touch his cage with a ten-foot pole
. . . and I meant to do it, for I didn't want the ministers to hear
anything unpleasant in my house.  But it slipped my mind. . .Emily
was worrying me so much about clean collars and grammar that it
wasn't any wonder. . .and I never thought of that poor parrot till
we sat down to tea.  Just as minister number one was in the very
middle of saying grace, Ginger, who was on the veranda outside the
dining room window, lifted up HIS voice.  The gobbler had come
into view in the yard and the sight of a gobbler always had an
unwholesome effect on Ginger.  He surpassed himself that time.
You can smile, Anne, and I don't deny I've chuckled some over it
since myself, but at the time I felt almost as much mortified as Emily.
I went out and carried Ginger to the barn.  I can't say I enjoyed
the meal.  I knew by the look of Emily that there was trouble
brewing for Ginger and James A.  When the folks went away I
started for the cow pasture and on the way I did some thinking.
I felt sorry for Emily and kind of fancied I hadn't been so thoughtful
of her as I might; and besides, I wondered if the ministers would
think that Ginger had learned his vocabulary from me.  The long and
short of it was, I decided that Ginger would have to be mercifully
disposed of and when I'd druv the cows home I went in to tell Emily so.
But there was no Emily and there was a letter on the table. . .just
according to the rule in story books.  Emily writ that I'd have to
choose between her and Ginger; she'd gone back to her own house and
there she would stay till I went and told her I'd got rid of that parrot.

"I was all riled up, Anne, and I said she might stay till doomsday if
she waited for that; and I stuck to it.  I packed up her belongings
and sent them after her.  It made an awful lot of talk . . .Scottsford
was pretty near as bad as Avonlea for gossip. . .and everybody
sympathized with Emily.  It kept me all cross and cantankerous
and I saw I'd have to get out or I'd never have any peace.
I concluded I'd come to the Island.  I'd been here when I was
a boy and I liked it; but Emily had always said she wouldn't
live in a place where folks were scared to walk out after dark for
fear they'd fall off the edge.  So, just to be contrary, I moved
over here.  And that's all there is to it.  I hadn't ever heard a
word from or about Emily till I come home from the back field
Saturday and found her scrubbing the floor but with the first
decent dinner I'd had since she left me all ready on the table.
She told me to eat it first and then we'd talk. . .by which I
concluded that Emily had learned some lessons about getting along
with a man.  So she's here and she's going to stay. . .seeing that
Ginger's dead and the Island's some bigger than she thought.
There's Mrs. Lynde and her now.  No, don't go, Anne.  Stay and get
acquainted with Emily.  She took quite a notion to you Saturday. . .
wanted to know who that handsome redhaired girl was at the next house."

Mrs. Harrison welcomed Anne radiantly and insisted on her staying to tea.

"James A.  has been telling me all about you and how kind you've been,
making cakes and things for him," she said.  "I want to get acquainted
with all my new neighbors just as soon as possible.  Mrs. Lynde is a
lovely woman, isn't she?  So friendly."

When Anne went home in the sweet June dusk, Mrs. Harrison went with her
across the fields where the fireflies were lighting their starry lamps.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Harrison confidentially, "that James A. has told
you our story?"

"Yes."

"Then I needn't tell it, for James A. is a just man and he would
tell the truth.  The blame was far from being all on his side.
I can see that now.  I wasn't back in my own house an hour before I
wished I hadn't been so hasty but I wouldn't give in.  I see now that
I expected too much of a man.  And I was real foolish to mind his
bad grammar.  It doesn't matter if a man does use bad grammar so
long as he is a good provider and doesn't go poking round the pantry
to see how much sugar you've used in a week.  I feel that James A.
and I are going to be real happy now.  I wish I knew who `Observer'
is, so that I could thank him.  I owe him a real debt of gratitude."

Anne kept her own counsel and Mrs. Harrison never knew that her
gratitude found its way to its object.  Anne felt rather bewildered
over the far-reaching consequences of those foolish "notes."  They
had reconciled a man to his wife and made the reputation of a prophet.

Mrs. Lynde was in the Green Gables kitchen.  She had been telling
the whole story to Marilla.

"Well, and how do you like Mrs. Harrison?" she asked Anne.

"Very much.  I think she's a real nice little woman."

"That's exactly what she is," said Mrs. Rachel with emphasis,
"and as I've just been sayin' to Marilla, I think we ought all
to overlook Mr. Harrison's peculiarities for her sake and try to
make her feel at home here, that's what.  Well, I must get back.
Thomas'll be wearying for me.  I get out a little since Eliza came
and he's seemed a lot better these past few days, but I never like
to be long away from him.  I hear Gilbert Blythe has resigned from
White Sands.  He'll be off to college in the fall, I suppose."

Mrs. Rachel looked sharply at Anne, but Anne was bending over a sleepy
Davy nodding on the sofa and nothing was to be read in her face.
She carried Davy away, her oval girlish cheek pressed against his
curly yellow head.  As they went up the stairs Davy flung a tired
arm about Anne's neck and gave her a warm hug and a sticky kiss.

"You're awful nice, Anne.  Milty Boulter wrote on his slate today
and showed it to Jennie Sloane,

    "`Roses red and vi'lets blue,
    Sugar's sweet, and so are you"

and that 'spresses my feelings for you ezackly, Anne."




                               XXVI

                         Around the Bend


Thomas Lynde faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he
had lived it.  His wife was a tender, patient, unwearied nurse.
Sometimes Rachel had been a little hard on her Thomas in health,
when his slowness or meekness had provoked her; but when he became
ill no voice could be lower, no hand more gently skillful, no vigil
more uncomplaining.

"You've been a good wife to me, Rachel," he once said simply, when
she was sitting by him in the dusk, holding his thin, blanched old
hand in her work-hardened one.  "A good wife.  I'm sorry I ain't
leaving you better off; but the children will look after you.
They're all smart, capable children, just like their mother.
A good mother. . .a good woman. . . ."

He had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white
dawn was creeping up over the pointed firs in the hollow, Marilla
went softly into the east gable and wakened Anne.

"Anne, Thomas Lynde is gone. . .their hired boy just brought the word.
I'm going right down to Rachel."

On the day after Thomas Lynde's funeral Marilla went about Green Gables
with a strangely preoccupied air.  Occasionally she looked at Anne,
seemed on the point of saying something, then shook her head and
buttoned up her mouth.  After tea she went down to see Mrs. Rachel;
and when she returned she went to the east gable, where Anne was
correcting school exercises.

"How is Mrs. Lynde tonight?" asked the latter.

"She's feeling calmer and more composed," answered Marilla, sitting
down on Anne's bed. . .a proceeding which betokened some unusual
mental excitement, for in Marilla's code of household ethics to
sit on a bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offense.
"But she's very lonely.  Eliza had to go home today. . .her son
isn't well and she felt she couldn't stay any longer."

"When I've finished these exercises I'll run down and chat awhile
with Mrs. Lynde," said Anne.  "I had intended to study some Latin
composition tonight but it can wait."

"I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall," said
Marilla jerkily.  "How would you like to go too, Anne?"

Anne looked up in astonishment.

"I would like it, of course, Marilla.  But it isn't possible."

"I guess it can be made possible.  I've always felt that you should go.
I've never felt easy to think you were giving it all up on my account."

"But Marilla, I've never been sorry for a moment that I stayed home.
I've been so happy. . .Oh, these past two years have just been delightful."

"Oh, yes, I know you've been contented enough.  But that isn't the
question exactly.  You ought to go on with your education.  You've
saved enough to put you through one year at Redmond and the money the
stock brought in will do for another year. . .and there's scholarships
and things you might win."

"Yes, but I can't go, Marilla.  Your eyes are better, of course;
but I can't leave you alone with the twins.  They need so much
looking after."

"I won't be alone with them.  That's what I meant to discuss with you.
I had a long talk with Rachel tonight.  Anne, she's feeling dreadful
bad over a good many things.  She's not left very well off.  It seems
they mortgaged the farm eight years ago to give the youngest boy a
start when he went west; and they've never been able to pay much more
than the interest since.  And then of course Thomas' illness has cost
a good deal, one way or another.  The farm will have to be sold and Rachel
thinks there'll be hardly anything left after the bills are settled.
She says she'll have to go and live with Eliza and it's breaking her
heart to think of leaving Avonlea.  A woman of her age doesn't make
new friends and interests easy.  And, Anne, as she talked about it
the thought came to me that I would ask her to come and live with me,
but I thought I ought to talk it over with you first before I said
anything to her.  If I had Rachel living with me you could go to college.
How do you feel about it?"

"I feel. . .as if. . .somebody. . .had handed me. . .the moon. . .and I
didn't know. . .exactly. . .what to do. . .with it," said Anne dazedly.
"But as for asking Mrs. Lynde to come here, that is for you to decide,
Marilla.  Do you think. . .are you sure. . .you would like it?  Mrs. Lynde
is a good woman and a kind neighbor, but. . .but. . ."

"But she's got her faults, you mean to say?  Well, she has, of course;
but I think I'd rather put up with far worse faults than see Rachel
go away from Avonlea.  I'd miss her terrible.  She's the only close
friend I've got here and I'd be lost without her.  We've been neighbors
for forty-five years and we've never had a quarrel. . .though we came
rather near it that time you flew at Mrs. Rachel for calling you homely
and redhaired.  Do you remember, Anne?"

"I should think I do," said Anne ruefully.  "People don't forget
things like that.  How I hated poor Mrs. Rachel at that moment!"

"And then that `apology' you made her.  Well, you were a handful,
in all conscience, Anne.  I did feel so puzzled and bewildered how
to manage you.  Matthew understood you better."

"Matthew understood everything," said Anne softly, as she always
spoke of him.

