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                       ANNE of the ISLAND

                              by

                      Lucy Maud Montgomery




                               to
                 all the girls all over the world
                 who have "wanted more" about
                              ANNE



                 All precious things discovered late
                 To those that seek them issue forth,
                 For Love in sequel works with Fate,
                 And draws the veil from hidden worth.
                                           -TENNYSON



                           Table of Contents

I       The Shadow of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
II      Garlands of Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
III     Greeting and Farewell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
IV      April's Lady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
V       Letters from Home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
VI      In the Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
VII     Home Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
VIII    Anne's First Proposal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
IX      An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend. . . . . . .113
X       Patty's Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
XI      The Round of Life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .139
XII     "Averil's Atonement" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
XIII    The Way of Transgressors . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
XIV     The Summons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
XV      A Dream Turned Upside Down . . . . . . . . . . . . .194
XVI     Adjusted Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .202
XVII    A Letter from Davy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219
XVIII   Miss Josepine Remembers the Anne-girl. . . . . . . .225
XIX     An Interlude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .234
XX      Gilbert Speaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240
XXI     Roses of Yesterday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249
XXII    Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables . . . . . . .256
XXIII   Paul Cannot Find the Rock People . . . . . . . . . .263
XXIV    Enter Jonas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .269
XXV     Enter Prince Charming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
XXVI    Enter Christine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288
XXVII   Mutual Confidences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .294
XXVIII  A June Evening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .303
XXIX    Diana's Wedding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .311
XXX     Mrs. Skinner's Romance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317
XXXI    Anne to Philippa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .323
XXXII   Tea with Mrs. Douglas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .328
XXXIII  "He Just Kept Coming and Coming" . . . . . . . . . .336
XXXIV   John Douglas Speaks at Last. . . . . . . . . . . . .342
XXXV    The Last Redmond Year Opens. . . . . . . . . . . . .350
XXXV1   The Gardners' Call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .361
XXXVII  Full-fledged B.A.'s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
XXXVIII False Dawn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .379
XXXIX   Deals with Weddings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .388
XL      A Book of Revelation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400
XLI     Love Takes Up the Glass of Time. . . . . . . . . . .407





                       ANNE of the ISLAND
                              by
                      Lucy Maud Montgomery




Chapter I

The Shadow of Change


"Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley,
gazing across the shorn fields dreamily.  She and Diana Barry had
been picking apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now
resting from their labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of
thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still
summer-sweet with the incense of ferns in the Haunted Wood.

But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn.
The sea was roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare
and sere, scarfed with golden rod, the brook valley below Green
Gables overflowed with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of
Shining Waters was blue -- blue -- blue; not the changeful blue
of spring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast,
serene blue, as if the water were past all moods and tenses of emotion
and had settled down to a tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.

"It has been a nice summer," said Diana, twisting the new ring on
her left hand with a smile.  "And Miss Lavendar's wedding seemed
to come as a sort of crown to it.  I suppose Mr. and Mrs. Irving
are on the Pacific coast now."

"It seems to me they have been gone long enough to go around the world,"
sighed Anne.

"I can't believe it is only a week since they were married.
Everything has changed.  Miss Lavendar and Mr. and Mrs. Allan gone
-- how lonely the manse looks with the shutters all closed!
I went past it last night, and it made me feel as if everybody
in it had died."

"We'll never get another minister as nice as Mr. Allan," said Diana,
with gloomy conviction.  "I suppose we'll have all kinds of supplies
this winter, and half the Sundays no preaching at all.  And you and
Gilbert gone -- it will be awfully dull."

"Fred will be here," insinuated Anne slyly.

"When is Mrs. Lynde going to move up?" asked Diana, as if she
had not heard Anne's remark.

"Tomorrow.  I'm glad she's coming -- but it will be another change.
Marilla and I cleared everything out of the spare room yesterday.
Do you know, I hated to do it?  Of course, it was silly -- but
it did seem as if we were committing sacrilege.  That old spare
room has always seemed like a shrine to me.  When I was a child
I thought it the most wonderful apartment in the world.  You
remember what a consuming desire I had to sleep in a spare room bed
-- but not the Green Gables spare room.  Oh, no, never there!
It would have been too terrible -- I couldn't have slept a wink
from awe.  I never WALKED through that room when Marilla sent me in
on an errand -- no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath,
as if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it.
The pictures of George Whitefield and the Duke of Wellington
hung there, one on each side of the mirror, and frowned so sternly
at me all the time I was in, especially if I dared peep in the mirror,
which was the only one in the house that didn't twist my face a little.
I always wondered how Marilla dared houseclean that room.  And now it's
not only cleaned but stripped bare.  George Whitefield and the Duke
have been relegated to the upstairs hall.  `So passes the glory of
this world,' " concluded Anne, with a laugh in which there was a
little note of regret.  It is never pleasant to have our old
shrines desecrated, even when we have outgrown them.

"I'll be so lonesome when you go," moaned Diana for the hundredth time.
"And to think you go next week!"

"But we're together still," said Anne cheerily.  "We mustn't let next
week rob us of this week's joy.  I hate the thought of going myself
-- home and I are such good friends.  Talk of being lonesome!
It's I who should groan.  YOU'LL be here with any number of your
old friends -- AND Fred!  While I shall be alone among strangers,
not knowing a soul!"

"EXCEPT Gilbert -- AND Charlie Sloane," said Diana, imitating
Anne's italics and slyness.

"Charlie Sloane will be a great comfort, of course," agreed Anne
sarcastically; whereupon both those irresponsible damsels laughed.
Diana knew exactly what Anne thought of Charlie Sloane; but,
despite sundry confidential talks, she did not know just what
Anne thought of Gilbert Blythe.  To be sure, Anne herself
did not know that.

"The boys may be boarding at the other end of Kingsport, for all
I know," Anne went on.  "I am glad I'm going to Redmond, and I am
sure I shall like it after a while.  But for the first few weeks
I know I won't.  I shan't even have the comfort of looking forward
to the weekend visit home, as I had when I went to Queen's.
Christmas will seem like a thousand years away."

"Everything is changing -- or going to change," said Diana sadly.
"I have a feeling that things will never be the same again, Anne."

"We have come to a parting of the ways, I suppose," said Anne
thoughtfully.  "We had to come to it.  Do you think, Diana, that
being grown-up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would
be when we were children?"

"I don't know -- there are SOME nice things about it," answered
Diana, again caressing her ring with that little smile which
always had the effect of making Anne feel suddenly left out and
inexperienced.  "But there are so many puzzling things, too.
Sometimes I feel as if being grown-up just frightened me -- and
then I would give anything to be a little girl again."

"I suppose we'll get used to being grownup in time," said Anne
cheerfully.  "There won't be so many unexpected things about it
by and by -- though, after all, I fancy it's the unexpected
things that give spice to life.  We're eighteen, Diana.  In two
more years we'll be twenty.  When I was ten I thought twenty was
a green old age.  In no time you'll be a staid, middle-aged
matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne, coming to visit
you on vacations.  You'll always keep a corner for me, won't you,
Di darling?  Not the spare room, of course -- old maids can't
aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as 'umble as Uriah Heep,
and quite content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor
cubby hole."

"What nonsense you do talk, Anne," laughed Diana.  "You'll marry
somebody splendid and handsome and rich -- and no spare room in
Avonlea will be half gorgeous enough for you -- and you'll turn
up your nose at all the friends of your youth."

"That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning
it up would spoil it," said Anne, patting that shapely organ.
"I haven't so many good features that I could afford to spoil
those I have; so, even if I should marry the King of the Cannibal
Islands, I promise you I won't turn up my nose at you, Diana."

With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to
Orchard Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office.  She found a
letter awaiting her there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her
on the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters she was sparkling
with the excitement of it.

"Priscilla Grant is going to Redmond, too," she exclaimed.
"Isn't that splendid?  I hoped she would, but she didn't think
her father would consent.  He has, however, and we're to board
together.  I feel that I can face an army with banners -- or all
the professors of Redmond in one fell phalanx -- with a chum like
Priscilla by my side."

"I think we'll like Kingsport," said Gilbert.  "It's a nice old
burg, they tell me, and has the finest natural park in the world.
I've heard that the scenery in it is magnificent."

"I wonder if it will be -- can be -- any more beautiful than this,"
murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes
of those to whom "home" must always be the loveliest spot in the world,
no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.

They were leaning on the bridge of the old pond, drinking deep of
the enchantment of the dusk, just at the spot where Anne had climbed
from her sinking Dory on the day Elaine floated down to Camelot.
The fine, empurpling dye of sunset still stained the western skies,
but the moon was rising and the water lay like a great, silver dream
in her light.  Remembrance wove a sweet and subtle spell over the
two young creatures.

"You are very quiet, Anne," said Gilbert at last.

"I'm afraid to speak or move for fear all this wonderful beauty
will vanish just like a broken silence," breathed Anne.

Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying
on the rail of the bridge.  His hazel eyes deepened into darkness,
his still boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope
that thrilled his soul.  But Anne snatched her hand away and
turned quickly.  The spell of the dusk was broken for her.

"I must go home," she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
"Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I'm sure the twins will
be in some dreadful mischief by this time.  I really shouldn't have
stayed away so long."

She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached
the Green Gables lane.  Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get
a  word in edgewise.  Anne felt rather relieved when they parted.
There had been a new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with
regard to Gilbert, ever since that fleeting moment of revelation
in the garden of Echo Lodge.  Something alien had intruded into
the old, perfect, school-day comradeship -- something that
threatened to mar it.

"I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before," she thought, half-
resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.
"Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense.
It mustn't be spoiled -- I won't let it.  Oh, WHY can't boys be
just sensible!"

Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly "sensible" that
she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert's,
as distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had
rested there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far
from being an unpleasant one -- very different from that which
had attended a similar demonstration on Charlie Sloane's part,
when she had been sitting out a dance with him at a White Sands
party three nights before.  Anne shivered over the disagreeable
recollection.  But all problems connected with infatuated swains
vanished from her mind when she entered the homely, unsentimental
atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an eight-year-old
boy was crying grievously on the sofa.

"What is the matter, Davy?" asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
"Where are Marilla and Dora?"

"Marilla's putting Dora to bed," sobbed Davy, "and I'm crying
'cause Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head,
and scraped all the skin off her nose, and -- "

"Oh, well, don't cry about it, dear.  Of course, you are sorry
for her, but crying won't help her any.  She'll be all right
tomorrow.  Crying never helps any one, Davy-boy, and -- "

"I ain't crying 'cause Dora fell down cellar," said Davy, cutting
short Anne's wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness.
"I'm crying, cause I wasn't there to see her fall.  I'm always
missing some fun or other, seems to me."

"Oh, Davy!" Anne choked back an unholy shriek of laughter.
"Would you call it fun to see poor little Dora fall down the
steps and get hurt?"

"She wasn't MUCH hurt," said Davy, defiantly.  "'Course, if
she'd been killed I'd have been real sorry, Anne.  But the Keiths
ain't so easy killed.  They're like the Blewetts, I guess.  Herb
Blewett fell off the hayloft last Wednesday, and rolled right
down through the turnip chute into the box stall, where they had
a fearful wild, cross horse, and rolled right under his heels.
And still he got out alive, with only three bones broke.  Mrs.
Lynde says there are some folks you can't kill with a meat-axe.
Is Mrs. Lynde coming here tomorrow, Anne?"

"Yes, Davy, and I hope you'll be always very nice and good to her."

"I'll be nice and good.  But will she ever put me to bed at nights, Anne?"

"Perhaps.  Why?"

"'Cause," said Davy very decidedly, "if she does I won't say my
prayers before her like I do before you, Anne."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I don't think it would be nice to talk to God before
strangers, Anne.  Dora can say hers to Mrs. Lynde if she likes,
but _I_ won't.  I'll wait till she's gone and then say 'em.  Won't
that be all right, Anne?"

"Yes, if you are sure you won't forget to say them, Davy-boy."

"Oh, I won't forget, you bet.  I think saying my prayers is great fun.
But it won't be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you.
I wish you'd stay home, Anne.  I don't see what you want to go away
and leave us for."

"I don't exactly WANT to, Davy, but I feel I ought to go."

"If you don't want to go you needn't.  You're grown up.  When _I_'m
grown up I'm not going to do one single thing I don't want to do, Anne."

"All your life, Davy, you'll find yourself doing things you don't
want to do."

"I won't," said Davy flatly.  "Catch me!  I have to do things I
don't want to now 'cause you and Marilla'll send me to bed if I don't.
But when I grow up you can't do that, and there'll be nobody to tell me
not to do things.  Won't I have the time!  Say, Anne, Milty Boulter says
his mother says you're going to college to see if you can catch a man.
Are you, Anne?  I want to know."

For a second Anne burned with resentment.  Then she laughed,
reminding herself that Mrs. Boulter's crude vulgarity of thought
and speech could not harm her.

"No, Davy, I'm not.  I'm going to study and grow and learn about many things."

"What things?"

      "`Shoes and ships and sealing wax
      And cabbages and kings,'"

quoted Anne.

"But if you DID want to catch a man how would you go about it?
I want to know," persisted Davy, for whom the subject evidently
possessed a certain fascination.

"You'd better ask Mrs. Boulter," said Anne thoughtlessly.  "I
think it's likely she knows more about the process than I do."

"I will, the next time I see her," said Davy gravely.

"Davy!  If you do!" cried Anne, realizing her mistake.

"But you just told me to," protested Davy aggrieved.

"It's time you went to bed," decreed Anne, by way of getting out
of the scrape.

After Davy had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island
and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom,
while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind.
Anne had always loved that brook.  Many a dream had she spun over
its sparkling water in days gone by.  She forgot lovelorn youths,
and the cayenne speeches of malicious neighbors, and all the
problems of her girlish existence.  In imagination she sailed
over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of "faery
lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the
evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire.  And she
was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen
pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.




Chapter II

Garlands of Autumn


The following week sped swiftly, crowded with innumerable "last things,"
as Anne called them.  Good-bye calls had to be made and received, being
pleasant or otherwise, according to whether callers and called-upon were
heartily in sympathy with Anne's hopes, or thought she was too much
puffed-up over going to college and that it was their duty to "take her
down a peg or two."

The A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party in honor of Anne and Gilbert
one evening at the home of Josie Pye, choosing that place, partly
because Mr. Pye's house was large and convenient, partly because
it was strongly suspected that the Pye girls would have nothing
to do with the affair if their offer of the house for the party
was not accepted.  It was a very pleasant little time, for the
Pye girls were gracious, and said and did nothing to mar the
harmony of the occasion -- which was not according to their wont.
Josie was unusually amiable -- so much so that she even remarked
condescendingly to Anne,

"Your new dress is rather becoming to you, Anne.  Really, you
look ALMOST PRETTY in it."

"How kind of you to say so," responded Anne, with dancing eyes.
Her sense of humor was developing, and the speeches that would
have hurt her at fourteen were becoming merely food for amusement
now.  Josie suspected that Anne was laughing at her behind those
wicked eyes; but she contented herself with whispering to Gertie,
as they went downstairs, that Anne Shirley would put on more airs
than ever now that she was going to college -- you'd see!

All the "old crowd" was there, full of mirth and zest and
youthful lightheartedness.  Diana Barry, rosy and dimpled,
shadowed by the faithful Fred; Jane Andrews, neat and sensible
and plain; Ruby Gillis, looking her handsomest and brightest in a
cream silk blouse, with red geraniums in her golden hair; Gilbert
Blythe and Charlie Sloane, both trying to keep as near the
elusive Anne as possible; Carrie Sloane, looking pale and
melancholy because, so it was reported, her father would not
allow Oliver Kimball to come near the place; Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson, whose round face and objectionable ears were as round
and objectionable as ever; and Billy Andrews, who sat in a corner all
the evening, chuckled when any one spoke to him, and watched Anne
Shirley with a grin of pleasure on his broad, freckled countenance.

Anne had known beforehand of the party, but she had not known
that she and Gilbert were, as the founders of the Society, to be
presented with a very complimentary "address" and "tokens of
respect" -- in her case a volume of Shakespeare's plays, in
Gilbert's a fountain pen.  She was so taken by surprise and
pleased by the nice things said in the address, read in Moody
Spurgeon's most solemn and ministerial tones, that the tears
quite drowned the sparkle of her big gray eyes.  She had worked
hard and faithfully for the A.V.I.S., and it warmed the cockles
of her heart that the members appreciated her efforts so sincerely.
And they were all so nice and friendly and jolly -- even the Pye
girls had their merits; at that moment Anne loved all the world.

She enjoyed the evening tremendously, but the end of it rather
spoiled all.  Gilbert again made the mistake of saying something
sentimental to her as they ate their supper on the moonlit
verandah; and Anne, to punish him, was gracious to Charlie Sloane
and allowed the latter to walk home with her.  She found,
however, that revenge hurts nobody quite so much as the one who
tries to inflict it.  Gilbert walked airily off with Ruby Gillis,
and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as they
loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air.  They were
evidently having the best of good times, while she was horribly
bored by Charlie Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never,
even by accident, said one thing that was worth listening to.
Anne gave an occasional absent "yes" or "no," and thought how
beautiful Ruby had looked that night, how very goggly Charlie's
eyes were in the moonlight -- worse even than by daylight -- and
that the world, somehow, wasn't quite such a nice place as she
had believed it to be earlier in the evening.

"I'm just tired out -- that is what is the matter with me,"
she said, when she thankfully found herself alone in her own room.
And she honestly believed it was.  But a certain little gush of joy,
as from some secret, unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart
the next evening, when she saw Gilbert striding down through the
Haunted Wood and crossing the old log bridge with that firm,
quick step of his.  So Gilbert was not going to spend this last
evening with Ruby Gillis after all!

"You look tired, Anne," he said.

"I am tired, and, worse than that, I'm disgruntled.  I'm tired
because I've been packing my trunk and sewing all day.  But I'm
disgruntled because six women have been here to say good-bye to
me, and every one of the six managed to say something that seemed
to take the color right out of life and leave it as gray and
dismal and cheerless as a November morning."

"Spiteful old cats!" was Gilbert's elegant comment.

"Oh, no, they weren't," said Anne seriously.  "That is just the
trouble.  If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn't have minded
them.  But they are all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me
and whom I like, and that is why what they said, or hinted, had
such undue weight with me.  They let me see they thought I was
crazy going to Redmond and trying to take a B.A., and ever since
I've been wondering if I am.  Mrs. Peter Sloane sighed and said
she hoped my strength would hold out till I got through; and at
once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous prostration at the
end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must cost an awful
lot to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over me that
it was unpardonable of me to squander Marilla's money and my own
on such a folly.  Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn't let
college spoil me, as it did some people; and I felt in my bones
that the end of my four Redmond years would see me a most
insufferable creature, thinking I knew it all, and looking down
on everything and everybody in Avonlea; Mrs. Elisha Wright said
she understood that Redmond girls, especially those who belonged
to Kingsport, were 'dreadful dressy and stuck-up,' and she
guessed I wouldn't feel much at home among them; and I saw
myself, a snubbed, dowdy, humiliated country girl, shuffling
through Redmond's classic halls in coppertoned boots."

Anne ended with a laugh and a sigh commingled.  With her sensitive
nature all disapproval had weight, even the disapproval of those
for whose opinions she had scant respect.  For the time being life
was savorless, and ambition had gone out like a snuffed candle.

"You surely don't care for what they said," protested Gilbert.
"You know exactly how narrow their outlook on life is, excellent
creatures though they are.  To do anything THEY have never done
is anathema maranatha.  You are the first Avonlea girl who has
ever gone to college; and you know that all pioneers are considered
to be afflicted with moonstruck madness."

"Oh, I know.  But FEELING is so different from KNOWING.  My common
sense tells me all you can say, but there are times when common
sense has no power over me.  Common nonsense takes possession of
my soul.  Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the
heart to finish packing."

"You're just tired, Anne.  Come, forget it all and take a walk
with me -- a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh.
There should be something there I want to show you."

"Should be!  Don't you know if it is there?"

"No.  I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring.
Come on.  We'll pretend we are two children again and we'll go the
way of the wind."

They started gaily off.  Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of
the preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who
was learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy
comrade again.  Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the
kitchen window.

"That'll be a match some day," Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.

Marilla winced slightly.  In her heart she hoped it would, but it
went against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde's
gossipy matter-of-fact way.

"They're only children yet," she said shortly.

Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.

"Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age.  We old
folks, Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never
grow up, that's what.  Anne is a young woman and Gilbert's a man,
and he worships the ground she walks on, as any one can see.
He's a fine fellow, and Anne can't do better.  I hope she won't
get any romantic nonsense into her head at Redmond.  I don't
approve of them coeducational places and never did, that's what.
I don't believe," concluded Mrs. Lynde solemnly, "that the
students at such colleges ever do much else than flirt."

"They must study a little," said Marilla, with a smile.

"Precious little," sniffed Mrs. Rachel.  "However, I think Anne
will.  She never was flirtatious.  But she doesn't appreciate
Gilbert at his full value, that's what.  Oh, I know girls!
Charlie Sloane is wild about her, too, but I'd never advise her
to marry a Sloane.  The Sloanes are good, honest, respectable people,
of course.  But when all's said and done, they're SLOANES."

Marilla nodded.  To an outsider, the statement that Sloanes were
Sloanes might not be very illuminating, but she understood.
Every village has such a family; good, honest, respectable people
they may be, but SLOANES they are and must ever remain, though
they speak with the tongues of men and angels.

Gilbert and Anne, happily unconscious that their future was thus
being settled by Mrs. Rachel, were sauntering through the shadows
of the Haunted Wood.  Beyond, the harvest hills were basking in
an amber sunset radiance, under a pale, aerial sky of rose and blue.
The distant spruce groves were burnished bronze, and their long shadows
barred the upland meadows.  But around them a little wind sang among
the fir tassels, and in it there was the note of autumn.

"This wood really is haunted now -- by old memories," said Anne,
stooping to gather a spray of ferns, bleached to waxen whiteness
by frost.  "It seems to me that the little girls Diana and I used
to be play here still, and sit by the Dryad's Bubble in the
twilights, trysting with the ghosts.  Do you know, I can never go
up this path in the dusk without feeling a bit of the old fright
and shiver?  There was one especially horrifying phantom which we
created -- the ghost of the murdered child that crept up behind
you and laid cold fingers on yours.  I confess that, to this day,
I cannot help fancying its little, furtive footsteps behind me
when I come here after nightfall.  I'm not afraid of the White
Lady or the headless man or the skeletons, but I wish I had never
imagined that baby's ghost into existence.  How angry Marilla
and Mrs. Barry were over that affair," concluded Anne, with
reminiscent laughter.

The woods around the head of the marsh were full of purple vistas,
threaded with gossamers.  Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces
and a maple-fringed, sun-warm valley they found the "something"
Gilbert was looking for.

"Ah, here it is," he said with satisfaction.

"An apple tree -- and away back here!" exclaimed Anne delightedly.

"Yes, a veritable apple-bearing apple tree, too, here in the very
midst of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard.  I was
here one day last spring and found it, all white with blossom.
So I resolved I'd come again in the fall and see if it had been
apples.  See, it's loaded.  They look good, too -- tawny as
russets but with a dusky red cheek.  Most wild seedlings are
green and uninviting."

"I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed," said
Anne dreamily."  And how it has grown and flourished and held its
own here all alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!"

"Here's a fallen tree with a cushion of moss.  Sit down, Anne --
it will serve for a woodland throne.  I'll climb for some apples.
They all grow high -- the tree had to reach up to the sunlight."

The apples proved to be delicious.  Under the tawny skin was a
white, white flesh, faintly veined with red; and, besides their
own proper apple taste, they had a certain wild, delightful tang
no orchard-grown apple ever possessed.

"The fatal apple of Eden couldn't have had a rarer flavor,"
commented Anne.  "But it's time we were going home.  See, it was
twilight three minutes ago and now it's moonlight.  What a pity
we couldn't have caught the moment of transformation.  But such
moments never are caught, I suppose."

"Let's go back around the marsh and home by way of Lover's Lane.
Do you feel as disgruntled now as when you started out, Anne?"

"Not I.  Those apples have been as manna to a hungry soul.  I feel
that I shall love Redmond and have a splendid four years there."

"And after those four years -- what?"

"Oh, there's another bend in the road at their end," answered
Anne lightly.  "I've no idea what may be around it -- I don't
want to have.  It's nicer not to know."

Lover's Lane was a dear place that night, still and mysteriously
dim in the pale radiance of the moonlight.  They loitered through
it in a pleasant chummy silence, neither caring to talk.

"If Gilbert were always as he has been this evening how nice and
simple everything would be," reflected Anne.

Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along.  In her light dress,
with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris.

"I wonder if I can ever make her care for me," he thought, with a
pang of self-destruct.




Chapter III

Greeting and Farewell


Charlie Sloane, Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley left Avonlea the
following Monday morning.  Anne had hoped for a fine day.  Diana
was to drive her to the station and they wanted this, their last
drive together for some time, to be a pleasant one.  But when Anne
went to bed Sunday night the east wind was moaning around Green
Gables with an ominous prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning.
Anne awoke to find raindrops pattering against her window and
shadowing the pond's gray surface with widening rings; hills and
sea were hidden in mist, and the whole world seemed dim and dreary.
Anne dressed in the cheerless gray dawn, for an early start was
necessary to catch the boat train; she struggled against the tears
that WOULD well up in her eyes in spite of herself.  She was leaving
the home that was so dear to her, and something told her that she was
leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge.  Things would never be
the same again; coming back for vacations would not be living there.
And oh, how dear and beloved everything was -- that little white porch room,
sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the old Snow Queen at the window,
the brook in the hollow, the Dryad's Bubble, the Haunted Woods,
and Lover's Lane -- all the thousand and one dear spots where memories
of the old years bided.  Could she ever be really happy anywhere else?