"Well, I think it could be managed so that Rachel and I wouldn't
clash at all.  It always seemed to me that the reason two women
can't get along in one house is that they try to share the same
kitchen and get in each other's way.  Now, if Rachel came here,
she could have the north gable for her bedroom and the spare room
for a kitchen as well as not, for we don't really need a spare room
at all.  She could put her stove there and what furniture she wanted
to keep, and be real comfortable and independent.  She'll have enough
to live on of course...her children'll see to that...so all I'd be
giving her would be house room.  Yes, Anne, far as I'm concerned
I'd like it."

"Then ask her," said Anne promptly.  "I'd be very sorry myself to
see Mrs. Rachel go away."

"And if she comes," continued Marilla, "You can go to college as well
as not.  She'll be company for me and she'll do for the twins what I
can't do, so there's no reason in the world why you shouldn't go."

Anne had a long meditation at her window that night.  Joy and regret
struggled together in her heart.  She had come at last. . .suddenly
and unexpectedly. . .to the bend in the road; and college was around it,
with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized as well that
when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet things behind. . .
all the little simple duties and interests which had grown so dear to her
in the last two years and which she had glorified into beauty and delight
by the enthusiasm she had put into them.  She must give up her school. . .
and she loved every one of her pupils, even the stupid and naughty ones.
The mere thought of Paul Irving made her wonder if Redmond were such a
name to conjure with after all.

"I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon,
"and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal.  But it's best
to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't.
I must get out all my ambitions and dust them."

Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after
a heart to heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer
of a home at Green Gables.  She elected to remain in her own house
for the summer, however; the farm was not to be sold until the fall
and there were many arrangements to be made.

"I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green Gables,"
sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself.  "But really, Green Gables doesn't seem as
out of the world as it used to do. . .Anne has lots of company and the
twins make it real lively.  And anyhow, I'd rather live at the bottom
of a well than leave Avonlea."

These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival
of Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip.  Sage heads were shaken over
Marilla Cuthbert's rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her.
People opined that they wouldn't get on together.  They were both
"too fond of their own way," and many doleful predictions were made,
none of which disturbed the parties in question at all.  They had
come to a clear and distinct understanding of the respective duties
and rights of their new arrangements and meant to abide by them.

"I won't meddle with you nor you with me," Mrs. Rachel had said decidedly,
"and as for the twins, I'll be glad to do all I can for them; but I won't
undertake to answer Davy's questions, that's what.  I'm not an encyclopedia,
neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer.  You'll miss Anne for that."

"Sometimes Anne's answers were about as queer as Davy's questions,"
said Marilla drily.  "The twins will miss her and no mistake; but
her future can't be sacrificed to Davy's thirst for information.
When he asks questions I can't answer I'll just tell him children
should be seen and not heard.  That was how I was brought up,
and I don't know but what it was just as good a way as all these
new-fangled notions for training children."

"Well, Anne's methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,"
said Mrs. Lynde smilingly.  "He is a reformed character, that's what."

"He isn't a bad little soul," conceded Marilla.  "I never expected to get
as fond of those children as I have.  Davy gets round you somehow . . .and
Dora is a lovely child, although she is. . .kind of. . .well, kind of. . ."

"Monotonous?  Exactly," supplied Mrs. Rachel.  "Like a book where every
page is the same, that's what.  Dora will make a good, reliable woman but
she'll never set the pond on fire.  Well, that sort of folks are comfortable
to have round, even if they're not as interesting as the other kind."

Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of
Anne's resignation brought unmixed pleasure.  Her pupils looked
upon it as a sheer catastrophe.  Annetta Bell had hysterics when
she went home.  Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked
battles with other boys by way of relieving his feelings.  Barbara
Shaw cried all night.  Paul Irving defiantly told his grandmother
that she needn't expect him to eat any porridge for a week.

"I can't do it, Grandma," he said.  "I don't really know if I can
eat ANYTHING.  I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat.
I'd have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn't been
watching me.  I believe I will cry after I go to bed.  It wouldn't
show on my eyes tomorrow, would it?  And it would be such a relief.
But anyway, I can't eat porridge.  I'm going to need all my strength
of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left
to grapple with porridge.  Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when
my beautiful teacher goes away.  Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews
will get the school.  I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice.  But I know
she won't understand things like Miss Shirley."

Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.

"It will be horribly lonesome here next winter," she mourned, one twilight
when the moonlight was raining "airy silver" through the cherry boughs
and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like radiance in which
the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker by the window,
Diana sitting Turkfashion on the bed.  "You and Gilbert will be gone
. . .and the Allans too.  They are going to call Mr. Allan to
Charlottetown and of course he'll accept.  It's too mean.  We'll
be vacant all winter, I suppose, and have to listen to a long
string of candidates. . .and half of them won't be any good."

"I hope they won't call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,"
said Anne decidedly.  "He wants the call but he does preach such
gloomy sermons.  Mr. Bell says he's a minister of the old school,
but Mrs. Lynde says there's nothing whatever the matter with him
but indigestion.  His wife isn't a very good cook, it seems, and
Mrs. Lynde says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks
out of three his theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere.
Mrs. Allan feels very badly about going away.  She says everybody
has been so kind to her since she came here as a bride that she
feels as if she were leaving lifelong friends.  And then, there's
the baby's grave, you know.  She says she doesn't see how she can
go away and leave that. . .it was such a little mite of a thing
and only three months old, and she says she is afraid it will miss
its mother, although she knows better and wouldn't say so to Mr. Allan
for anything.  She says she has slipped through the birch grove back
of the manse nearly every night to the graveyard and sung a little
lullaby to it.  She told me all about it last evening when I was
up putting some of those early wild roses on Matthew's grave.
I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I would put flowers
on the baby's grave and when I was away I felt sure that. . ."

"That I would do it," supplied Diana heartily.  "Of course I will.
And I'll put them on Matthew's grave too, for your sake, Anne."

"Oh, thank you.  I meant to ask you to if you would.  And on little
Hester Gray's too?  Please don't forget hers.  Do you know, I've
thought and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has
become strangely real to me.  I think of her, back there in her
little garden in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy
that if I could steal back there some spring evening, just at the
magic time 'twixt light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech
hill that my footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the
garden just as it used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early
roses, with the tiny house beyond it all hung with vines; and
little Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes, and the wind
ruffling her dark hair, wandering about, putting her fingertips
under the chins of the lilies and whispering secrets with the roses;
and I would go forward, oh, so softly, and hold out my hands and
say to her, `Little Hester Gray, won't you let me be your playmate,
for I love the roses too?'  And we would sit down on the old bench
and talk a little and dream a little, or just be beautifully silent
together.  And then the moon would rise and I would look around me
. . .and there would be no Hester Gray and no little vine-hung house,
and no roses. . .only an old waste garden starred with June lilies amid the
grasses, and the wind sighing, oh, so sorrowfully in the cherry trees.  And
I would not know whether it had been real or if I had just imagined it all."
Diana crawled up and got her back against the headboard of the bed.
When your companion of twilight hour said such spooky things it was
just as well not to be able to fancy there was anything behind you.

"I'm afraid the Improvement Society will go down when you and
Gilbert are both gone," she remarked dolefully.

"Not a bit of fear of it," said Anne briskly, coming back from
dreamland to the affairs of practical life.  "It is too firmly
established for that, especially since the older people are
becoming so enthusiastic about it.  Look what they are doing this
summer for their lawns and lanes.  Besides, I'll be watching for
hints at Redmond and I'll write a paper for it next winter and
send it over.  Don't take such a gloomy view of things, Diana.
And don't grudge me my little hour of gladness and jubilation now.
Later on, when I have to go away, I'll feel anything but glad."

"It's all right for you to be glad. . .you're going to college and
you'll have a jolly time and make heaps of lovely new friends."

"I hope I shall make new friends," said Anne thoughtfully.
"The possibilities of making new friends help to make life very
fascinating.  But no matter how many friends I make they'll never
be as dear to me as the old ones. . .especially a certain girl
with black eyes and dimples.  Can you guess who she is, Diana?"

"But there'll be so many clever girls at Redmond," sighed Diana,
"and I'm only a stupid little country girl who says `I seen'
sometimes. . .though I really know better when I stop to think.
Well, of course these past two years have really been too pleasant
to last.  I know SOMEBODY who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow.
Anne, I'm going to ask you a question. . .a serious question.  Don't be
vexed and do answer seriously.  Do you care anything for Gilbert?"

"Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean," said Anne
calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.

Diana sighed.  She wished, somehow, that Anne had answered differently.

"Don't you mean EVER to be married, Anne?"

"Perhaps. . .some day. . .when I meet the right one," said Anne,
smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.

"But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?" persisted Diana.

"Oh, I should know him. . .SOMETHING would tell me.  You know what my
ideal is, Diana."

"But people's ideals change sometimes."

"Mine won't.  And I COULDN'T care for any man who didn't fulfill it."

"What if you never meet him?"

"Then I shall die an old maid," was the cheerful response.  "I daresay
it isn't the hardest death by any means."

"Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it's the living an
old maid I shouldn't like," said Diana, with no intention of being
humorous.  "Although I wouldn't mind being an old maid VERY much if
I could be one like Miss Lavendar.  But I never could be.  When I'm
forty-five I'll be horribly fat.  And while there might be some
romance about a thin old maid there couldn't possibly be any about
a fat one.  Oh, mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis
three weeks ago.  Ruby told me all about it.  She says she never
had any intention of taking him, because any one who married him
will have to go in with the old folks; but Ruby says that he made
such a perfectly beautiful and romantic proposal that it simply
swept her off her feet.  But she didn't want to do anything rash so
she asked for a week to consider; and two days later she was at a
meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother's and there was a book
called `The Complete Guide to Etiquette,' lying on the parlor
table.  Ruby said she simply couldn't describe her feelings when in
a section of it headed, `The Deportment of Courtship and Marriage,'
she found the very proposal Nelson had made, word for word.  She
went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal; and she says
his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for
fear he'll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they needn't
be afraid; for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told
how a rejected lover should behave and there's nothing about
drowning in THAT.  And she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining
away for her but she's perfectly helpless in the matter."

Anne made an impatient movement.

"I hate to say it. . .it seems so disloyal. . .but, well, I don't
like Ruby Gillis now.  I liked her when we went to school and
Queen's together. . .though not so well as you and Jane of course.
But this last year at Carmody she seems so different. . .so. . .so. . ."

"I know," nodded Diana.  "It's the Gillis coming out in her. . .
she can't help it.  Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl
thought about anything but the boys she never showed it in her
walk and conversation.  She talks about nothing but boys and what
compliments they pay her, and how crazy they all are about her at
Carmody.  And the strange thing is, they ARE, too. . ."  Diana
admitted this somewhat resentfully.  "Last night when I saw her in
Mr. Blair's store she whispered to me that she'd just made a new `mash.'
I wouldn't ask her who it was, because I knew she was dying to BE asked.
Well, it's what Ruby always wanted, I suppose.  You remember even when
she was little she always said she meant to have dozens of beaus when she
grew up and have the very gayest time she could before she settled down.
She's so different from Jane, isn't she?  Jane is such a nice, sensible,
lady-like girl."

"Dear old Jane is a jewel," agreed Anne, "but," she added, leaning
forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimpled little hand
hanging over her pillow, "there's nobody like my own Diana after all.
Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and `swore'
eternal friendship in your garden?  We've kept that `oath,' I
think. . .we've never had a quarrel nor even a coolness.  I shall
never forget the thrill that went over me the day you told me you
loved me.  I had had such a lonely, starved heart all through my
childhood.  I'm just beginning to realize how starved and lonely it
really was.  Nobody cared anything for me or wanted to be bothered
with me.  I should have been miserable if it hadn't been for that
strange little dream-life of mine, wherein I imagined all the
friends and love I craved.  But when I came to Green Gables
everything was changed.  And then I met you.  You don't know what
your friendship meant to me.  I want to thank you here and now,
dear, for the warm and true affection you've always given me."

"And always, always will," sobbed Diana.  "I shall NEVER love anybody
. . .any GIRL. . .half as well as I love you.  And if I ever do marry
and have a little girl of my own I'm going to name her ANNE."




                                XXVII

                   An Afternoon at the Stone House


"Where are you going, all dressed up, Anne?" Davy wanted to know.
"You look bully in that dress."

 Anne had come down to dinner in a new dress of pale green muslin
. . .the first color she had worn since Matthew's death.  It became
her perfectly, bringing out all the delicate, flower-like tints of
her face and the gloss and burnish of her hair.

"Davy, how many times have I told you that you mustn't use that word,"
she rebuked.  "I'm going to Echo Lodge."

"Take me with you," entreated Davy.

"I would if I were driving.  But I'm going to walk and it's too far
for your eight-year-old legs.  Besides, Paul is going with me and I
fear you don't enjoy yourself in his company."

"Oh, I like Paul lots better'n I did," said Davy, beginning to make
fearful inroads into his pudding.  "Since I've got pretty good
myself I don't mind his being gooder so much.  If I can keep
on I'll catch up with him some day, both in legs and goodness.
'Sides, Paul's real nice to us second primer boys in school.
He won't let the other big boys meddle with us and he shows us
lots of games."

"How came Paul to fall into the brook at noon hour yesterday?"
asked Anne.  "I met him on the playground, such a dripping figure
that I sent him promptly home for clothes without waiting to find
out what had happened."

"Well, it was partly a zacksident," explained Davy.  "He stuck
his head in on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally.
We was all down at the brook and Prillie Rogerson got mad at Paul
about something. . .she's awful mean and horrid anyway, if she IS
pretty. . .and said that his grandmother put his hair up in curl
rags every night.  Paul wouldn't have minded what she said, I guess,
but Gracie Andrews laughed, and Paul got awful red, 'cause Gracie's
his girl, you know.  He's CLEAN GONE on her. . .brings her flowers
and carries her books as far as the shore road.  He got as red as
a beet and said his grandmother didn't do any such thing and his
hair was born curly.  And then he laid down on the bank and stuck
his head right into the spring to show them.  Oh, it wasn't the
spring we drink out of. . ."  seeing a horrified look on Marilla's
face. . ."it was the little one lower down.  But the bank's awful
slippy and Paul went right in.  I tell you he made a bully splash.
Oh, Anne, Anne, I didn't mean to say that. . .it just slipped out
before I thought.  He made a SPLENDID splash.  But he looked so
funny when he crawled out, all wet and muddy.  The girls laughed
more'n ever, but Gracie didn't laugh.  She looked sorry.  Gracie's
a nice girl but she's got a snub nose.  When I get big enough to
have a girl I won't have one with a snub nose. . .I'll pick one
with a pretty nose like yours, Anne."

"A boy who makes such a mess of syrup all over his face when he is eating
his pudding will never get a girl to look at him," said Marilla severely.

"But I'll wash my face before I go courting," protested Davy,
trying to improve matters by rubbing the back of his hand over the
smears.  "And I'll wash behind my ears too, without being told.
I remembered to this morning, Marilla.  I don't forget half as often
as I did.  But. . ."  and Davy sighed. . ."there's so many corners
about a fellow that it's awful hard to remember them all.  Well, if
I can't go to Miss Lavendar's I'll go over and see Mrs. Harrison.
Mrs. Harrison's an awful nice woman, I tell you.  She keeps a jar
of cookies in her pantry a-purpose for little boys, and she always
gives me the scrapings out of a pan she's mixed up a plum cake in.
A good many plums stick to the sides, you see.  Mr. Harrison was
always a nice man, but he's twice as nice since he got married over
again.  I guess getting married makes folks nicer.  Why don't YOU
get married, Marilla?  I want to know."

Marilla's state of single blessedness had never been a sore point
with her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks
with Anne, that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.

"But maybe you never asked anybody to have you," protested Davy.

"Oh, Davy," said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being spoken to,
"it's the MEN that have to do the asking."

"I don't know why they have to do it ALWAYS," grumbled Davy.
"Seems to me everything's put on the men in this world.
Can I have some more pudding, Marilla?"

"You've had as much as was good for you," said Marilla; but she
gave him a moderate second helping.

"I wish people could live on pudding.  Why can't they, Marilla?
I want to know."

"Because they'd soon get tired of it."

"I'd like to try that for myself," said skeptical Davy.  "But I
guess it's better to have pudding only on fish and company days
than none at all.  They never have any at Milty Boulter's.
Milty says when company comes his mother gives them cheese and cuts
it herself. . .one little bit apiece and one over for manners."

"If Milty Boulter talks like that about his mother at least you
needn't repeat it," said Marilla severely.

"Bless my soul,". . .Davy had picked this expression up from
Mr. Harrison and used it with great gusto. . ."Milty meant it
as a compelment.  He's awful proud of his mother, cause folks
say she could scratch a living on a rock."

"I. . .I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy bed again,"
said Marilla, rising and going out hurriedly.

The slandered hens were nowhere near the pansy bed and Marilla did
not even glance at it.  Instead, she sat down on the cellar hatch
and laughed until she was ashamed of herself.

When Anne and Paul reached the stone house that afternoon they
found Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth in the garden,
weeding, raking, clipping, and trimming as if for dear life.
Miss Lavendar herself, all gay and sweet in the frills and laces
she loved, dropped her shears and ran joyously to meet her guests,
while Charlotta the Fourth grinned cheerfully.

"Welcome, Anne.  I thought you'd come today.  You belong to the
afternoon so it brought you.  Things that belong together are sure
to come together.  What a lot of trouble that would save some
people if they only knew it.  But they don't. . .and so they waste
beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together
that DON'T belong.  And you, Paul. . .why, you've grown!  You're
half a head taller than when you were here before."

"Yes, I've begun to grow like pigweed in the night, as Mrs. Lynde says,"
said Paul, in frank delight over the fact.  "Grandma says it's the
porridge taking effect at last.  Perhaps it is.  Goodness knows. . ."
Paul sighed deeply. . ."I've eaten enough to make anyone grow.
I do hope, now that I've begun, I'll keep on till I'm as tall as father.
He is six feet, you know, Miss Lavendar."

Yes, Miss Lavendar did know; the flush on her pretty cheeks
deepened a little; she took Paul's hand on one side and Anne's
on the other and walked to the house in silence.

"Is it a good day for the echoes, Miss Lavendar?" queried Paul anxiously.
The day of his first visit had been too windy for echoes and Paul had
been much disappointed.

"Yes, just the best kind of a day," answered Miss Lavendar, rousing
herself from her reverie.  "But first we are all going to have
something to eat.  I know you two folks didn't walk all the way
back here through those beechwoods without getting hungry, and
Charlotta the Fourth and I can eat any hour of the day. . .we have
such obliging appetites.  So we'll just make a raid on the pantry.
Fortunately it's lovely and full.  I had a presentiment that I was
going to have company today and Charlotta the Fourth and I prepared."

"I think you are one of the people who always have nice things in
their pantry," declared Paul.  "Grandma's like that too.  But she
doesn't approve of snacks between meals.  I wonder," he added
meditatively, "if I OUGHT to eat them away from home when I know
she doesn't approve."

"Oh, I don't think she would disapprove after you have had a
long walk.  That makes a difference," said Miss Lavendar,
exchanging amused glances with Anne over Paul's brown curls.
"I suppose that snacks ARE extremely unwholesome.  That is why
we have them so often at Echo Lodge.  We. . .Charlotta the Fourth
and I. . .live in defiance of every known law of diet.  We eat all
sorts of indigestible things whenever we happen to think of it,
by day or night; and we flourish like green bay trees.  We are always
intending to reform.  When we read any article in a paper warning
us against something we like we cut it out and pin it up on the
kitchen wall so that we'll remember it.  But we never can somehow
. . .until after we've gone and eaten that very thing.  Nothing has
ever killed us yet; but Charlotta the Fourth has been known to have
bad dreams after we had eaten doughnuts and mince pie and fruit
cake before we went to bed."