Breakfast at Green Gables that morning was a rather doleful meal.
Davy, for the first time in his life probably, could not eat, but
blubbered shamelessly over his porridge.  Nobody else seemed to
have much appetite, save Dora, who tucked away her rations comfortably.
Dora, like the immortal and most prudent Charlotte, who "went on
cutting bread and butter" when her frenzied lover's body had been
carried past on a shutter, was one of those fortunate creatures
who are seldom disturbed by anything.  Even at eight it took a
great deal to ruffle Dora's placidity.  She was sorry Anne was
going away, of course, but was that any reason why she should
fail to appreciate a poached egg on toast?  Not at all.  And,
seeing that Davy could not eat his, Dora ate it for him.

Promptly on time Diana appeared with horse and buggy, her rosy
face glowing above her raincoat.  The good-byes had to be said
then somehow.  Mrs. Lynde came in from her quarters to give Anne
a hearty embrace and warn her to be careful of her health,
whatever she did.  Marilla, brusque and tearless, pecked Anne's
cheek and said she supposed they'd hear from her when she got
settled.  A casual observer might have concluded that Anne's
going mattered very little to her -- unless said observer had
happened to get a good look in her eyes.  Dora kissed Anne primly
and squeezed out two decorous little tears; but Davy, who had
been crying on the back porch step ever since they rose from the
table, refused to say good-bye at all.  When he saw Anne coming
towards him he sprang to his feet, bolted up the back stairs, and
hid in a clothes closet, out of which he would not come.  His muffled
howls were the last sounds Anne heard as she left Green Gables.

It rained heavily all the way to Bright River, to which station
they had to go, since the branch line train from Carmody did not
connect with the boat train.  Charlie and Gilbert were on the
station platform when they reached it, and the train was whistling.
Anne had just time to get her ticket and trunk check, say a hurried
farewell to Diana, and hasten on board.  She wished she were going back
with Diana to Avonlea; she knew she was going to die of homesickness.
And oh, if only that dismal rain would stop pouring down as if the
whole world were weeping over summer vanished and joys departed!
Even Gilbert's presence brought her no comfort, for Charlie Sloane
was there, too, and Sloanishness could be tolerated only in fine weather.
It was absolutely insufferable in rain.

But when the boat steamed out of Charlottetown harbor things took
a turn for the better.  The rain ceased and the sun began to
burst out goldenly now and again between the rents in the clouds,
burnishing the gray seas with copper-hued radiance, and lighting
up the mists that curtained the Island's red shores with gleams
of gold foretokening a fine day after all.  Besides, Charlie
Sloane promptly became so seasick that he had to go below, and
Anne and Gilbert were left alone on deck.

"I am very glad that all the Sloanes get seasick as soon as they
go on water," thought Anne mercilessly.  "I am sure I couldn't
take my farewell look at the `ould sod' with Charlie standing
there pretending to look sentimentally at it, too."

"Well, we're off," remarked Gilbert unsentimentally.

"Yes, I feel like Byron's `Childe Harold' -- only it isn't really
my `native shore' that I'm watching," said Anne, winking her gray
eyes vigorously.  "Nova Scotia is that, I suppose.  But one's
native shore is the land one loves the best, and that's good old
P.E.I. for me.  I can't believe I didn't always live here.
Those eleven years before I came seem like a bad dream.
It's seven years since I crossed on this boat -- the evening
Mrs. Spencer brought me over from Hopetown.  I can see myself,
in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, exploring
decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity.  It was a fine evening;
and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine.  Now I'm
crossing the strait again.  Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I'll like Redmond
and Kingsport, but I'm sure I won't!"

"Where's all your philosophy gone, Anne?"

"It's all submerged under a great, swamping wave of loneliness
and homesickness.  I've longed for three years to go to Redmond
-- and now I'm going -- and I wish I weren't!  Never mind!  I
shall be cheerful and philosophical again after I have just one
good cry.  I MUST have that, `as a went' -- and I'll have to wait
until I get into my boardinghouse bed tonight, wherever it may
be, before I can have it.  Then Anne will be herself again.  I
wonder if Davy has come out of the closet yet."

It was nine that night when their train reached Kingsport, and
they found themselves in the blue-white glare of the crowded station.
Anne felt horribly bewildered, but a moment later she was seized by
Priscilla Grant, who had come to Kingsport on Saturday.

"Here you are, beloved!  And I suppose you're as tired as I was
when I got here Saturday night."

"Tired!  Priscilla, don't talk of it.  I'm tired, and green,
and provincial, and only about ten years old.  For pity's sake
take your poor, broken-down chum to some place where she can
hear herself think."

"I'll take you right up to our boardinghouse.  I've a cab ready outside."

"It's such a blessing you're here, Prissy.  If you weren't I
think I should just sit down on my suitcase, here and now, and
weep bitter tears.  What a comfort one familiar face is in a
howling wilderness of strangers!"

"Is that Gilbert Blythe over there, Anne?  How he has grown up
this past year!  He was only a schoolboy when I taught in Carmody.
And of course that's Charlie Sloane.  HE hasn't changed -- couldn't!
He looked just like that when he was born, and he'll look like that
when he's eighty.  This way, dear.  We'll be home in twenty minutes."

"Home!" groaned Anne.  "You mean we'll be in some horrible boardinghouse,
in a still more horrible hall bedroom, looking out on a dingy back yard."

"It isn't a horrible boardinghouse, Anne-girl.  Here's our cab.
Hop in -- the driver will get your trunk.  Oh, yes, the boardinghouse
-- it's really a very nice place of its kind, as you'll admit tomorrow
morning when a good night's sleep has turned your blues rosy pink.
It's a big, old-fashioned, gray stone house on St. John Street,
just a nice little constitutional from Redmond.  It used to be the
`residence' of great folk, but fashion has deserted St. John Street
and its houses only dream now of better days.  They're so big that
people living in them have to take boarders just to fill up.  At least,
that is the reason our landladies are very anxious to impress on us.
They're delicious, Anne -- our landladies, I mean."

"How many are there?"

"Two.  Miss Hannah Harvey and Miss Ada Harvey.  They were born twins
about fifty years ago."

"I can't get away from twins, it seems," smiled Anne.  "Wherever I
go they confront me."

"Oh, they're not twins now, dear.  After they reached the age of
thirty they never were twins again.  Miss Hannah has grown old,
not too gracefully, and Miss Ada has stayed thirty, less
gracefully still.  I don't know whether Miss Hannah can smile or
not; I've never caught her at it so far, but Miss Ada smiles all
the time and that's worse.  However, they're nice, kind souls,
and they take two boarders every year because Miss Hannah's
economical soul cannot bear to `waste room space' -- not because
they need to or have to, as Miss Ada has told me seven times
since Saturday night.  As for our rooms, I admit they are hall
bedrooms, and mine does look out on the back yard.  Your room is
a front one and looks out on Old St. John's graveyard, which is
just across the street."

"That sounds gruesome," shivered Anne.  "I think I'd rather have
the back yard view."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't.  Wait and see.  Old St. John's is a
darling place.  It's been a graveyard so long that it's ceased to
be one and has become one of the sights of Kingsport.  I was all
through it yesterday for a pleasure exertion.  There's a big
stone wall and a row of enormous trees all around it, and rows of
trees all through it, and the queerest old tombstones, with the
queerest and quaintest inscriptions.  You'll go there to study, Anne,
see if you don't.  Of course, nobody is ever buried there now.
But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument to the
memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War.
It is just opposite the entrance gates and there's `scope for
imagination' in it, as you used to say.  Here's your trunk at
last -- and the boys coming to say good night.  Must I really
shake hands with Charlie Sloane, Anne?  His hands are always so
cold and fishy-feeling.  We must ask them to call occasionally.
Miss Hannah gravely told me we could have `young gentlemen
callers' two evenings in the week, if they went away at a
reasonable hour; and Miss Ada asked me, smiling, please to be
sure they didn't sit on her beautiful cushions.  I promised to
see to it; but goodness knows where else they CAN sit, unless
they sit on the floor, for there are cushions on EVERYTHING.
Miss Ada even has an elaborate Battenburg one on top of the piano."

Anne was laughing by this time.  Priscilla's gay chatter had the
intended effect of cheering her up; homesickness vanished for the
time being, and did not even return in full force when she
finally found herself alone in her little bedroom.  She went to
her window and looked out.  The street below was dim and quiet.
Across it the moon was shining above the trees in Old St. John's,
just behind the great dark head of the lion on the monument.
Anne wondered if it could have been only that morning that
she had left Green Gables.  She had the sense of a long
passage of time which one day of change and travel gives.

"I suppose that very moon is looking down on Green Gables now,"
she mused.  "But I won't think about it -- that way homesickness
lies.  I'm not even going to have my good cry.  I'll put that off
to a more convenient season, and just now I'll go calmly and
sensibly to bed and to sleep."




Chapter IV

April's Lady


Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial
days, and wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame
in garments fashioned like those of her youth.  Here and there
it sprouts out into modernity, but at heart it is still unspoiled;
it is full of curious relics, and haloed by the romance of many
legends of the past.  Once it was a mere frontier station on the
fringe of the wilderness, and those were the days when Indians
kept life from being monotonous to the settlers.  Then it grew
to be a bone of contention between the British and the French,
being occupied now by the one and now by the other, emerging from
each occupation with some fresh scar of battling nations branded on it.

It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over
by tourists, a dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond
the town, and several antiquated cannon in its public squares.
It has other historic spots also, which may be hunted out by the
curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St. John's
Cemetery at the very core of the town, with streets of quiet,
old-time houses on two sides, and busy, bustling, modern
thoroughfares on the others.  Every citizen of Kingsport feels a
thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John's, for, if he be of
any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a
queer, crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively
over the grave, on which all the main facts of his history are
recorded.  For the most part no great art or skill was lavished
on those old tombstones.  The larger number are of roughly
chiselled brown or gray native stone, and only in a few cases is
there any attempt at ornamentation.  Some are adorned with skull
and cross-bones, and this grizzly decoration is frequently
coupled with a cherub's head.  Many are prostrate and in ruins.
Into almost all Time's tooth has been gnawing, until some
inscriptions have been completely effaced, and others can only be
deciphered with difficulty.  The graveyard is very full and very
bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected by rows of elms and
willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very dreamlessly,
forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite
undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.

Anne took the first of many rambles in Old St. John's the next afternoon.
She and Priscilla had gone to Redmond in the forenoon and registered as
students, after which there was nothing more to do that day.  The girls
gladly made their escape, for it was not exhilarating to be surrounded
by crowds of strangers, most of whom had a rather alien appearance,
as if not quite sure where they belonged.

The "freshettes" stood about in detached groups of two or three,
looking askance at each other; the "freshies," wiser in their day
and generation, had banded themselves together on the big
staircase of the entrance hall, where they were shouting out
glees with all the vigor of youthful lungs, as a species of
defiance to their traditional enemies, the Sophomores, a few of
whom were prowling loftily about, looking properly disdainful of
the "unlicked cubs" on the stairs.  Gilbert and Charlie were
nowhere to be seen.

"Little did I think the day would ever come when I'd be glad of
the sight of a Sloane," said Priscilla, as they crossed the
campus, "but I'd welcome Charlie's goggle eyes almost
ecstatically.  At least, they'd be familiar eyes."

"Oh," sighed Anne.  "I can't describe how I felt when I was
standing there, waiting my turn to be registered -- as
insignificant as the teeniest drop in a most enormous bucket.
It's bad enough to feel insignificant, but it's unbearable to
have it grained into your soul that you will never, can never,
be anything but insignificant, and that is how I did feel --
as if I were invisible to the naked eye and some of those Sophs
might step on me.  I knew I would go down to my grave unwept,
unhonored and unsung."

"Wait till next year," comforted Priscilla.  "Then we'll be able
to look as bored and sophisticated as any Sophomore of them all.
No doubt it is rather dreadful to feel insignificant; but I think
it's better than to feel as big and awkward as I did -- as if I were
sprawled all over Redmond.  That's how I felt -- I suppose because
I was a good two inches taller than any one else in the crowd.
I wasn't afraid a Soph might walk over me; I was afraid they'd take
me for an elephant, or an overgrown sample of a potato-fed Islander."

"I suppose the trouble is we can't forgive big Redmond for not
being little Queen's," said Anne, gathering about her the shreds
of her old cheerful philosophy to cover her nakedness of spirit.
"When we left Queen's we knew everybody and had a place of our own.
I suppose we have been unconsciously expecting to take life
up at Redmond just where we left off at Queen's, and now we feel
as if the ground had slipped from under our feet.  I'm thankful
that neither Mrs. Lynde nor Mrs. Elisha Wright know, or ever
will know, my state of mind at present.  They would exult in
saying `I told you so,' and be convinced it was the beginning of
the end.  Whereas it is just the end of the beginning."

"Exactly.  That sounds more Anneish.  In a little while we'll be
acclimated and acquainted, and all will be well.  Anne, did you
notice the girl who stood alone just outside the door of the
coeds' dressing room all the morning -- the pretty one with the
brown eyes and crooked mouth?"

"Yes, I did.  I noticed her particularly because she seemed the
only creature there who LOOKED as lonely and friendless as I FELT.
I had YOU, but she had no one."

"I think she felt pretty all-by-herselfish, too.  Several times I
saw her make a motion as if to cross over to us, but she never
did it -- too shy, I suppose.  I wished she would come.  If I hadn't
felt so much like the aforesaid elephant I'd have gone to her.
But I couldn't lumber across that big hall with all those boys
howling on the stairs.  She was the prettiest freshette I saw today,
but probably favor is deceitful and even beauty is vain on your
first day at Redmond," concluded Priscilla with a laugh.

"I'm going across to Old St. John's after lunch," said Anne.
"I don't know that a graveyard is a very good place to go to get
cheered up, but it seems the only get-at-able place where there
are trees, and trees I must have.  I'll sit on one of those old
slabs and shut my eyes and imagine I'm in the Avonlea woods."

Anne did not do that, however, for she found enough of interest
in Old St. John's to keep her eyes wide open.  They went in by
the entrance gates, past the simple, massive, stone arch
surmounted by the great lion of England.

    "`And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble is gory,
    And those bleak heights henceforth shall be famous in story,'"

quoted Anne, looking at it with a thrill.  They found themselves
in a dim, cool, green place where winds were fond of purring.
Up and down the long grassy aisles they wandered, reading the
quaint, voluminous epitaphs, carved in an age that had more
leisure than our own.

"`Here lieth the body of Albert Crawford, Esq.,'" read Anne
from a worn, gray slab, "`for many years Keeper of His Majesty's
Ordnance at Kingsport.  He served in the army till the peace of
1763, when he retired from bad health.  He was a brave officer,
the best of husbands, the best of fathers, the best of friends.
He died October 29th, 1792, aged 84 years.' There's an epitaph
for you, Prissy.  There is certainly some `scope for imagination'
in it.  How full such a life must have been of adventure!  And as
for his personal qualities, I'm sure human eulogy couldn't go
further.  I wonder if they told him he was all those best things
while he was alive."

"Here's another," said Priscilla.  "Listen --

`To the memory of Alexander Ross, who died on the 22nd of September,
1840, aged 43 years.  This is raised as a tribute of affection by one
whom he served so faithfully for 27 years that he was regarded as a friend,
deserving the fullest confidence and attachment.' "

"A very good epitaph," commented Anne thoughtfully.  "I wouldn't
wish a better.  We are all servants of some sort, and if the fact
that we are faithful can be truthfully inscribed on our tombstones
nothing more need be added.  Here's a sorrowful little gray stone,
Prissy -- `to the memory of a favorite child.' And here is another
`erected to the memory of one who is buried elsewhere.'  I wonder
where that unknown grave is.  Really, Pris, the graveyards of today
will never be as interesting as this.  You were right -- I shall
come here often.  I love it already.  I see we're not alone here
-- there's a girl down at the end of this avenue."

"Yes, and I believe it's the very girl we saw at Redmond this morning.
I've been watching her for five minutes.  She has started to come up
the avenue exactly half a dozen times, and half a dozen times has she
turned and gone back.  Either she's dreadfully shy or she has got
something on her conscience.  Let's go and meet her.  It's easier
to get acquainted in a graveyard than at Redmond, I believe."

They walked down the long grassy arcade towards the stranger, who
was sitting on a gray slab under an enormous willow.  She was
certainly very pretty, with a vivid, irregular, bewitching type
of prettiness.  There was a gloss as of brown nuts on her
satin-smooth hair and a soft, ripe glow on her round cheeks.
Her eyes were big and brown and velvety, under oddly-pointed
black brows, and her crooked mouth was rose-red.  She wore a
smart brown suit, with two very modish little shoes peeping
from beneath it; and her hat of dull pink straw, wreathed with
golden-brown poppies, had the indefinable, unmistakable air
which pertains to the "creation" of an artist in millinery.
Priscilla had a sudden stinging consciousness that her own hat
had been trimmed by her village store milliner, and Anne wondered
uncomfortably if the blouse she had made herself, and which Mrs.
Lynde had fitted, looked VERY countrified and home-made besides
the stranger's smart attire.  For a moment both girls felt like
turning back.

But they had already stopped and turned towards the gray slab.
It was too late to retreat, for the brown-eyed girl had evidently
concluded that they were coming to speak to her.  Instantly she
sprang up and came forward with outstretched hand and a gay,
friendly smile in which there seemed not a shadow of either
shyness or burdened conscience.

"Oh, I want to know who you two girls are," she exclaimed eagerly.
"I've been DYING to know.  I saw you at Redmond this morning.
Say, wasn't it AWFUL there?  For the time I wished I had stayed
home and got married."

Anne and Priscilla both broke into unconstrained laughter at this
unexpected conclusion.  The brown-eyed girl laughed, too.

"I really did.  I COULD have, you know.  Come, let's all sit down
on this gravestone and get acquainted.  It won't be hard.  I know
we're going to adore each other -- I knew it as soon as I saw you
at Redmond this morning.  I wanted so much to go right over and
hug you both."

"Why didn't you?" asked Priscilla.

"Because I simply couldn't make up my mind to do it.  I never can
make up my mind about anything myself -- I'm always afflicted
with indecision.  Just as soon as I decide to do something I feel
in my bones that another course would be the correct one.  It's a
dreadful misfortune, but I was born that way, and there is no use
in blaming me for it, as some people do.  So I couldn't make up
my mind to go and speak to you, much as I wanted to."

"We thought you were too shy," said Anne.

"No, no, dear.  Shyness isn't among the many failings -- or
virtues -- of Philippa Gordon -- Phil for short.  Do call me Phil
right off.  Now, what are your handles?"

"She's Priscilla Grant," said Anne, pointing.

"And SHE'S Anne Shirley," said Priscilla, pointing in turn.

"And we're from the Island," said both together.

"I hail from Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia," said Philippa.

"Bolingbroke!" exclaimed Anne.  "Why, that is where I was born."

"Do you really mean it?  Why, that makes you a Bluenose after all."

"No, it doesn't," retorted Anne.  "Wasn't it Dan O'Connell who
said that if a man was born in a stable it didn't make him a horse?
I'm Island to the core."

"Well, I'm glad you were born in Bolingbroke anyway.  It makes us
kind of neighbors, doesn't it?  And I like that, because when I tell
you secrets it won't be as if I were telling them to a stranger.
I have to tell them.  I can't keep secrets -- it's no use to try.
That's my worst failing -- that, and indecision, as aforesaid.
Would you believe it?  -- it took me half an hour to decide which
hat to wear when I was coming here -- HERE, to a graveyard!
At first I inclined to my brown one with the feather;
but as soon as I put it on I thought this pink one with the
floppy brim would be more becoming.  When I got IT pinned in
place I liked the brown one better.  At last I put them close
together on the bed, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hat pin.
The pin speared the pink one, so I put it on.  It is becoming,
isn't it?  Tell me, what do you think of my looks?"

At this naive demand, made in a perfectly serious tone, Priscilla
laughed again.  But Anne said, impulsively squeezing Philippa's
hand,

"We thought this morning that you were the prettiest girl we saw
at Redmond."

Philippa's crooked mouth flashed into a bewitching, crooked smile
over very white little teeth.

"I thought that myself," was her next astounding statement,
"but I wanted some one else's opinion to bolster mine up.
I can't decide even on my own appearance.  Just as soon as I've
decided that I'm pretty I begin to feel miserably that I'm not.
Besides, have a horrible old great-aunt who is always saying to me,
with a mournful sigh, `You were such a pretty baby.  It's strange how
children change when they grow up.' I adore aunts, but I detest great-
aunts.  Please tell me quite often that I am pretty, if you don't mind.
I feel so much more comfortable when I can believe I'm pretty.  And
I'll be just as obliging to you if you want me to -- I CAN be, with
a clear conscience."

"Thanks," laughed Anne, "but Priscilla and I are so firmly convinced
of our own good looks that we don't need any assurance about them,
so you needn't trouble."

"Oh, you're laughing at me.  I know you think I'm abominably vain,
but I'm not.  There really isn't one spark of vanity in me.
And I'm never a bit grudging about paying compliments to other
girls when they deserve them.  I'm so glad I know you folks.
I came up on Saturday and I've nearly died of homesickness
ever since.  It's a horrible feeling, isn't it?  In Bolingbroke
I'm an important personage, and in Kingsport I'm just nobody!
There were times when I could feel my soul turning a delicate blue.
Where do you hang out?"

"Thirty-eight St. John's Street."

"Better and better.  Why, I'm just around the corner on Wallace Street.
I don't like my boardinghouse, though.  It's bleak and lonesome, and
my room looks out on such an unholy back yard.  It's the ugliest place
in the world.  As for cats -- well, surely ALL the Kingsport cats can't
congregate there at night, but half of them must.  I adore cats on
hearth rugs, snoozing before nice, friendly fires, but cats in back
yards at midnight are totally different animals.  The first night
I was here I cried all night, and so did the cats.  You should have
seen my nose in the morning.  How I wished I had never left home!"

"I don't know how you managed to make up your mind to come to
Redmond at all, if you are really such an undecided person," said
amused Priscilla.

"Bless your heart, honey, I didn't.  It was father who wanted me
to come here.  His heart was set on it -- why, I don't know.  It
seems perfectly ridiculous to think of me studying for a B.A.
degree, doesn't it?  Not but what I can do it, all right.
I have heaps of brains."

"Oh!" said Priscilla vaguely.

"Yes.  But it's such hard work to use them.  And B.A.'s are such
learned, dignified, wise, solemn creatures -- they must be.  No,
_I_ didn't want to come to Redmond.  I did it just to oblige father.
He IS such a duck.  Besides, I knew if I stayed home I'd have to
get married.  Mother wanted that -- wanted it decidedly.  Mother
has plenty of decision.  But I really hated the thought of
being married for a few years yet.  I want to have heaps of fun
before I settle down.  And, ridiculous as the idea of my being a
B.A. is, the idea of my being an old married woman is still more
absurd, isn't it?  I'm only eighteen.  No, I concluded I would
rather come to Redmond than be married.  Besides, how could I
ever have made up my mind which man to marry?"

"Were there so many?" laughed Anne.

"Heaps.  The boys like me awfully -- they really do.  But there
were only two that mattered.  The rest were all too young and too
poor.  I must marry a rich man, you know."

"Why must you?"

"Honey, you couldn't imagine ME being a poor man's wife, could you?
I can't do a single useful thing, and I am VERY extravagant.  Oh, no,
my husband must have heaps of money.  So that narrowed them down to two.
But I couldn't decide between two any easier than between two hundred.
I knew perfectly well that whichever one I chose I'd regret all my life
that I hadn't married the other."

"Didn't you -- love -- either of them?" asked Anne, a little hesitatingly.
It was not easy for her to speak to a stranger of the great mystery and
transformation of life.

"Goodness, no.  _I_ couldn't love anybody.  It isn't in me.
Besides I wouldn't want to.  Being in love makes you a perfect
slave, _I_ think.  And it would give a man such power to hurt you.
I'd be afraid.  No, no, Alec and Alonzo are two dear boys, and I like
them both so much that I really don't know which I like the better.
That is the trouble.  Alec is the best looking, of course, and I
simply couldn't marry a man who wasn't handsome.  He is good-tempered
too, and has lovely, curly, black hair.  He's rather too perfect --
I don't believe I'd like a perfect husband -- somebody I could never
find fault with."

"Then why not marry Alonzo?" asked Priscilla gravely.

"Think of marrying a name like Alonzo!" said Phil dolefully.
"I don't believe I could endure it.  But he has a classic nose,
and it WOULD be a comfort to have a nose in the family that could
be depended on.  I can't depend on mine.  So far, it takes after the
Gordon pattern, but I'm so afraid it will develop Byrne tendencies
as I grow older.  I examine it every day anxiously to make sure it's
still Gordon.  Mother was a Byrne and has the Byrne nose in the
Byrnest degree.  Wait till you see it.  I adore nice noses.
Your nose is awfully nice, Anne Shirley.  Alonzo's nose nearly
turned the balance in his favor.  But ALONZO!  No, I couldn't decide.
If I could have done as I did with the hats -- stood them both up
together, shut my eyes, and jabbed with a hatpin -- it would have
been quite easy."

"What did Alec and Alonzo feel like when you came away?" queried Priscilla.

"Oh, they still have hope.  I told them they'd have to wait
till I could make up my mind.  They're quite willing to wait.
They both worship me, you know.  Meanwhile, I intend to have
a good time.  I expect I shall have heaps of beaux at Redmond.
I can't be happy unless I have, you know.  But don't you think
the freshmen are fearfully homely?