"Grandma lets me have a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butter
before I go to bed; and on Sunday nights she puts jam on the bread,"
said Paul.  "So I'm always glad when it's Sunday night. . . for more
reasons than one.  Sunday is a very long day on the shore road.
Grandma says it's all too short for her and that father never found
Sundays tiresome when he was a little boy.  It wouldn't seem so long
if I could talk to my rock people but I never do that because Grandma
doesn't approve of it on Sundays.  I think a good deal; but I'm afraid
my thoughts are worldly.  Grandma says we should never think anything
but religious thoughts on Sundays.  But teacher here said once that
every really beautiful thought was religious, no matter what it was about,
or what day we thought it on.  But I feel sure Grandma thinks that sermons
and Sunday School lessons are the only things you can think truly
religious thoughts about.  And when it comes to a difference of opinion
between Grandma and teacher I don't know what to do.  In my heart". . .
Paul laid his hand on his breast and raised very serious blue eyes to
Miss Lavendar's immediately sympathetic face. . ."I agree with teacher.
But then, you see, Grandma has brought father up HER way and made a
brilliant success of him; and teacher has never brought anybody up yet,
though she's helping with Davy and Dora.  But you can't tell how they'll
turn out till they ARE grown up.  So sometimes I feel as if it might be
safer to go by Grandma's opinions."

"I think it would," agreed Anne solemnly.  "Anyway, I daresay that
if your Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean,
under our different ways of expressing it, we'd find out we both
meant much the same thing.  You'd better go by her way of expressing it,
since it's been the result of experience.  We'll have to wait until we see
how the twins do turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good."
After lunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the acquaintance
of the echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and Miss Lavendar sat
on the stone bench under the poplar and talked.

"So you are going away in the fall?" said Miss Lavendar wistfully.
"I ought to be glad for your sake, Anne. . .but I'm horribly,
selfishly sorry.  I shall miss you so much.  Oh, sometimes, I think
it is of no use to make friends.  They only go out of your life
after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness
before they came."

"That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say but never
Miss Lavendar," said Anne.  "NOTHING is worse than emptiness. . .and
I'm not going out of your life.  There are such things as letters and
vacations.  Dearest, I'm afraid you're looking a little pale and tired."

"Oh. . .hoo. . .hoo. . .hoo," went Paul on the dyke, where he had been
making noises diligently. . .not all of them melodious in the making,
but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver of sound
by the fairy alchemists over the river.  Miss Lavendar made an
impatient movement with her pretty hands.

"I'm just tired of everything. . .even of the echoes.  There is nothing
in my life but echoes. . .echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys.
They're beautiful and mocking.  Oh Anne, it's horrid of me to talk
like this when I have company.  It's just that I'm getting old and
it doesn't agree with me.  I know I'll be fearfully cranky by the
time I'm sixty.  But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills."
At this moment Charlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch,
returned, and announced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball's
pasture was red with early strawberries, and wouldn't Miss Shirley
like to go and pick some.

"Early strawberries for tea!" exclaimed Miss Lavendar.  "Oh, I'm
not so old as I thought. . .and I don't need a single blue pill!
Girls, when you come back with your strawberries we'll have tea out
here under the silver poplar.  I'll have it all ready for you with
home-grown cream."

Anne and Charlotta the Fourth accordingly betook themselves back to
Mr. Kimball's pasture, a green remote place where the air was as
soft as velvet and fragrant as a bed of violets and golden as amber.

"Oh, isn't it sweet and fresh back here?" breathed Anne.  "I just
feel as if I were drinking in the sunshine."

"Yes, ma'am, so do I.  That's just exactly how I feel too, ma'am,"
agreed Charlotta the Fourth, who would have said precisely the same
thing if Anne had remarked that she felt like a pelican of the
wilderness.  Always after Anne had visited Echo Lodge Charlotta the
Fourth mounted to her little room over the kitchen and tried before
her looking glass to speak and look and move like Anne.  Charlotta
could never flatter herself that she quite succeeded; but practice
makes perfect, as Charlotta had learned at school, and she fondly
hoped that in time she might catch the trick of that dainty uplift
of chin, that quick, starry outflashing of eyes, that fashion of
walking as if you were a bough swaying in the wind.  It seemed so
easy when you watched Anne.  Charlotta the Fourth admired Anne
wholeheartedly.  It was not that she thought her so very handsome.
Diana Barry's beauty of crimson cheek and black curls was much more
to Charlotta the Fourth's taste than Anne's moonshine charm of
luminous gray eyes and the pale, everchanging roses of her cheeks.

"But I'd rather look like you than be pretty," she told Anne sincerely.

Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute, and cast away the sting.
She was used to taking her compliments mixed.  Public opinion never
agreed on Anne's looks.  People who had heard her called handsome
met her and were disappointed.  People who had heard her called
plain saw her and wondered where other people's eyes were.  Anne
herself would never believe that she had any claim to beauty.
When she looked in the glass all she saw was a little pale face
with seven freckles on the nose thereof.  Her mirror never revealed
to her the elusive, ever-varying play of feeling that came and went
over her features like a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of
dream and laughter alternating in her big eyes.

While Anne was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the
word she possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of
appearance that left beholders with a pleasurable sense of
satisfaction in that softly rounded girlhood of hers, with all its
strongly felt potentialities.  Those who knew Anne best felt,
without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction
was the aura of possibility surrounding her. . .the power of
future development that was in her.  She seemed to walk in an
atmosphere of things about to happen.

As they picked, Charlotta the Fourth confided to Anne her fears
regarding Miss Lavendar.  The warm-hearted little handmaiden was
honestly worried over her adored mistress' condition.

"Miss Lavendar isn't well, Miss Shirley, ma'am.  I'm sure she isn't,
though she never complains.  She hasn't seemed like herself this
long while, ma'am. . .not since that day you and Paul were here
together before.  I feel sure she caught cold that night, ma'am.
After you and him had gone she went out and walked in the garden
for long after dark with nothing but a little shawl on her.
There was a lot of snow on the walks and I feel sure she got a
chill, ma'am.  Ever since then I've noticed her acting tired and
lonesome like.  She don't seem to take an interest in anything, ma'am.
She never pretends company's coming, nor fixes up for it, nor nothing,
ma'am.  It's only when you come she seems to chirk up a bit.  And the
worst sign of all, Miss Shirley, ma'am. . ."  Charlotta the Fourth
lowered her voice as if she were about to tell some exceedingly
weird and awful symptom indeed. . ."is that she never gets cross
now when I breaks things.  Why, Miss Shirley, ma'am, yesterday I
bruk her green and yaller bowl that's always stood on the bookcase.
Her grandmother brought it out from England and Miss Lavendar was
awful choice of it.  I was dusting it just as careful, Miss Shirley,
ma'am, and it slipped out, so fashion, afore I could grab holt of it,
and bruk into about forty millyun pieces.  I tell you I was sorry
and scared.  I thought Miss Lavendar would scold me awful, ma'am;
and I'd ruther she had than take it the way she did.  She just
come in and hardly looked at it and said, `It's no matter, Charlotta.
Take up the pieces and throw them away.' Just like that, Miss Shirley,
ma'am. . .`take up the pieces and throw them away,' as if it wasn't
her grandmother's bowl from England.  Oh, she isn't well and I feel
awful bad about it.  She's got nobody to look after her but me."

Charlotta the Fourth's eyes brimmed up with tears.  Anne patted the
little brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically.

"I think Miss Lavendar needs a change, Charlotta.  She stays here
alone too much.  Can't we induce her to go away for a little trip?"

Charlotta shook her head, with its rampant bows, disconsolately.

"I don't think so, Miss Shirley, ma'am.  Miss Lavendar hates visiting.
She's only got three relations she ever visits and she says she
just goes to see them as a family duty.  Last time when she come
home she said she wasn't going to visit for family duty no more.
`I've come home in love with loneliness, Charlotta,' she says to me,
`and I never want to stray from my own vine and fig tree again.
My relations try so hard to make an old lady of me and it has
a bad effect on me.'  Just like that, Miss Shirley, ma'am.
'It has a very bad effect on me.'  So I don't think it would
do any good to coax her to go visiting."

"We must see what can be done," said Anne decidedly, as she put
the last possible berry in her pink cup.  "Just as soon as I have
my vacation I'll come through and spend a whole week with you.
We'll have a picnic every day and pretend all sorts of interesting
things, and see if we can't cheer Miss Lavendar up."

"That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma'am," exclaimed Charlotta
the Fourth in rapture.  She was glad for Miss Lavendar's sake and for
her own too.  With a whole week in which to study Anne constantly
she would surely be able to learn how to move and behave like her.

When the girls got back to Echo Lodge they found that Miss Lavendar
and Paul had carried the little square table out of the kitchen to
the garden and had everything ready for tea.  Nothing ever tasted
so delicious as those strawberries and cream, eaten under a great
blue sky all curdled over with fluffy little white clouds, and in
the long shadows of the wood with its lispings and its murmurings.
After tea Anne helped Charlotta wash the dishes in the kitchen,
while Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench with Paul and heard
all about his rock people.  She was a good listener, this sweet
Miss Lavendar, but just at the last it struck Paul that she had
suddenly lost interest in the Twin Sailors.

"Miss Lavendar, why do you look at me like that?" he asked gravely.

"How do I look, Paul?"

"Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mind of,"
said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight that it
wasn't quite safe to have secrets when he was about.

"You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago," said Miss Lavendar
dreamily.