I saw only one really handsome fellow among them.  He went away
before you came.  I heard his chum call him Gilbert.  His chum
had eyes that stuck out THAT FAR.  But you're not going yet, girls?
Don't go yet."

"I think we must," said Anne, rather coldly.  "It's getting late,
and I've some work to do."

"But you'll both come to see me, won't you?" asked Philippa,
getting up and putting an arm around each.  "And let me come to
see you.  I want to be chummy with you.  I've taken such a fancy
to you both.  And I haven't quite disgusted you with my frivolity,
have I?"

"Not quite," laughed Anne, responding to Phil's squeeze, with a
return of cordiality.

"Because I'm not half so silly as I seem on the surface, you
know.  You just accept Philippa Gordon, as the Lord made her,
with all her faults, and I believe you'll come to like her.
Isn't this graveyard a sweet place?  I'd love to be buried here.
Here's a grave I didn't see before -- this one in the iron
railing -- oh, girls, look, see -- the stone says it's the grave
of a middy who was killed in the fight between the Shannon and
the Chesapeake.  Just fancy!"

Anne paused by the railing and looked at the worn stone, her pulses
thrilling with sudden excitement.  The old graveyard, with its
over-arching trees and long aisles of shadows, faded from her sight.
Instead, she saw the Kingsport Harbor of nearly a century agone.
Out of the mist came slowly a great frigate, brilliant with
"the meteor flag of England."  Behind her was another, with
a still, heroic form, wrapped in his own starry flag, lying on
the quarter deck -- the gallant Lawrence.  Time's finger had
turned back his pages, and that was the Shannon sailing
triumphant up the bay with the Chesapeake as her prize.

"Come back, Anne Shirley -- come back," laughed Philippa, pulling
her arm.  "You're a hundred years away from us.  Come back."

Anne came back with a sigh; her eyes were shining softly.

"I've always loved that old story," she said, "and although the
English won that victory, I think it was because of the brave,
defeated commander I love it.  This grave seems to bring it so
near and make it so real.  This poor little middy was only
eighteen.  He `died of desperate wounds received in gallant
action' -- so reads his epitaph.  It is such as a soldier might
wish for."

Before she turned away, Anne unpinned the little cluster of
purple pansies she wore and dropped it softly on the grave of the
boy who had perished in the great sea-duel.

"Well, what do you think of our new friend?" asked Priscilla,
when Phil had left them.

"I like her.  There is something very lovable about her, in spite
of all her nonsense.  I believe, as she says herself, that she
isn't half as silly as she sounds.  She's a dear, kissable baby
-- and I don't know that she'll ever really grow up."

"I like her, too," said Priscilla, decidedly.  "She talks as much
about boys as Ruby Gillis does.  But it always enrages or sickens
me to hear Ruby, whereas I just wanted to laugh good-naturedly at
Phil.  Now, what is the why of that?"

"There is a difference," said Anne meditatively.  "I think it's
because Ruby is really so CONSCIOUS of boys.  She plays at love
and love-making.  Besides, you feel, when she is boasting of her
beaux that she is doing it to rub it well into you that you
haven't half so many.  Now, when Phil talks of her beaux it
sounds as if she was just speaking of chums.  She really looks
upon boys as good comrades, and she is pleased when she has
dozens of them tagging round, simply because she likes to be
popular and to be thought popular.  Even Alex and Alonzo -- I'll
never be able to think of those two names separately after this
-- are to her just two playfellows who want her to play with them
all their lives.  I'm glad we met her, and I'm glad we went to
Old St. John's.  I believe I've put forth a tiny soul-root into
Kingsport soil this afternoon.  I hope so.  I hate to feel transplanted."




Chapter V

Letters from Home


For the next three weeks Anne and Priscilla continued to feel as
strangers in a strange land.  Then, suddenly, everything seemed
to fall into focus -- Redmond, professors, classes, students,
studies, social doings.  Life became homogeneous again, instead
of being made up of detached fragments.  The Freshmen, instead of
being a collection of unrelated individuals, found themselves a
class, with a class spirit, a class yell, class interests, class
antipathies and class ambitions.  They won the day in the annual
"Arts Rush" against the Sophomores, and thereby gained the
respect of all the classes, and an enormous, confidence-giving
opinion of themselves.  For three years the Sophomores had won in
the "rush"; that the victory of this year perched upon the
Freshmen's banner was attributed to the strategic generalship of
Gilbert Blythe, who marshalled the campaign and originated
certain new tactics, which demoralized the Sophs and swept the
Freshmen to triumph.  As a reward of merit he was elected
president of the Freshman Class, a position of honor and
responsibility -- from a Fresh point of view, at least -- coveted
by many.  He was also invited to join the "Lambs" -- Redmondese
for Lamba Theta -- a compliment rarely paid to a Freshman.  As a
preparatory initiation ordeal he had to parade the principal
business streets of Kingsport for a whole day wearing a sunbonnet
and a voluminous kitchen apron of gaudily flowered calico.  This
he did cheerfully, doffing his sunbonnet with courtly grace when
he met ladies of his acquaintance.  Charlie Sloane, who had not
been asked to join the Lambs, told Anne he did not see how Blythe
could do it, and HE, for his part, could never humiliate himself so.

"Fancy Charlie Sloane in a `caliker' apron and a `sunbunnit,' "
giggled Priscilla.  "He'd look exactly like his old Grandmother
Sloane.  Gilbert, now, looked as much like a man in them as in
his own proper habiliments."

Anne and Priscilla found themselves in the thick of the social
life of Redmond.  That this came about so speedily was due in
great measure to Philippa Gordon.  Philippa was the daughter of a
rich and well-known man, and belonged to an old and exclusive
"Bluenose" family.  This, combined with her beauty and charm -- a
charm acknowledged by all who met her -- promptly opened the
gates of all cliques, clubs and classes in Redmond to her; and
where she went Anne and Priscilla went, too.  Phil "adored" Anne
and Priscilla, especially Anne.  She was a loyal little soul,
crystal-free from any form of snobbishness.  "Love me, love my
friends" seemed to be her unconscious motto.  Without effort,
she took them with her into her ever widening circle of
acquaintanceship, and the two Avonlea girls found their social
pathway at Redmond made very easy and pleasant for them, to the
envy and wonderment of the other freshettes, who, lacking
Philippa's sponsorship, were doomed to remain rather on the
fringe of things during their first college year.

To Anne and Priscilla, with their more serious views of life,
Phil remained the amusing, lovable baby she had seemed on their
first meeting.  Yet, as she said herself, she had "heaps" of
brains.  When or where she found time to study was a mystery, for
she seemed always in demand for some kind of "fun," and her home
evenings were crowded with callers.  She had all the "beaux" that
heart could desire, for nine-tenths of the Freshmen and a big
fraction of all the other classes were rivals for her smiles.
She was naively delighted over this, and gleefully recounted each
new conquest to Anne and Priscilla, with comments that might have
made the unlucky lover's ears burn fiercely.

"Alec and Alonzo don't seem to have any serious rival yet,"
remarked Anne, teasingly.

"Not one," agreed Philippa.  "I write them both every week and
tell them all about my young men here.  I'm sure it must amuse them.
But, of course, the one I like best I can't get.  Gilbert Blythe
won't take any notice of me, except to look at me as if I were a
nice little kitten he'd like to pat.  Too well I know the reason.
I owe you a grudge, Queen Anne.  I really ought to hate you and
instead I love you madly, and I'm miserable if I don't see you
every day.  You're different from any girl I ever knew before.
When you look at me in a certain way I feel what an
insignificant, frivolous little beast I am, and I long to
be better and wiser and stronger.  And then I make good
resolutions; but the first nice-looking mannie who comes my way
knocks them all out of my head.  Isn't college life magnificent?
It's so funny to think I hated it that first day.  But if I hadn't
I might never got really acquainted with you.  Anne, please tell me
over again that you like me a little bit.  I yearn to hear it."

"I like you a big bit -- and I think you're a dear, sweet,
adorable, velvety, clawless, little -- kitten," laughed Anne,
"but I don't see when you ever get time to learn your lessons."

Phil must have found time for she held her own in every class of
her year.  Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who
detested coeds, and had bitterly opposed their admission to
Redmond, couldn't floor her.  She led the freshettes everywhere,
except in English, where Anne Shirley left her far behind.  Anne
herself found the studies of her Freshman year very easy, thanks
in great part to the steady work she and Gilbert had put in
during those two past years in Avonlea.  This left her more time
for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed.  But never for a
moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there.  To her, the
happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came
from home.  It was not until she had got her first letters that
she began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home
there.  Before they came, Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles
away; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to
the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same,
instead of two hopelessly segregated existences.  The first batch
contained six letters, from Jane Andrews, Ruby Gillis, Diana
Barry, Marilla, Mrs. Lynde and Davy.  Jane's was a copperplate
production, with every "t" nicely crossed and every "i" precisely
dotted, and not an interesting sentence in it.  She never
mentioned the school, concerning which Anne was avid to hear; she
never answered one of the questions Anne had asked in her letter.
But she told Anne how many yards of lace she had recently
crocheted, and the kind of weather they were having in Avonlea,
and how she intended to have her new dress made, and the way she
felt when her head ached.  Ruby Gillis wrote a gushing epistle
deploring Anne's absence, assuring her she was horribly missed in
everything, asking what the Redmond "fellows" were like, and
filling the rest with accounts of her own harrowing experiences
with her numerous admirers.  It was a silly, harmless letter, and
Anne would have laughed over it had it not been for the postscript.
"Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond, judging from his letters,"
wrote Ruby.  "I don't think Charlie is so stuck on it."

So Gilbert was writing to Ruby!  Very well.  He had a perfect
right to, of course.  Only -- !!  Anne did not know that Ruby had
written the first letter and that Gilbert had answered it from
mere courtesy.  She tossed Ruby's letter aside contemptuously.
But it took all Diana's breezy, newsy, delightful epistle to
banish the sting of Ruby's postscript.  Diana's letter contained
a little too much Fred, but was otherwise crowded and crossed
with items of interest, and Anne almost felt herself back in
Avonlea while reading it.  Marilla's was a rather prim and
colorless epistle, severely innocent of gossip or emotion.
Yet somehow it conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome, simple
life at Green Gables, with its savor of ancient peace, and the
steadfast abiding love that was there for her.  Mrs. Lynde's
letter was full of church news.  Having broken up housekeeping,
Mrs. Lynde had more time than ever to devote to church affairs
and had flung herself into them heart and soul.  She was at
present much worked up over the poor "supplies" they were having
in the vacant Avonlea pulpit.

"I don't believe any but fools enter the ministry nowadays," she
wrote bitterly.  "Such candidates as they have sent us, and such
stuff as they preach!  Half of it ain't true, and, what's worse,
it ain't sound doctrine.  The one we have now is the worst of the
lot.  He mostly takes a text and preaches about something else.
And he says he doesn't believe all the heathen will be eternally
lost.  The idea!  If they won't all the money we've been giving
to Foreign Missions will be clean wasted, that's what!  Last
Sunday night he announced that next Sunday he'd preach on the
axe-head that swam.  I think he'd better confine himself to the
Bible and leave sensational subjects alone.  Things have come to
a pretty pass if a minister can't find enough in Holy Writ to
preach about, that's what.  What church do you attend, Anne?  I
hope you go regularly.  People are apt to get so careless about
church-going away from home, and I understand college students
are great sinners in this respect.  I'm told many of them actually
study their lessons on Sunday.  I hope you'll never sink that low,
Anne.  Remember how you were brought up.  And be very careful what
friends you make.  You never know what sort of creatures are in
them colleges.  Outwardly they may be as whited sepulchers and
inwardly as ravening wolves, that's what.  You'd better not have
anything to say to any young man who isn't from the Island.

"I forgot to tell you what happened the day the minister called
here.  It was the funniest thing I ever saw.  I said to Marilla,
`If Anne had been here wouldn't she have had a laugh?'  Even
Marilla laughed.  You know he's a very short, fat little man with
bow legs.  Well, that old pig of Mr. Harrison's -- the big, tall
one -- had wandered over here that day again and broke into the
yard, and it got into the back porch, unbeknowns to us, and it
was there when the minister appeared in the doorway.  It made one
wild bolt to get out, but there was nowhere to bolt to except
between them bow legs.  So there it went, and, being as it was so
big and the minister so little, it took him clean off his feet
and carried him away.  His hat went one way and his cane another,
just as Marilla and I got to the door.  I'll never forget the
look of him.  And that poor pig was near scared to death.  I'll
never be able to read that account in the Bible of the swine that
rushed madly down the steep place into the sea without seeing
Mr. Harrison's pig careering down the hill with that minister.
I guess the pig thought he had the Old Boy on his back instead
of inside of him.  I was thankful the twins weren't about.
It wouldn't have been the right thing for them to have seen
a minister in such an undignified predicament.  Just before
they got to the brook the minister jumped off or fell off.
The pig rushed through the brook like mad and up through the woods.
Marilla and I run down and helped the minister get up and brush
his coat.  He wasn't hurt, but he was mad.  He seemed to hold
Marilla and me responsible for it all, though we told him the pig
didn't belong to us, and had been pestering us all summer.
Besides, what did he come to the back door for?  You'd never have
caught Mr. Allan doing that.  It'll be a long time before we get
a man like Mr. Allan.  But it's an ill wind that blows no good.
We've never seen hoof or hair of that pig since, and it's my
belief we never will.

"Things is pretty quiet in Avonlea.  I don't find Green Gables
as lonesome as I expected.  I think I'll start another cotton
warp quilt this winter.  Mrs. Silas Sloane has a handsome new
apple-leaf pattern.

"When I feel that I must have some excitement I read the murder
trials in that Boston paper my niece sends me.  I never used to
do it, but they're real interesting.  The States must be an awful
place.  I hope you'll never go there, Anne.  But the way girls
roam over the earth now is something terrible.  It always makes
me think of Satan in the Book of Job, going to and fro and walking
up and down.  I don't believe the Lord ever intended it, that's what.

"Davy has been pretty good since you went away.  One day he was
bad and Marilla punished him by making him wear Dora's apron all
day, and then he went and cut all Dora's aprons up.  I spanked
him for that and then he went and chased my rooster to death.

"The MacPhersons have moved down to my place.  She's a great
housekeeper and very particular.  She's rooted all my June lilies
up because she says they make a garden look so untidy.  Thomas
set them lilies out when we were married.  Her husband seems a
nice sort of a man, but she can't get over being an old maid,
that's what.

"Don't study too hard, and be sure and put your winter
underclothes on as soon as the weather gets cool.
Marilla worries a lot about you, but I tell her you've
got a lot more sense than I ever thought you would have
at one time, and that you'll be all right."

Davy's letter plunged into a grievance at the start.

"Dear anne, please write and tell marilla not to tie me to the
rale of the bridge when I go fishing the boys make fun of me when
she does.  Its awful lonesome here without you but grate fun in
school.  Jane andrews is crosser than you.  I scared mrs. lynde
with a jacky lantern last nite.  She was offel mad and she was
mad cause I chased her old rooster round the yard till he fell
down ded.  I didn't mean to make him fall down ded.  What made
him die, anne, I want to know.  mrs. lynde threw him into the
pig pen she mite of sold him to mr. blair.  mr. blair is giving
50 sense apeace for good ded roosters now.  I herd mrs. lynde
asking the minister to pray for her.  What did she do that was so
bad, anne, I want to know.  I've got a kite with a magnificent
tail, anne.  Milty bolter told me a grate story in school
yesterday.  it is troo.  old Joe Mosey and Leon were playing
cards one nite last week in the woods.  The cards were on a stump
and a big black man bigger than the trees come along and grabbed
the cards and the stump and disapered with a noys like thunder.
Ill bet they were skared.  Milty says the black man was the old
harry.  was he, anne, I want to know.  Mr. kimball over at
spenservale is very sick and will have to go to the hospitable.
please excuse me while I ask marilla if thats spelled rite.
Marilla says its the silem he has to go to not the other place.
He thinks he has a snake inside of him.  whats it like to have a
snake inside of you, anne.  I want to know.  mrs. lawrence bell
is sick to.  mrs. lynde says that all that is the matter with
her is that she thinks too much about her insides."

"I wonder," said Anne, as she folded up her letters, "what Mrs.
Lynde would think of Philippa."




Chapter VI

In the Park


"What are you going to do with yourselves today, girls?"
asked Philippa, popping into Anne's room one Saturday afternoon.

"We are going for a walk in the park," answered Anne.  "I ought to
stay in and finish my blouse.  But I couldn't sew on a day like this.
There's something in the air that gets into my blood and makes a sort
of glory in my soul.  My fingers would twitch and I'd sew a crooked seam.
So it's ho for the park and the pines."

"Does `we' include any one but yourself and Priscilla?"

"Yes, it includes Gilbert and Charlie, and we'll be very glad if
it will include you, also."

"But," said Philippa dolefully, "if I go I'll have to be gooseberry,
and that will be a new experience for Philippa Gordon."

"Well, new experiences are broadening.  Come along, and you'll be
able to sympathize with all poor souls who have to play
gooseberry often.  But where are all the victims?"

"Oh, I was tired of them all and simply couldn't be bothered with
any of them today.  Besides, I've been feeling a little blue --
just a pale, elusive azure.  It isn't serious enough for anything
darker.  I wrote Alec and Alonzo last week.  I put the letters
into envelopes and addressed them, but I didn't seal them up.
That evening something funny happened.  That is, Alec would think
it funny, but Alonzo wouldn't be likely to.  I was in a hurry, so
I snatched Alec's letter -- as I thought -- out of the envelope
and scribbled down a postscript.  Then I mailed both letters.  I
got Alonzo's reply this morning.  Girls, I had put that postscript
to his letter and he was furious.  Of course he'll get over it --
and I don't care if he doesn't -- but it spoiled my day.
So I thought I'd come to you darlings to get cheered up.
After the football season opens I won't have any spare Saturday
afternoons.  I adore football.  I've got the most gorgeous
cap and sweater striped in Redmond colors to wear to the games.
To be sure, a little way off I'll look like a walking barber's pole.
Do you know that that Gilbert of yours has been elected Captain of
the Freshman football team?"

"Yes, he told us so last evening," said Priscilla, seeing that
outraged Anne would not answer.  "He and Charlie were down.
We knew they were coming, so we painstakingly put out of sight
or out of reach all Miss Ada's cushions.  That very elaborate one
with the raised embroidery I dropped on the floor in the corner
behind the chair it was on.  I thought it would be safe there.
But would you believe it?  Charlie Sloane made for that chair,
noticed the cushion behind it, solemnly fished it up, and sat on
it the whole evening.  Such a wreck of a cushion as it was!  Poor
Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh, so reproachfully,
why I had allowed it to be sat upon.  I told her I hadn't -- that
it was a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate
Sloanishness and I wasn't a match for both combined."

"Miss Ada's cushions are really getting on my nerves," said Anne.
"She finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered
within an inch of their lives.  There being absolutely no other
cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall
on the stair landing.  They topple over half the time and if we
come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them.  Last
Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the
perils of the sea, I added in thought `and for all those who live
in houses where cushions are loved not wisely but too well!'
There! we're ready, and I see the boys coming through Old St. John's.
Do you cast in your lot with us, Phil?"

"I'll go, if I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie.  That will be
a bearable degree of gooseberry.  That Gilbert of yours is a
darling, Anne, but why does he go around so much with Goggle-eyes?"

Anne stiffened.  She had no great liking for Charlie Sloane; but
he was of Avonlea, so no outsider had any business to laugh at him.

"Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends," she said coldly.
"Charlie is a nice boy.  He's not to blame for his eyes."

"Don't tell me that!  He is!  He must have done something
dreadful in a previous existence to be punished with such eyes.
Pris and I are going to have such sport with him this afternoon.
We'll make fun of him to his face and he'll never know it."

Doubtless, "the abandoned P's," as Anne called them, did carry
out their amiable intentions.  But Sloane was blissfully
ignorant; he thought he was quite a fine fellow to be walking
with two such coeds, especially Philippa Gordon, the class beauty
and belle.  It must surely impress Anne.  She would see that some
people appreciated him at his real value.

Gilbert and Anne loitered a little behind the others, enjoying
the calm, still beauty of the autumn afternoon under the pines of
the park, on the road that climbed and twisted round the harbor shore.

"The silence here is like a prayer, isn't it?" said Anne,
her face upturned to the shining sky.  "How I love the pines!
They seem to strike their roots deep into the romance of all the ages.
It is so comforting to creep away now and then for a good talk with them.
I always feel so happy out here."

      "`And so in mountain solitudes o'ertaken
          As by some spell divine,
      Their cares drop from them like the needles shaken
          From out the gusty pine,'"

quoted Gilbert.

"They make our little ambitions seem rather petty, don't they, Anne?"

"I think, if ever any great sorrow came to me, I would come to the
pines for comfort," said Anne dreamily.

"I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne," said Gilbert,
who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous
creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the
highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that
the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer
most sharply.

"But there must -- sometime," mused Anne.  "Life seems like a cup
of glory held to my lips just now.  But there must be some
bitterness in it -- there is in every cup.  I shall taste mine
some day.  Well, I hope I shall be strong and brave to meet it.
And I hope it won't be through my own fault that it will come.
Do you remember what Dr. Davis said last Sunday evening -- that
the sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them,
while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or
wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear?  But we mustn't talk
of sorrow on an afternoon like this.  It's meant for the sheer
joy of living, isn't it?"

"If I had my way I'd shut everything out of your life but
happiness and pleasure, Anne," said Gilbert in the tone that
meant "danger ahead."

"Then you would be very unwise," rejoined Anne hastily.  "I'm sure
no life can be properly developed and rounded out without some
trial and sorrow -- though I suppose it is only when we are pretty
comfortable that we admit it.  Come -- the others have got to the
pavilion and are beckoning to us."

They all sat down in the little pavilion to watch an autumn
sunset of deep red fire and pallid gold.  To their left lay
Kingsport, its roofs and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke.
To their right lay the harbor, taking on tints of rose and copper as
it stretched out into the sunset.  Before them the water shimmered,
satin smooth and silver gray, and beyond, clean shaven William's
Island loomed out of the mist, guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog.
Its lighthouse beacon flared through the mist like a baleful star,
and was answered by another in the far horizon.

"Did you ever see such a strong-looking place?" asked Philippa.
"I don't want William's Island especially, but I'm sure I couldn't
get it if I did.  Look at that sentry on the summit of the fort,
right beside the flag.  Doesn't he look as if he had stepped out
of a romance?"

"Speaking of romance," said Priscilla, "we've been looking for
heather -- but, of course, we couldn't find any.  It's too late
in the season, I suppose."

"Heather!" exclaimed Anne.  "Heather doesn't grow in America,
does it?"

"There are just two patches of it in the whole continent," said Phil,
"one right here in the park, and one somewhere else in Nova Scotia,
I forget where.  The famous Highland Regiment, the Black Watch,
camped here one year, and, when the men shook out the straw of
their beds in the spring, some seeds of heather took root."

"Oh, how delightful!" said enchanted Anne.

"Let's go home around by Spofford Avenue," suggested Gilbert.
"We can see all `the handsome houses where the wealthy nobles
dwell.' Spofford Avenue is the finest residential street in
Kingsport.  Nobody can build on it unless he's a millionaire."

"Oh, do," said Phil.  "There's a perfectly killing little place I
want to show you, Anne.  IT wasn't built by a millionaire.  It's
the first place after you leave the park, and must have grown
while Spofford Avenue was still a country road.  It DID grow --
it wasn't built!  I don't care for the houses on the Avenue.
They're too brand new and plateglassy.  But this little spot is a
dream -- and its name -- but wait till you see it."

They saw it as they walked up the pine-fringed hill from the park.
Just on the crest, where Spofford Avenue petered out into a
plain road, was a little white frame house with groups of pines
on either side of it, stretching their arms protectingly over its
low roof.  It was covered with red and gold vines, through which
its green-shuttered windows peeped.  Before it was a tiny garden,
surrounded by a low stone wall.  October though it was, the
garden was still very sweet with dear, old-fashioned, unworldly
flowers and shrubs -- sweet may, southern-wood, lemon verbena,
alyssum, petunias, marigolds and chrysanthemums.  A tiny brick
wall, in herring-bone pattern, led from the gate to the front
porch.  The whole place might have been transplanted from some
remote country village; yet there was something about it that
made its nearest neighbor, the big lawn-encircled palace of a
tobacco king, look exceedingly crude and showy and ill-bred by
contrast.  As Phil said, it was the difference between being born
and being made.

"It's the dearest place I ever saw," said Anne delightedly.  "It
gives me one of my old, delightful funny aches.  It's dearer and
quainter than even Miss Lavendar's stone house."

"It's the name I want you to notice especially," said Phil.
"Look -- in white letters, around the archway over the gate.
`Patty's Place.' Isn't that killing?  Especially on this Avenue
of Pinehursts and Elmwolds and Cedarcrofts?  `Patty's Place,'
if you please!  I adore it."

"Have you any idea who Patty is?" asked Priscilla.

"Patty Spofford is the name of the old lady who owns it, I've
discovered.  She lives there with her niece, and they've lived
there for hundreds of years, more or less -- maybe a little less,
Anne.  Exaggeration is merely a flight of poetic fancy.  I understand
that wealthy folk have tried to buy the lot time and again -- it's
really worth a small fortune now, you know -- but `Patty' won't sell
upon any consideration.  And there's an apple orchard behind the house
in place of a back yard -- you'll see it when we get a little past --
a real apple orchard on Spofford Avenue!"

"I'm going to dream about `Patty's Place' tonight," said Anne.
"Why, I feel as if I belonged to it.  I wonder if, by any chance,
we'll ever see the inside of it."

"It isn't likely," said Priscilla.

Anne smiled mysteriously.