"When you were young?"

"Yes, when I was young.  Do I seem very old to you, Paul?"

"Do you know, I can't make up my mind about that," said Paul
confidentially.  "Your hair looks old. . .I never knew a young
person with white hair.  But your eyes are as young as my beautiful
teacher's when you laugh.  I tell you what, Miss Lavendar". . .
Paul's voice and face were as solemn as a judge's. . ."I think you
would make a splendid mother.  You have just the right look in
your eyes. . . the look my little mother always had.  I think
it's a pity you haven't any boys of your own."

"I have a little dream boy, Paul."

"Oh, have you really?  How old is he?"

"About your age I think.  He ought to be older because I dreamed
him long before you were born.  But I'll never let him get any
older than eleven or twelve; because if I did some day he might
grow up altogether and then I'd lose him."

"I know," nodded Paul.  "That's the beauty of dream-people. . .they
stay any age you want them.  You and my beautiful teacher and me
myself are the only folks in the world that I know of that have
dream-people.  Isn't it funny and nice we should all know each
other?  But I guess that kind of people always find each other out.
Grandma never has dream-people and Mary Joe thinks I'm wrong in the
upper story because I have them.  But I think it's splendid to have them.
YOU know, Miss Lavendar.  Tell me all about your little dream-boy."

"He has blue eyes and curly hair.  He steals in and wakens me with
a kiss every morning.  Then all day he plays here in the garden. . .
and I play with him.  Such games as we have.  We run races and talk
with the echoes; and I tell him stories.  And when twilight comes. . ."

"I know," interrupted Paul eagerly.  "He comes and sits beside you. . .
SO. . .because of course at twelve he'd be too big to climb into your lap
. . .and lays his head on your shoulder. . .SO. . .and you put your arms
about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your cheek on his head. . .
yes, that's the very way.  Oh, you DO know, Miss Lavendar."

Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house,
and something in Miss Lavendar's face made her hate to disturb them.

"I'm afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark.
Miss Lavendar, I'm going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole
week pretty soon."

"If you come for a week I'll keep you for two," threatened Miss Lavendar.




                             XXVIII

        The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace


The last day of school came and went.  A triumphant
"semi-annual examination" was held and Anne's pupils
acquitted themselves splendidly.  At the close they gave
her an address and a writing desk.  All the girls and ladies
present cried, and some of the boys had it cast up to them
later on that they cried too, although they always denied it.

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell
walked home together and talked things over.

"I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem
so much attached to her," sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit
of sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way.
"To be sure," she added hastily, "we all know we'll have a good
teacher next year too."

"Jane will do her duty, I've no doubt," said Mrs. Andrews rather stiffly.
"I don't suppose she'll tell the children quite so many fairy tales or
spend so much time roaming about the woods with them.  But she has her
name on the Inspector's Roll of Honor and the Newbridge people are in
a terrible state over her leaving."

"I'm real glad Anne is going to college," said Mrs. Bell.
"She has always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her."

"Well, I don't know."  Mrs. Andrews was determined not to agree fully
with anybody that day.  "I don't see that Anne needs any more education.
She'll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his infatuation for her
lasts till he gets through college, and what good will Latin and Greek
do her then?  If they taught you at college how to manage a man there
might be some sense in her going."

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never
learned how to manage her "man," and as a result the Andrews
household was not exactly a model of domestic happiness.

"I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the
Presbytery," said Mrs. Bell.  "That means we'll be losing him soon,
I suppose."

"They're not going before September," said Mrs. Sloane.  "It will
be a great loss to the community. . .though I always did think
that Mrs. Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister's wife.
But we are none of us perfect.  Did you notice how neat and snug
Mr. Harrison looked today?  I never saw such a changed man.  He goes
to church every Sunday and has subscribed to the salary."

"Hasn't that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?" said Mrs. Andrews.
"He was such a mite for his age when he came here.  I declare I
hardly knew him today.  He's getting to look a lot like his father."

"He's a smart boy," said Mrs. Bell.

"He's smart enough, but". . .Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice. . ."I
believe he tells queer stories.  Gracie came home from school one
day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about
people who lived down at the shore. . .stories there couldn't be a
word of truth in, you know.  I told Gracie not to believe them,
and she said Paul didn't intend her to.  But if he didn't what did
he tell them to her for?"

"Anne says Paul is a genius," said Mrs. Sloane.

"He may be.  You never know what to expect of them Americans,"
said Mrs. Andrews.  Mrs. Andrews' only acquaintance with the word
"genius" was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any
eccentric individual "a queer genius."  She probably thought,
with Mary Joe, that it meant a person with something wrong
in his upper story.

Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she
had sat on the first day of school two years before, her face
leaning on her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the
window to the Lake of Shining Waters.  Her heart was so wrung over
the parting with her pupils that for a moment college had lost all
its charm.  She still felt the clasp of Annetta Bell's arms about
her neck and heard the childish wail, "I'll NEVER love any teacher
as much as you, Miss Shirley, never, never."

For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many
mistakes and learning from them.  She had had her reward.  She had
taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught
her much more. . .lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent
wisdom, lore of childish hearts.  Perhaps she had not succeeded in
"inspiring" any wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had
taught them, more by her own sweet personality than by all her
careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that
were before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding
fast to truth and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all
that savored of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity.  They were,
perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such lessons; but they
would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the
capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the Roses.

"Another chapter in my life is closed," said Anne aloud, as she
locked her desk.  She really felt very sad over it; but the romance
in the idea of that "closed chapter" did comfort her a little.

Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and
everybody concerned had a good time.

She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded
her to buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting
and making it together, while the happy Charlotta the Fourth basted
and swept up clippings.  Miss Lavendar had complained that she could
not feel much interest in anything, but the sparkle came back to her
eyes over her pretty dress.

"What a foolish, frivolous person I must be," she sighed.
"I'm wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress. . .
even it is a forget-me-not organdy. . .should exhilarate me so,
when a good conscience and an extra contribution to Foreign Missions
couldn't do it."

Midway in her visit Anne went home to Green Gables for a day to mend
the twins' stockings and settle up Davy's accumulated store of questions.
In the evening she went down to the shore road to see Paul Irving.
As she passed by the low, square window of the Irving sitting room
she caught a glimpse of Paul on somebody's lap; but the next moment
he came flying through the hall.

"Oh, Miss Shirley," he cried excitedly, "you can't think what
has happened!  Something so splendid.  Father is here. . .
just think of that!  Father is here!  Come right in.  Father,
this is my beautiful teacher.  YOU know, father."

Stephen Irving came forward to meet Anne with a smile.  He was a
tall, handsome man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set,
dark blue eyes, and a strong, sad face, splendidly modeled about
chin and brow.  Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought
with a thrill of intense satisfaction.  It was so disappointing to
meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or stooped,
or otherwise lacking in manly beauty.  Anne would have thought it
dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar's romance had not looked
the part.

"So this is my little son's `beautiful teacher,' of whom I have
heard so much," said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake.  "Paul's
letters have been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel as if I
were pretty well acquainted with you already.  I want to thank you
for what you have done for Paul.  I think that your influence has
been just what he needed.  Mother is one of the best and dearest of
women; but her robust, matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not
always understand a temperament like my laddie's.  What was lacking in
her you have supplied.  Between you, I think Paul's training in these
two past years has been as nearly ideal as a motherless boy's could be."

Everybody likes to be appreciated.  Under Mr. Irving's praise
Anne's face "burst flower like into rosy bloom," and the busy,
weary man of the world, looking at her, thought he had never seen a
fairer, sweeter slip of girlhood than this little "down east"
schoolteacher with her red hair and wonderful eyes.

Paul sat between them blissfully happy.

"I never dreamed father was coming," he said radiantly.  "Even Grandma
didn't know it.  It was a great surprise.  As a general thing. . ."
Paul shook his brown curls gravely. . ."I don't like to be surprised.
You lose all the fun of expecting things when you're surprised.
But in a case like this it is all right.  Father came last night
after I had gone to bed.  And after Grandma and Mary Joe had stopped
being surprised he and Grandma came upstairs to look at me, not meaning
to wake me up till morning.  But I woke right up and saw father.
I tell you I just sprang at him."

"With a hug like a bear's," said Mr. Irving, putting his arms
around Paul's shoulder smilingly.  "I hardly knew my boy, he had
grown so big and brown and sturdy."

"I don't know which was the most pleased to see father, Grandma or I,"
continued Paul.  "Grandma's been in kitchen all day making the things
father likes to eat.  She wouldn't trust them to Mary Joe, she says.
That's HER way of showing gladness.  _I_ like best just to sit and
talk to father.  But I'm going to leave you for a little while now
if you'll excuse me.  I must get the cows for Mary Joe.  That is one
of my daily duties."

When Paul had scampered away to do his "daily duty" Mr. Irving
talked to Anne of various matters.  But Anne felt that he was
thinking of something else underneath all the time.  Presently it
came to the surface.

"In Paul's last letter he spoke of going with you to visit an old. . .
friend of mine. . .Miss Lewis at the stone house in Grafton.
Do you know her well?"

"Yes, indeed, she is a very dear friend of mine," was Anne's demure
reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled over
her from head to foot at Mr. Irving's question.  Anne "felt
instinctively" that romance was peeping at her around a corner.

Mr. Irving rose and went to the window, looking out on a great,
golden, billowing sea where a wild wind was harping.  For a few
moments there was silence in the little dark-walled room.  Then he
turned and looked down into Anne's sympathetic face with a smile,
half-whimsical, half-tender.

"I wonder how much you know," he said.

"I know all about it," replied Anne promptly.  "You see," she explained
hastily, "Miss Lavendar and I are very intimate.  She wouldn't tell
things of such a sacred nature to everybody.  We are kindred spirits."