"No, it isn't likely.  But I believe it will happen.  I have a
queer, creepy, crawly feeling -- you can call it a presentiment,
if you like -- that `Patty's Place' and I are going to be better
acquainted yet."




Chapter VII

Home Again


Those first three weeks at Redmond had seemed long; but the rest
of the term flew by on wings of wind.  Before they realized it
the Redmond students found themselves in the grind of Christmas
examinations, emerging therefrom more or less triumphantly.  The
honor of leading in the Freshman classes fluctuated between Anne,
Gilbert and Philippa; Priscilla did very well; Charlie Sloane
scraped through respectably, and comported himself as complacently
as if he had led in everything.

"I can't really believe that this time tomorrow I'll be in Green Gables,"
said Anne on the night before departure.  "But I shall be.  And you, Phil,
will be in Bolingbroke with Alec and Alonzo."

"I'm longing to see them," admitted Phil, between the chocolate
she was nibbling.  "They really are such dear boys, you know.
There's to be no end of dances and drives and general jamborees.
I shall never forgive you, Queen Anne, for not coming home with
me for the holidays."

"`Never' means three days with you, Phil.  It was dear of you to
ask me -- and I'd love to go to Bolingbroke some day.  But I
can't go this year -- I MUST go home.  You don't know how my
heart longs for it."

"You won't have much of a time," said Phil scornfully.  "There'll
be one or two quilting parties, I suppose; and all the old
gossips will talk you over to your face and behind your back.
You'll die of lonesomeness, child."

"In Avonlea?" said Anne, highly amused.

"Now, if you'd come with me you'd have a perfectly gorgeous time.
Bolingbroke would go wild over you, Queen Anne -- your hair and
your style and, oh, everything!  You're so DIFFERENT.  You'd be
such a success -- and I would bask in reflected glory -- `not the
rose but near the rose.' Do come, after all, Anne."

"Your picture of social triumphs is quite fascinating, Phil, but
I'll paint one to offset it.  I'm going home to an old country
farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple
orchards.  There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond,
where I've heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind.
There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now.  There
will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one
short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model,
the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a `holy terror.' There will be a
little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick,
and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the
height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress.  How do you like
my picture, Phil?"

"It seems a very dull one," said Phil, with a grimace.

"Oh, but I've left out the transforming thing," said Anne softly.
"There'll be love there, Phil -- faithful, tender love, such as
I'll never find anywhere else in the world -- love that's waiting
for me.  That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn't it, even if
the colors are not very brilliant?"

Phil silently got up, tossed her box of chocolates away, went up
to Anne, and put her arms about her.

"Anne, I wish I was like you," she said soberly.

Diana met Anne at the Carmody station the next night, and they
drove home together under silent, star-sown depths of sky.  Green
Gables had a very festal appearance as they drove up the lane.
There was a light in every window, the glow breaking out through
the darkness like flame-red blossoms swung against the dark
background of the Haunted Wood.  And in the yard was a brave
bonfire with two gay little figures dancing around it, one of
which gave an unearthly yell as the buggy turned in under the poplars.

"Davy means that for an Indian war-whoop," said Diana.  "Mr.
Harrison's hired boy taught it to him, and he's been practicing
it up to welcome you with.  Mrs. Lynde says it has worn her
nerves to a frazzle.  He creeps up behind her, you know, and then
lets go.  He was determined to have a bonfire for you, too.  He's
been piling up branches for a fortnight and pestering Marilla to
be let pour some kerosene oil over it before setting it on fire.
I guess she did, by the smell, though Mrs. Lynde said up to the last
that Davy would blow himself and everybody else up if he was let."

Anne was out of the buggy by this time, and Davy was rapturously
hugging her knees, while even Dora was clinging to her hand.

"Isn't that a bully bonfire, Anne?  Just let me show you how to
poke it -- see the sparks?  I did it for you, Anne, 'cause I was
so glad you were coming home."

The kitchen door opened and Marilla's spare form darkened against
the inner light.  She preferred to meet Anne in the shadows, for
she was horribly afraid that she was going to cry with joy --
she, stern, repressed Marilla, who thought all display of deep
emotion unseemly.  Mrs. Lynde was behind her, sonsy, kindly,
matronly, as of yore.  The love that Anne had told Phil was
waiting for her surrounded her and enfolded her with its blessing
and its sweetness.  Nothing, after all, could compare with old ties,
old friends, and old Green Gables!  How starry Anne's eyes were
as they sat down to the loaded supper table, how pink her cheeks,
how silver-clear her laughter!  And Diana was going to stay all
night, too.  How like the dear old times it was!  And the
rose-bud tea-set graced the table!  With Marilla the force of
nature could no further go.

"I suppose you and Diana will now proceed to talk all night,"
said Marilla sarcastically, as the girls went upstairs.
Marilla was always sarcastic after any self-betrayal.

"Yes," agreed Anne gaily, "but I'm going to put Davy to bed first.
He insists on that."

"You bet," said Davy, as they went along the hall.  "I want somebody
to say my prayers to again.  It's no fun saying them alone."

"You don't say them alone, Davy.  God is always with you to hear you."

"Well, I can't see Him," objected Davy.  "I want to pray to somebody
I can see, but I WON'T say them to Mrs. Lynde or Marilla, there now!"

Nevertheless, when Davy was garbed in his gray flannel nighty, he
did not seem in a hurry to begin.  He stood before Anne,
shuffling one bare foot over the other, and looked undecided.

"Come, dear, kneel down," said Anne.

Davy came and buried his head in Anne's lap, but he did not kneel down.

"Anne," he said in a muffled voice.  "I don't feel like praying after all.
I haven't felt like it for a week now.  I -- I DIDN'T pray last night nor
the night before."

"Why not, Davy?" asked Anne gently.

"You -- you won't be mad if I tell you?" implored Davy.

Anne lifted the little gray-flannelled body on her knee and
cuddled his head on her arm.

"Do I ever get `mad' when you tell me things, Davy?"

"No-o-o, you never do.  But you get sorry, and that's worse.
You'll be awful sorry when I tell you this, Anne -- and you'll
be 'shamed of me, I s'pose."

"Have you done something naughty, Davy, and is that why you can't
say your prayers?"

"No, I haven't done anything naughty -- yet.  But I want to do it."

"What is it, Davy?"

"I -- I want to say a bad word, Anne," blurted out Davy, with a
desperate effort.  "I heard Mr. Harrison's hired boy say it one
day last week, and ever since I've been wanting to say it ALL the
time -- even when I'm saying my prayers."

"Say it then, Davy."

Davy lifted his flushed face in amazement.

"But, Anne, it's an AWFUL bad word."

"SAY IT!"

Davy gave her another incredulous look, then in a low voice he
said the dreadful word.  The next minute his face was burrowing
against her.

"Oh, Anne, I'll never say it again -- never.  I'll never WANT to
say it again.  I knew it was bad, but I didn't s'pose it was so
-- so -- I didn't s'pose it was like THAT."

"No, I don't think you'll ever want to say it again, Davy -- or
think it, either.  And I wouldn't go about much with Mr. Harrison's
hired boy if I were you."

"He can make bully war-whoops," said Davy a little regretfully.

"But you don't want your mind filled with bad words, do you, Davy
-- words that will poison it and drive out all that is good and manly?"

"No," said Davy, owl-eyed with introspection.

"Then don't go with those people who use them.  And now do you
feel as if you could say your prayers, Davy?"

"Oh, yes," said Davy, eagerly wriggling down on his knees, "I can
say them now all right.  I ain't scared now to say `if I should
die before I wake,' like I was when I was wanting to say that word."

Probably Anne and Diana did empty out their souls to each other
that night, but no record of their confidences has been preserved.
They both looked as fresh and bright-eyed at breakfast as only
youth can look after unlawful hours of revelry and confession.
There had been no snow up to this time, but as Diana crossed
the old log bridge on her homeward way the white flakes were
beginning to flutter down over the fields and woods, russet
and gray in their dreamless sleep.  Soon the far-away slopes
and hills were dim and wraith-like through their gauzy scarfing,
as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal veil over her hair
and was waiting for her wintry bridegroom.  So they had a white
Christmas after all, and a very pleasant day it was.  In the
forenoon letters and gifts came from Miss Lavendar and Paul;
Anne opened them in the cheerful Green Gables kitchen, which was
filled with what Davy, sniffing in ecstasy, called "pretty smells."

"Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving are settled in their new home now,"
reported Anne.  "I am sure Miss Lavendar is perfectly happy --
I know it by the general tone of her letter -- but there's a
note from Charlotta the Fourth.  She doesn't like Boston at all,
and she is fearfully homesick.  Miss Lavendar wants me to go
through to Echo Lodge some day while I'm home and light a fire to
air it, and see that the cushions aren't getting moldy.  I think
I'll get Diana to go over with me next week, and we can spend the
evening with Theodora Dix.  I want to see Theodora.  By the way,
is Ludovic Speed still going to see her?"

"They say so," said Marilla, "and he's likely to continue it.
Folks have given up expecting that that courtship will ever
arrive anywhere."

"I'd hurry him up a bit, if I was Theodora, that's what," said
Mrs. Lynde.  And there is not the slightest doubt but that she would.

There was also a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of
Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they
looked when they saw her.

"But I can't make up my mind yet which to marry," wrote Phil.
"I do wish you had come with me to decide for me.  Some one
will have to.  When I saw Alec my heart gave a great thump and I
thought, `He might be the right one.'  And then, when Alonzo came,
thump went my heart again.  So that's no guide, though it should be,
according to all the novels I've ever read.  Now, Anne, YOUR heart
wouldn't thump for anybody but the genuine Prince Charming, would it?
There must be something radically wrong with mine.  But I'm having a
perfectly gorgeous time.  How I wish you were here!  It's snowing
today, and I'm rapturous.  I was so afraid we'd have a green
Christmas and I loathe them.  You know, when Christmas is a dirty
grayey-browney affair, looking as if it had been left over a hundred
years ago and had been in soak ever since, it is called a GREEN Christmas!
Don't ask me why.  As Lord Dundreary says, `there are thome thingth no
fellow can underthtand.'

"Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you
hadn't any money with you to pay your fare?  I did, the other day.
It's quite awful.  I had a nickel with me when I got on the car.
I thought it was in the left pocket of my coat.  When I got
settled down comfortably I felt for it.  It wasn't there.
I had a cold chill.  I felt in the other pocket.  Not there.
I had another chill.  Then I felt in a little inside pocket.
All in vain.  I had two chills at once.

"I took off my gloves, laid them on the seat, and went over all
my pockets again.  It was not there.  I stood up and shook myself,
and then looked on the floor.  The car was full of people, who
were going home from the opera, and they all stared at me, but
I was past caring for a little thing like that.

"But I could not find my fare.  I concluded I must have put it in
my mouth and swallowed it inadvertently.

"I didn't know what to do.  Would the conductor, I wondered, stop
the car and put me off in ignominy and shame?  Was it possible
that I could convince him that I was merely the victim of my own
absentmindedness, and not an unprincipled creature trying to
obtain a ride upon false pretenses?  How I wished that Alec
or Alonzo were there.  But they weren't because I wanted them.
If I HADN'T wanted them they would have been there by the dozen.
And I couldn't decide what to say to the conductor when he came
around.  As soon as I got one sentence of explanation mapped out
in my mind I felt nobody could believe it and I must compose
another.  It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in
Providence, and for all the comfort that gave me I might as well
have been the old lady who, when told by the captain during a
storm that she must put her trust in the Almighty exclaimed,
`Oh, Captain, is it as bad as that?'

"Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and
the conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me,
I suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm.
I hadn't swallowed it after all.  I meekly fished it out of the
index finger of my glove and poked it in the box.  I smiled at
everybody and felt that it was a beautiful world."

The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least pleasant of many
pleasant holiday outings.  Anne and Diana went back to it by the
old way of the beech woods, carrying a lunch basket with them.
Echo Lodge, which had been closed ever since Miss Lavendar's
wedding, was briefly thrown open to wind and sunshine once more,
and firelight glimmered again in the little rooms.  The perfume
of Miss Lavendar's rose bowl still filled the air.  It was hardly
possible to believe that Miss Lavendar would not come tripping in
presently, with her brown eyes a-star with welcome, and that
Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and wide of smile, would not
pop through the door.  Paul, too, seemed hovering around, with
his fairy fancies.

"It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the
old time glimpses of the moon," laughed Anne.  "Let's go out and
see if the echoes are at home.  Bring the old horn.  It is still
behind the kitchen door."

The echoes were at home, over the white river, as silver-clear
and multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased to answer the
girls locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in the perfect
half hour that follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset.




Chapter VIII

Anne's First Proposal


The old year did not slip away in a green twilight, with a
pinky-yellow sunset.  Instead, it went out with a wild, white
bluster and blow.  It was one of the nights when the storm-wind
hurtles over the frozen meadows and black hollows, and moans
around the eaves like a lost creature, and drives the snow
sharply against the shaking panes.