"Yes, I believe you are.  Well, I am going to ask a favor of you.
I would like to go and see Miss Lavendar if she will let me.  Will
you ask her if I may come?"

Would she not?  Oh, indeed she would!  Yes, this was romance, the very,
the real thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream.
It was a little belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October
which should have bloomed in June; but none the less a rose,
all sweetness and fragrance, with the gleam of gold in its heart.
Never did Anne's feet bear her on a more willing errand than on
that walk through the beechwoods to Grafton the next morning.
She found Miss Lavendar in the garden.  Anne was fearfully excited.
Her hands grew cold and her voice trembled.

"Miss Lavendar, I have something to tell you. . .something very important.
Can you guess what it is?"

Anne never supposed that Miss Lavendar could GUESS; but Miss Lavendar's
face grew very pale and Miss Lavendar said in a quiet, still voice,
from which all the color and sparkle that Miss Lavendar's voice usually
suggested had faded.

"Stephen Irving is home?"

"How did you know?  Who told you?" cried Anne disappointedly,
vexed that her great revelation had been anticipated.

"Nobody.  I knew that must be it, just from the way you spoke."

"He wants to come and see you," said Anne.  "May I send him word
that he may?"

"Yes, of course," fluttered Miss Lavendar.  "There is no reason why
he shouldn't.  He is only coming as any old friend might."

Anne had her own opinion about that as she hastened into the house
to write a note at Miss Lavendar's desk.

"Oh, it's delightful to be living in a storybook," she thought gaily.
"It will come out all right of course. . .it must. . .and Paul will
have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy.
But Mr. Irving will take Miss Lavendar away. . .and dear knows
what will happen to the little stone house. . .and so there are
two sides to it, as there seems to be to everything in this world."
The important note was written and Anne herself carried it to the
Grafton post office, where she waylaid the mail carrier and asked
him to leave it at the Avonlea office.

"It's so very important," Anne assured him anxiously.  The mail
carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look
the part of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain
that his memory was to be trusted.  But he said he would do his
best to remember and she had to be contented with that.

Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone
house that afternoon. . .a mystery from which she was excluded.
Miss Lavendar roamed about the garden in a distracted fashion.
Anne, too, seemed possessed by a demon of unrest, and walked to
and fro and went up and down.  Charlotta the Fourth endured it
till atience ceased to be a virtue; then she confronted Anne
on the occasion of that romantic young person's third aimless
peregrination through the kitchen.

"Please, Miss Shirley, ma'am," said Charlotta the Fourth, with an
indignant toss of her very blue bows, "it's plain to be seen you
and Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your
pardon if I'm too forward, Miss Shirley, ma'am, that it's real
mean not to tell me when we've all been such chums."

"Oh, Charlotta dear, I'd have told you all about it if it were my
secret. . .but it's Miss Lavendar's, you see.  However, I'll tell
you this much. . .and if nothing comes of it you must never
breathe a word about it to a living soul.  You see, Prince Charming
is coming tonight.  He came long ago, but in a foolish moment went
away and wandered afar and forgot the secret of the magic pathway
to the enchanted castle, where the princess was weeping her
faithful heart out for him.  But at last he remembered it again and
the princess is waiting still. . .because nobody but her own dear
prince could carry her off."

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, what is that in prose?" gasped the
mystified Charlotta.

Anne laughed.

"In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavendar's is coming to see her
tonight."

"Do you mean an old beau of hers?" demanded the literal Charlotta.

"That is probably what I do mean. . .in prose," answered Anne gravely.
"It is Paul's father. . .Stephen Irving.  And goodness knows what will
come of it, but let us hope for the best, Charlotta."

"I hope that he'll marry Miss Lavendar," was Charlotta's unequivocal response.
"Some women's intended from the start to be old maids, and I'm afraid I'm one
of them, Miss Shirley, ma'am, because I've awful little patience with the men.
But Miss Lavendar never was.  And I've been awful worried, thinking what on
earth she'd do when I got so big I'd HAVE to go to Boston.  There ain't any
more girls in our family and dear knows what she'd do if she got some
stranger that might laugh at her pretendings and leave things lying round
out of their place and not be willing to be called Charlotta the Fifth.
She might get someone who wouldn't be as unlucky as me in breaking dishes
but she'd never get anyone who'd love her better."

And the faithful little handmaiden dashed to the oven door with a sniff.

They went through the form of having tea as usual that night at
Echo Lodge; but nobody really ate anything.  After tea Miss Lavendar
went to her room and put on her new forget-me-not organdy,
while Anne did her hair for her.  Both were dreadfully excited;
but Miss Lavendar pretended to be very calm and indifferent.

"I must really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow," she said
anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any
importance just then.  "Those curtains have not worn as well as
they should, considering the price I paid.  Dear me, Charlotta
has forgotten to dust the stair railing AGAIN.  I really MUST
speak to her about it."

Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down
the lane and across the garden.

"This is the one place where time stands still," he said, looking
around him with delighted eyes.  "There is nothing changed about
this house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago.
It makes me feel young again."

"You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace," said Anne
seriously.  "It is only when the prince comes that things begin to happen."

Mr. Irving smiled a little sadly into her uplifted face, all astar with
its youth and promise.

"Sometimes the prince comes too late," he said.  He did not ask Anne to
translate her remark into prose.  Like all kindred spirits he "understood."

"Oh, no, not if he is the real prince coming to the true princess,"
said Anne, shaking her red head decidedly, as she opened the parlor door.
When he had gone in she shut it tightly behind him and turned to confront
Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all "nods and becks and
wreathed smiles."

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am," she breathed, "I peeked from the kitchen
window. . .and he's awful handsome. . .and just the right age for
Miss Lavendar.  And oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, do you think it would
be much harm to listen at the door?"

"It would be dreadful, Charlotta," said Anne firmly, "so just you
come away with me out of the reach of temptation."

"I can't do anything, and it's awful to hang round just waiting," sighed
Charlotta.  "What if he don't propose after all, Miss Shirley, ma'am?
You can never be sure of them men.  My older sister, Charlotta the First,
thought she was engaged to one once.  But it turned out HE had a
different opinion and she says she'll never trust one of them again.
And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one girl
awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time.
When a man don't know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma'am, how's
a poor woman going to be sure of it?"

"We'll go to the kitchen and clean the silver spoons," said Anne.
"That's a task which won't require much thinking fortunately. . .
for I COULDN'T think tonight.  And it will pass the time."

It passed an hour.  Then, just as Anne laid down the last shining spoon,
they heard the front door shut.  Both sought comfort fearfully in each
other's eyes.

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am," gasped Charlotta, "if he's going away this
early there's nothing into it and never will be."  They flew to the window.
Mr. Irving had no intention of going away.  He and Miss Lavendar were
strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone bench.

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, he's got his arm around her waist,"
whispered Charlotta the Fourth delightedly.  "He must have proposed
to her or she'd never allow it."

Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced
her around the kitchen until they were both out of breath.

"Oh, Charlotta," she cried gaily, "I'm neither a prophetess nor the
daughter of a prophetess but I'm going to make a prediction.
There'll be a wedding in this old stone house before the maple
leaves are red.  Do you want that translated into prose, Charlotta?"

"No, I can understand that," said Charlotta.  "A wedding ain't
poetry.  Why, Miss Shirley, ma'am, you're crying!  What for?"

"Oh, because it's all so beautiful. . .and story bookish. . .and
romantic. . .and sad," said Anne, winking the tears out of her
eyes.  "It's all perfectly lovely. . .but there's a little sadness
mixed up in it too, somehow."

"Oh, of course there's a resk in marrying anybody," conceded
Charlotta the Fourth, "but, when all's said and done, Miss Shirley,
ma'am, there's many a worse thing than a husband."




                                XXIX

                          Poetry and Prose


For the next month Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called
a whirl of excitement.  The preparation of her own modest outfit
for Redmond was of secondary importance.  Miss Lavendar was getting
ready to be married and the stone house was the scene of endless
consultations and plannings and discussions, with Charlotta the Fourth
hovering on the outskirts of things in agitated delight and wonder.
Then the dressmaker came, and there was the rapture and wretchedness
of choosing fashions and being fitted.  Anne and Diana spent half their
time at Echo Lodge and there were nights when Anne could not sleep for
wondering whether she had done right in advising Miss Lavendar to select
brown rather than navy blue for her traveling dress, and to have her
gray silk made princess.

Everybody concerned in Miss Lavendar's story was very happy.
Paul Irving rushed to Green Gables to talk the news over with
Anne as soon as his father had told him.

"I knew I could trust father to pick me out a nice little second mother,"
he said proudly.  "It's a fine thing to have a father you can depend on,
teacher.  I just love Miss Lavendar.  Grandma is pleased, too.  She says
she's real glad father didn't pick out an American for his second wife,
because, although it turned out all right the first time, such a thing
wouldn't be likely to happen twice.  Mrs. Lynde says she thoroughly
approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar will give
up her queer notions and be like other people, now that she's going to
be married.  But I hope she won't give her queer notions up, teacher,
because I like them.  And I don't want her to be like other people.
There are too many other people around as it is.  YOU know, teacher."

Charlotta the Fourth was another radiant person.

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, it has all turned out so beautiful.
When Mr. Irving and Miss Lavendar come back from their tower
I'm to go up to Boston and live with them. . .and me only fifteen,
and the other girls never went till they were sixteen.  Ain't
Mr. Irving splendid?  He just worships the ground she treads on
and it makes me feel so queer sometimes to see the look in his eyes
when he's watching her.  It beggars description, Miss Shirley, ma'am.
I'm awful thankful they're so fond of each other.  It's the best way,
when all's said and done, though some folks can get along without it.
I've got an aunt who has been married three times and says she married
the first time for love and the last two times for strictly business,
and was happy with all three except at the times of the funerals.
But I think she took a resk, Miss Shirley, ma'am."

"Oh, it's all so romantic," breathed Anne to Marilla that night.
"If I hadn't taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr. Kimball's
I'd never have known Miss Lavendar; and if I hadn't met her I'd
never have taken Paul there. . .and he'd never have written to his
father about visiting Miss Lavendar just as Mr. Irving was starting for
San Francisco.  Mr. Irving says whenever he got that letter he made
up his mind to send his partner to San Francisco and come here instead.
He hadn't heard anything of Miss Lavendar for fifteen years.  Somebody
had told him then that she was to be married and he thought she was and
never asked anybody anything about her.  And now everything has come right.
And I had a hand in bringing it about.  Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde says,
everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway.  But even so,
it's nice to think one was an instrument used by predestination.  Yes indeed,
it's very romantic."

"I can't see that it's so terribly romantic at all," said Marilla
rather crisply.  Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it
and had plenty to do with getting ready for college without "traipsing"
to Echo Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar.  "In the
first place two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving
goes to the States and after a spell gets married up there and is
perfectly happy from all accounts.  Then his wife dies and after
a decent interval he thinks he'll come home and see if his first
fancy'll have him.  Meanwhile, she's been living single, probably
because nobody nice enough came along to want her, and they meet and
agree to be married after all.  Now, where is the romance in all that?"

"Oh, there isn't any, when you put it that way," gasped Anne,
rather as if somebody had thrown cold water over her.  "I suppose
that's how it looks in prose.  But it's very different if you look
at it through poetry. . .and _I_ think it's nicer. . ."  Anne recovered
herself and her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed. . ."to look at
it through poetry."

Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from
further sarcastic comments.  Perhaps some realization came to her
that after all it was better to have, like Anne, "the vision and
the faculty divine". . .that gift which the world cannot bestow or
take away, of looking at life through some transfiguring. . .or
revealing?. . .medium, whereby everything seemed apparelled in
celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to
those who, like herself and Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things
only through prose.

"When's the wedding to be?" she asked after a pause.

"The last Wednesday in August.  They are to be married in the
garden under the honeysuckle trellis. . .the very spot where
Mr. Irving proposed to her twenty-five years ago.  Marilla, that
IS romantic, even in prose.  There's to be nobody there except
Mrs. Irving and Paul and Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar's
cousins.  And they will leave on the six o'clock train for a trip
to the Pacific coast.  When they come back in the fall Paul and
Charlotta the Fourth are to go up to Boston to live with them.
But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it is. . .only of course they'll
sell the hens and cow, and board up the windows. . .and every summer
they're coming down to live in it.  I'm so glad.  It would have
hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to think of that dear
stone house all stripped and deserted, with empty rooms. . .or far
worse still, with other people living in it.  But I can think of it
now, just as I've always seen it, waiting happily for the summer to
bring life and laughter back to it again."

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen
to the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house.
Anne stumbled suddenly on it one evening when she went over to
Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into the Barry garden.
Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the big willow.
Diana was leaning against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on
very crimson cheeks.  One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his
face bent toward her, stammering something in low earnest tones.
There were no other people in the world except their two selves at
that magic moment; so neither of them saw Anne, who, after one
dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped noiselessly back
through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained her own
gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried
to collect her scattered wits.

"Diana and Fred are in love with each other," she gasped.
"Oh, it does seem so. . .so. . .so HOPELESSLY grown up."

Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was
proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams.
But as "things seen are mightier than things heard," or suspected,
the realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the
shock of perfect surprise.  This was succeeded by a queer, little
lonely feeling. . .as if, somehow, Diana had gone forward into a
new world, shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the outside.

"Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me," Anne thought,
a little sadly.  "And I'm afraid that this can't help making some
difference between Diana and me.  I'm sure I can't tell her all my
secrets after this. . .she might tell Fred.  And what CAN she see
in Fred?  He's very nice and jolly. . .but he's just Fred Wright."

It is always a very puzzling question. . .what can somebody see in
somebody else?  But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if
everybody saw alike. . .well, in that case, as the old Indian said,
"Everybody would want my squaw."  It was plain that Diana DID see
something in Fred Wright, however Anne's eyes might be holden.
Diana came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young
lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the
east gable.  Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.

"I'm so happy," said Diana, "but it does seem ridiculous to think
of me being engaged."

"What is it really like to be engaged?" asked Anne curiously.

"Well, that all depends on who you're engaged to," answered Diana,
with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those
who are engaged over those who are not.  "It's perfectly lovely to
be engaged to Fred. . .but I think it would be simply horrid to be
engaged to anyone else."

"There's not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that
there is only one Fred," laughed Anne.

"Oh, Anne, you don't understand," said Diana in vexation.  "I didn't
mean THAT. . .it's so hard to explain.  Never mind, you'll understand
sometime, when your own turn comes."

"Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now.  What is an imagination
for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people's eyes?"

"You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne.  Promise me that. . .
wherever you may be when I'm married."

"I'll come from the ends of the earth if necessary," promised Anne solemnly.

"Of course, it won't be for ever so long yet," said Diana, blushing.
"Three years at the very least. . .for I'm only eighteen and mother
says no daughter of hers shall be married before she's twenty-one.
Besides, Fred's father is going to buy the Abraham Fletcher farm
for him and he says he's got to have it two thirds paid for before
he'll give it to him in his own name.  But three years isn't any too
much time to get ready for housekeeping, for I haven't a speck of fancy
work made yet.  But I'm going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow.
Myra Gillis had thirty-seven doilies when she was married and I'm
determined I shall have as many as she had."

"I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only
thirty-six doilies," conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.

Diana looked hurt.

"I didn't think you'd make fun of me, Anne," she said reproachfully.

"Dearest, I wasn't making fun of you," cried Anne repentantly.
"I was only teasing you a bit.  I think you'll make the sweetest
little housekeeper in the world.  And I think it's perfectly lovely
of you to be planning already for your home o'dreams."

Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, "home o'dreams," than it
captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one
of her own.  It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark,
proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted
in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens,
and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero
evidently considered beneath his dignity.  Anne tried to banish
Gilbert's image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went
on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt
and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her
"home o'dreams" was built and furnished before Diana spoke again.

"I suppose, Anne, you must think it's funny I should like Fred so
well when he's so different from the kind of man I've always said I
would marry. . .the tall, slender kind?  But somehow I wouldn't
want Fred to be tall and slender. . .because, don't you see, he
wouldn't be Fred then.  Of course," added Diana rather dolefully,
"we will be a dreadfully pudgy couple.  But after all that's better
than one of us being short and fat and the other tall and lean,
like Morgan Sloane and his wife.  Mrs. Lynde says it always makes
her think of the long and short of it when she sees them together."

"Well," said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair
before her gilt framed mirror, "I am glad Diana is so happy and
satisfied.  But when my turn comes. . .if it ever does. . .I do
hope there'll be something a little more thrilling about it.  But
then Diana thought so too, once.  I've heard her say time and again
she'd never get engaged any poky commonplace way. . .he'd HAVE to
do something splendid to win her.  But she has changed.  Perhaps
I'll change too.  But I won't. . .and I'm determined I won't.  Oh,
I think these engagements are dreadfully unsettling things when
they happen to your intimate friends."




                                XXX

                  A Wedding at the Stone House

The last week in August came.  Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.
Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College.
In a week's time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and
set up her lares and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was
already prepared for her coming.  She had sold all her superfluous
household plenishings by auction and was at present reveling in the
congenial occupation of helping the Allans pack up.  Mr. Allan was
to preach his farewell sermon the next Sunday.  The old order was
changing rapidly to give place to the new, as Anne felt with a
little sadness threading all her excitement and happiness.

"Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things,"
said Mr. Harrison philosophically.  "Two years is about long
enough for things to stay exactly the same.  If they stayed
put any longer they might grow mossy."

Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda.  His wife had
self-sacrificingly told that he might smoke in the house
if he took care to sit by an open window.  Mr. Harrison
rewarded this concession by going outdoors altogether to
smoke in fine weather, and so mutual goodwill reigned.

Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for some of her yellow dahlias.
She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help
Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations
for the morrow's bridal.  Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias;
she did not like them and they would not have suited the fine
retirement of her old-fashioned garden.  But flowers of any kind
were rather scarce in Avonlea and the neighboring districts that summer,
thanks to Uncle Abe's storm; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain
old cream-colored stone jug, usually kept sacred to doughnuts, brimmed
over with yellow dahlias, would be just the thing to set in a dim angle
of the stone house stairs, against the dark background of red hall paper.

"I s'pose you'll be starting off for college in a fortnight's time?"
continued Mr. Harrison.  "Well, we're going to miss you an awful lot,
Emily and me.  To be sure, Mrs. Lynde'll be over there in your place.
There ain't nobody but a substitute can be found for them."

The irony of Mr. Harrison's tone is quite untransferable to paper.
In spite of his wife's intimacy with Mrs. Lynde, the best that could
be said of the relationship between her and Mr. Harrison even under
the new regime, was that they preserved an armed neutrality.

"Yes, I'm going," said Anne.  "I'm very glad with my head. . .and
very sorry with my heart."

"I s'pose you'll be scooping up all the honors that are lying round
loose at Redmond."

"I may try for one or two of them," confessed Anne, "but I
don't care so much for things like that as I did two years ago.
What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of
the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it.
I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself."

Mr. Harrison nodded.

"That's the idea exactly.  That's what college ought to be for,
instead of for turning out a lot of B.A.'s, so chock full of
book-learning and vanity that there ain't room for anything else.
You're all right.  College won't be able to do you much harm,
I reckon."

Diana and Anne drove over to Echo Lodge after tea, taking with them
all the flowery spoil that several predatory expeditions in their
own and their neighbors' gardens had yielded.  They found the stone
house agog with excitement.  Charlotta the Fourth was flying around
with such vim and briskness that her blue bows seemed really to possess
the power of being everywhere at once.  Like the helmet of Navarre,
Charlotta's blue bows waved ever in the thickest of the fray.

"Praise be to goodness you've come," she said devoutly, "for
there's heaps of things to do. . .and the frosting on that cake
WON'T harden. . .and there's all the silver to be rubbed up yet. . .
and the horsehair trunk to be packed. . .and the roosters for the
chicken salad are running out there beyant the henhouse yet,
crowing, Miss Shirley, ma'am.  And Miss Lavendar ain't to be
trusted to do a thing.  I was thankful when Mr. Irving came
a few minutes ago and took her off for a walk in the woods.
Courting's all right in its place, Miss Shirley, ma'am, but if
you try to mix it up with cooking and scouring everything's spoiled.
That's MY opinion, Miss Shirley, ma'am."

Anne and Diana worked so heartily that by ten o'clock even
Charlotta the Fourth was satisfied.  She braided her hair in
innumerable plaits and took her weary little bones off to bed.

"But I'm sure I shan't sleep a blessed wink, Miss Shirley, ma'am,
for fear that something'll go wrong at the last minute. . .the cream
won't whip. . .or Mr. Irving'll have a stroke and not be able to come."

"He isn't in the habit of having strokes, is he?" asked Diana, the
dimpled corners of her mouth twitching.  To Diana, Charlotta the Fourth
was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly a joy forever.

"They're not things that go by habit," said Charlotta the Fourth
with dignity.  "They just HAPPEN. . .and there you are.  ANYBODY
can have a stroke.  You don't have to learn how.  Mr. Irving looks
a lot like an uncle of mine that had one once just as he was
sitting down to dinner one day.  But maybe everything'll go all
right.  In this world you've just got to hope for the best and
prepare for the worst and take whatever God sends."

"The only thing I'm worried about is that it won't be fine tomorrow,"
said Diana.  "Uncle Abe predicted rain for the middle of the week,
and ever since the big storm I can't help believing there's a good
deal in what Uncle Abe says."

Anne, who knew better than Diana just how much Uncle Abe had to do
with the storm, was not much disturbed by this.  She slept the
sleep of the just and weary, and was roused at an unearthly hour by
Charlotta the Fourth.

"Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, it's awful to call you so early," came
wailing through the keyhole, "but there's so much to do yet. . .and oh,
Miss Shirley, ma'am, I'm skeered it's going to rain and I wish
you'd get up and tell me you think it ain't."  Anne flew to the
window, hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was saying
this merely by way of rousing her effectually.  But alas, the
morning did look unpropitious.  Below the window Miss Lavendar's
garden, which should have been a glory of pale virgin sunshine, lay
dim and windless; and the sky over the firs was dark with moody clouds.

"Isn't it too mean!" said Diana.

"We must hope for the best," said Anne determinedly.  "If it only
doesn't actually rain, a cool, pearly gray day like this would
really be nicer than hot sunshine."

"But it will rain," mourned Charlotta, creeping into the room, a
figure of fun, with her many braids wound about her head, the ends,
tied up with white thread, sticking out in all directions.  "It'll
hold off till the last minute and then pour cats and dogs.  And all
the folks will get sopping. . .and track mud all over the house. . .
and they won't be able to be married under the honeysuckle. . .and
it's awful unlucky for no sun to shine on a bride, say what you will,
Miss Shirley, ma'am.  _I_ knew things were going too well to last."

Charlotta the Fourth seemed certainly to have borrowed a leaf out
of Miss Eliza Andrews' book.

It did not rain, though it kept on looking as if it meant to.
By noon the rooms were decorated, the table beautifully laid;
and upstairs was waiting a bride, "adorned for her husband."

"You do look sweet," said Anne rapturously.

"Lovely," echoed Diana.

"Everything's ready, Miss Shirley, ma'am, and nothing dreadful has
happened YET," was Charlotta's cheerful statement as she betook
herself to her little back room to dress.  Out came all the braids;
the resultant rampant crinkliness was plaited into two tails and
tied, not with two bows alone, but with four, of brand-new ribbon,
brightly blue.  The two upper bows rather gave the impression of
overgrown wings sprouting from Charlotta's neck, somewhat after the
fashion of Raphael's cherubs.  But Charlotta the Fourth thought
them very beautiful, and after she had rustled into a white dress,
so stiffly starched that it could stand alone, she surveyed herself
in her glass with great satisfaction. . .a satisfaction which lasted
until she went out in the hall and caught a glimpse through the spare
room door of a tall girl in some softly clinging gown, pinning white,
star-like flowers on the smooth ripples of her ruddy hair.

"Oh, I'll NEVER be able to look like Miss Shirley," thought poor
Charlotta despairingly.  "You just have to be born so, I guess. . .
don't seem's if any amount of practice could give you that AIR."

By one o'clock the guests had come, including Mr. and Mrs. Allan,
for Mr. Allan was to perform the ceremony in the absence of the
Grafton minister on his vacation.  There was no formality about
the marriage.  Miss Lavendar came down the stairs to meet her
bridegroom at the foot, and as he took her hand she lifted her big
brown eyes to his with a look that made Charlotta the Fourth, who
intercepted it, feel queerer than ever.  They went out to the
honeysuckle arbor, where Mr. Allan was awaiting them.  The guests
grouped themselves as they pleased.  Anne and Diana stood by the
old stone bench, with Charlotta the Fourth between them, desperately
clutching their hands in her cold, tremulous little paws.

Mr. Allan opened his blue book and the ceremony proceeded.  Just as
Miss Lavendar and Stephen Irving were pronounced man and wife a very
beautiful and symbolic thing happened.  The sun suddenly burst through
the gray and poured a flood of radiance on the happy bride.  Instantly
the garden was alive with dancing shadows and flickering lights.

"What a lovely omen," thought Anne, as she ran to kiss the bride.
Then the three girls left the rest of the guests laughing around
the bridal pair while they flew into the house to see that all was
in readiness for the feast.

"Thanks be to goodness, it's over, Miss Shirley, ma'am," breathed
Charlotta the Fourth, "and they're married safe and sound, no
matter what happens now.  The bags of rice are in the pantry,
ma'am, and the old shoes are behind the door, and the cream for
whipping is on the sullar steps."

At half past two Mr. and Mrs. Irving left, and everybody went to
Bright River to see them off on the afternoon train.  As Miss
Lavendar. . .I beg her pardon, Mrs. Irving. . .stepped from the
door of her old home Gilbert and the girls threw the rice and
Charlotta the Fourth hurled an old shoe with such excellent aim
that she struck Mr. Allan squarely on the head.  But it was
reserved for Paul to give the prettiest send-off.  He popped out of
the porch ringing furiously a huge old brass dinner bell which had
adorned the dining room mantel.  Paul's only motive was to make a
joyful noise; but as the clangor died away, from point and curve
and hill across the river came the chime of "fairy wedding bells,"
ringing clearly, sweetly, faintly and more faint, as if Miss
Lavendar's beloved echoes were bidding her greeting and farewell.
And so, amid this benediction of sweet sounds, Miss Lavendar drove
away from the old life of dreams and make-believes to a fuller life
of realities in the busy world beyond.

Two hours later Anne and Charlotta the Fourth came down the lane again.
Gilbert had gone to West Grafton on an errand and Diana had to keep an
engagement at home.  Anne and Charlotta had come back to put things in
order and lock up the little stone house.  The garden was a pool of
late golden sunshine, with butterflies hovering and bees booming;
but the little house had already that indefinable air of desolation
which always follows a festivity.

"Oh dear me, don't it look lonesome?" sniffed Charlotta the Fourth,
who had been crying all the way home from the station.  "A wedding
ain't much cheerfuller than a funeral after all, when it's all
over, Miss Shirley, ma'am."

A busy evening followed.  The decorations had to be removed,
the dishes washed, the uneaten delicacies packed into a basket for
the delectation of Charlotta the Fourth's young brothers at home.
Anne would not rest until everything was in apple-pie order; after
Charlotta had gone home with her plunder Anne went over the still
rooms, feeling like one who trod alone some banquet hall deserted,
and closed the blinds.  Then she locked the door and sat down under
the silver poplar to wait for Gilbert, feeling very tired but still
unweariedly thinking "long, long thoughts."

"What are you thinking of, Anne?" asked Gilbert, coming down the
walk.  He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.

"Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving," answered Anne dreamily.  "Isn't
it beautiful to think how everything has turned out. . .how they
have come together again after all the years of separation and
misunderstanding?"

"Yes, it's beautiful," said Gilbert, looking steadily down into
Anne's uplifted face, "but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still,
Anne, if there had been NO separation or misunderstanding. . .
if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no
memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?"

For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time
her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the
paleness of her face.  It was as if a veil that had hung before
her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a
revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities.  Perhaps, after
all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like
a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an
old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in
seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung
athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps. . .
perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship,
as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark
lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the
evening before.  The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an
unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all
its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.

Gilbert wisely said nothing more; but in his silence he read the
history of the next four years in the light of Anne's remembered
blush.  Four years of earnest, happy work. . .and then the guerdon
of a useful knowledge gained and a sweet heart won.

Behind them in the garden the little stone house brooded among the
shadows.  It was lonely but not forsaken.  It had not yet done with
dreams and laughter and the joy of life; there were to be future
summers for the little stone house; meanwhile, it could wait.  And
over the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.


The correct words were obtained from the L.C. Page & Company, Inc.
edition of this book copyright 1909 - Thirteenth Impression, April 1911.

Italic emphases have been CAPITALIZED for emphasis, other italics, such
as titles have been `Placed in Single Quotes.'  Italic I's are _I_.

Most spellings and combined words have been left as they were in the
majority of the editions orginally published.  Some spelling errors
we presume were not intended have been corrected.