"Just the sort of night people like to cuddle down between their
blankets and count their mercies," said Anne to Jane Andrews, who
had come up to spend the afternoon and stay all night.  But when
they were cuddled between their blankets, in Anne's little porch
room, it was not her mercies of which Jane was thinking.

"Anne," she said very solemnly, "I want to tell you something.  May I"

Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party Ruby Gillis had
given the night before.  She would much rather have gone to sleep
than listen to Jane's confidences, which she was sure would bore her.
She had no prophetic inkling of what was coming.  Probably Jane was
engaged, too; rumor averred that Ruby Gillis was engaged to the
Spencervale schoolteacher, about whom all the girls were said
to be quite wild.

"I'll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet,"
thought Anne, drowsily.  Aloud she said, "Of course."

"Anne," said Jane, still more solemnly, "what do you think of my
brother Billy?"

Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered
helplessly in her thoughts.  Goodness, what DID she think of
Billy Andrews?  She had never thought ANYTHING about him --
round-faced, stupid, perpetually smiling, good-natured Billy
Andrews.  Did ANYBODY ever think about Billy Andrews?

"I -- I don't understand, Jane," she stammered.  "What do you
mean -- exactly?"

"Do you like Billy?" asked Jane bluntly.

"Why -- why -- yes, I like him, of course," gasped Anne,
wondering if she were telling the literal truth.  Certainly she
did not DISlike Billy.  But could the indifferent tolerance with
which she regarded him, when he happened to be in her range of
vision, be considered positive enough for liking?  WHAT was Jane
trying to elucidate?

"Would you like him for a husband?" asked Jane calmly.

"A husband!"  Anne had been sitting up in bed, the better to
wrestle with the problem of her exact opinion of Billy Andrews.
Now she fell flatly back on her pillows, the very breath gone
out of her.  "Whose husband?"

"Yours, of course," answered Jane.  "Billy wants to marry you.
He's always been crazy about you -- and now father has given him
the upper farm in his own name and there's nothing to prevent him
from getting married.  But he's so shy he couldn't ask you
himself if you'd have him, so he got me to do it.  I'd rather not
have, but he gave me no peace till I said I would, if I got a
good chance.  What do you think about it, Anne?"

Was it a dream?  Was it one of those nightmare things in which
you find yourself engaged or married to some one you hate or
don't know, without the slightest idea how it ever came about?
No, she, Anne Shirley, was lying there, wide awake, in her own bed,
and Jane Andrews was beside her, calmly proposing for her brother Billy.
Anne did not know whether she wanted to writhe or laugh; but she could
do neither, for Jane's feelings must not be hurt.

"I -- I couldn't marry Bill, you know, Jane," she managed to gasp.
"Why, such an idea never occurred to me -- never!"

"I don't suppose it did," agreed Jane.  "Billy has always been far
too shy to think of courting.  But you might think it over, Anne.
Billy is a good fellow.  I must say that, if he is my brother.
He has no bad habits and he's a great worker, and you can depend
on him.  `A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.' He told me to
tell you he'd be quite willing to wait till you got through college,
if you insisted, though he'd RATHER get married this spring before
the planting begins.  He'd always be very good to you, I'm sure,
and you know, Anne, I'd love to have you for a sister."

"I can't marry Billy," said Anne decidedly.  She had recovered
her wits, and was even feeling a little angry.  It was all so
ridiculous.  "There is no use thinking of it, Jane.  I don't care
anything for him in that way, and you must tell him so."

"Well, I didn't suppose you would," said Jane with a resigned
sigh, feeling that she had done her best.  "I told Billy I didn't
believe it was a bit of use to ask you, but he insisted.  Well,
you've made your decision, Anne, and I hope you won't regret it."

Jane spoke rather coldly.  She had been perfectly sure that the
enamored Billy had no chance at all of inducing Anne to marry him.
Nevertheless, she felt a little resentment that Anne Shirley,
who was, after all, merely an adopted orphan, without kith or kin,
should refuse her brother -- one of the Avonlea Andrews.  Well,
pride sometimes goes before a fall, Jane reflected ominously.

Anne permitted herself to smile in the darkness over the idea
that she might ever regret not marrying Billy Andrews.

"I hope Billy won't feel very badly over it," she said nicely.

Jane made a movement as if she were tossing her head on her pillow.

"Oh, he won't break his heart.  Billy has too much good sense for that.
He likes Nettie Blewett pretty well, too, and mother would rather he
married her than any one.  She's such a good manager and saver.
I think, when Billy is once sure you won't have him, he'll take Nettie.
Please don't mention this to any one, will you, Anne?"

"Certainly not," said Anne, who had no desire whatever to publish
abroad the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry her, preferring her,
when all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett.  Nettie Blewett!

"And now I suppose we'd better go to sleep," suggested Jane.

To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but, though very unlike
MacBeth in most respects, she had certainly contrived to murder
sleep for Anne.  That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow
until the wee sma's, but her meditations were far from being romantic.
It was not, however, until the next morning that she had an opportunity
to indulge in a good laugh over the whole affair.  When Jane had gone home
-- still with a hint of frost in voice and manner because Anne had declined
so ungratefully and decidedly the honor of an alliance with the House of
Andrews -- Anne retreated to the porch room, shut the door, and had her
laugh out at last.

"If I could only share the joke with some one!" she thought.
"But I can't.  Diana is the only one I'd want to tell, and, even
if I hadn't sworn secrecy to Jane, I can't tell Diana things now.
She tells everything to Fred -- I know she does.  Well, I've had
my first proposal.  I supposed it would come some day -- but I
certainly never thought it would be by proxy.  It's awfully funny
-- and yet there's a sting in it, too, somehow."

Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she
did not put it into words.  She had had her secret dreams of
the first time some one should ask her the great question.
And it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful:
and the "some one" was to be very handsome and dark-eyed and
distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether he were Prince Charming
to be enraptured with "yes," or one to whom a regretful, beautifully
worded, but hopeless refusal must be given.  If the latter, the
refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would be next best
thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing her hand,
assuring her of his unalterable, life-long devotion.  And it would
always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad about, also.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque.
Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had
given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn't "have him" Nettie Blewett would.
There was romance for you, with a vengeance!  Anne laughed -- and then sighed.
The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream.  Would the painful
process go on until everything became prosaic and hum-drum?




Chapter IX


An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend


The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first --
"actually whizzed away," Philippa said.  Anne enjoyed it
thoroughly in all its phases -- the stimulating class rivalry,
the making and deepening of new and helpful friendships, the gay
little social stunts, the doings of the various societies of
which she was a member, the widening of horizons and interests.
She studied hard, for she had made up her mind to win the Thorburn
Scholarship in English.  This being won, meant that she could
come back to Redmond the next year without trenching on Marilla's
small savings -- something Anne was determined she would not do.

Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found
plenty of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John's.
He was Anne's escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she
knew that their names were coupled in Redmond gossip.  Anne raged
over this but was helpless; she could not cast an old friend like
Gilbert aside, especially when he had grown suddenly wise and
wary, as behooved him in the dangerous proximity of more than one
Redmond youth who would gladly have taken his place by the side
of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes were as alluring
as stars of evening.  Anne was never attended by the crowd of
willing victims who hovered around Philippa's conquering march
through her Freshman year; but there was a lanky, brainy Freshie,
a jolly, little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned Junior who
all liked to call at Thirty-eight, St. John's, and talk over
'ologies and 'isms, as well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in
the becushioned parlor of that domicile.  Gilbert did not love
any of them, and he was exceedingly careful to give none of them
the advantage over him by any untimely display of his real
feelings Anne-ward.  To her he had become again the boy-comrade
of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own against any
smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him.
As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so
satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself,
that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas -- though she
spent considerable time secretly wondering why.

Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter.  Charlie Sloane,
sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada's most dearly beloved cushion,
asked Anne one night if she would promise "to become Mrs. Charlie
Sloane some day."  Coming after Billy Andrews' proxy effort,
this was not quite the shock to Anne's romantic sensibilities
that it would otherwise have been; but it was certainly another
heart-rending disillusion.  She was angry, too, for she felt that
she had never given Charlie the slightest encouragement to suppose
such a thing possible.  But what could you expect of a Sloane,
as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ask scornfully?  Charlie's whole attitude,
tone, air, words, fairly reeked with Sloanishness.  "He was conferring
a great honor -- no doubt whatever about that.  And when Anne, utterly
insensible to the honor, refused him, as delicately and considerately
as she could -- for even a Sloane had feelings which ought not to be
unduly lacerated -- Sloanishness still further betrayed itself.
Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal as Anne's imaginary
rejected suitors did.  Instead, he became angry, and showed it;
he said two or three quite nasty things; Anne's temper flashed up
mutinously and she retorted with a cutting little speech whose
keenness pierced even Charlie's protective Sloanishness and
reached the quick; he caught up his hat and flung himself out of
the house with a very red face; Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice
over Miss Ada's cushions on the way, and threw herself on her bed,
in tears of humiliation and rage.  Had she actually stooped to
quarrel with a Sloane?  Was it possible anything Charlie Sloane
could say had power to make her angry?  Oh, this was degradation,
indeed -- worse even than being the rival of Nettie Blewett!

"I wish I need never see the horrible creature again," she sobbed
vindictively into her pillows.

She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie
took care that it should not be at very close quarters.  Miss
Ada's cushions were henceforth safe from his depredations,
and when he met Anne on the street, or in Redmond's halls,
his bow was icy in the extreme.  Relations between these two
old schoolmates continued to be thus strained for nearly a year!
Then Charlie transferred his blighted affections to a round,
rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore who appreciated
them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and condescended
to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended to
show her just what she had lost.

One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla's room.

"Read that," she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter.  "It's from
Stella -- and she's coming to Redmond next year -- and what do
you think of her idea?  I think it's a perfectly splendid one,
if we can only carry it out.  Do you suppose we can, Pris?"

"I'll be better able to tell you when I find out what it is,"
said Priscilla, casting aside a Greek lexicon and taking up
Stella's letter.  Stella Maynard had been one of their chums at
Queen's Academy and had been teaching school ever since.

"But I'm going to give it up, Anne dear," she wrote, "and go to
college next year.  As I took the third year at Queen's I can
enter the Sophomore year.  I'm tired of teaching in a back
country school.  Some day I'm going to write a treatise on
`The Trials of a Country Schoolmarm.' It will be a harrowing bit
of realism.  It seems to be the prevailing impression that we live
in clover, and have nothing to do but draw our quarter's salary.
My treatise shall tell the truth about us.  Why, if a week should
pass without some one telling me that I am doing easy work for
big pay I would conclude that I might as well order my ascension
robe `immediately and to onct.'  `Well, you get your money easy,'
some rate-payer will tell me, condescendingly.  `All you have to
do is to sit there and hear lessons.'  I used to argue the matter
at first, but I'm wiser now.  Facts are stubborn things, but
as some one has wisely said, not half so stubborn as fallacies.
So I only smile loftily now in eloquent silence.  Why, I have nine
grades in my school and I have to teach a little of everything,
from investigating the interiors of earthworms to the study of
the solar system.  My youngest pupil is four -- his mother sends
him to school to `get him out of the way' -- and my oldest twenty
-- it `suddenly struck him' that it would be easier to go to
school and get an education than follow the plough any longer.
In the wild effort to cram all sorts of research into six hours a
day I don't wonder if the children feel like the little boy who
was taken to see the biograph.  `I have to look for what's coming
next before I know what went last,' he complained.  I feel like
that myself.

"And the letters I get, Anne!  Tommy's mother writes me that
Tommy is not coming on in arithmetic as fast as she would like.
He is only in simple reduction yet, and Johnny Johnson is in
fractions, and Johnny isn't half as smart as her Tommy, and she
can't understand it.  And Susy's father wants to know why Susy
can't write a letter without misspelling half the words, and
Dick's aunt wants me to change his seat, because that bad Brown
boy he is sitting with is teaching him to say naughty words.

"As to the financial part -- but I'll not begin on that.  Those
whom the gods wish to destroy they first make country schoolmarms!

"There, I feel better, after that growl.  After all, I've enjoyed
these past two years.  But I'm coming to Redmond.

"And now, Anne, I've a little plan.  You know how I loathe boarding.
I've boarded for four years and I'm so tired of it.  I don't feel like
enduring three years more of it.

Now, why can't you and Priscilla and I club together, rent
a little house somewhere in Kingsport, and board ourselves?
It would be cheaper than any other way.  Of course, we would
have to have a housekeeper and I have one ready on the spot.
You've heard me speak of Aunt Jamesina?  She's the sweetest
aunt that ever lived, in spite of her name.  She can't help that!
She was called Jamesina because her father, whose name was James,
was drowned at sea a month before she was born.  I always call her
Aunt Jimsie.  Well, her only daughter has recently married and
gone to the foreign mission field.  Aunt Jamesina is left alone
in a great big house, and she is horribly lonesome.  She will
come to Kingsport and keep house for us if we want her, and I
know you'll both love her.  The more I think of the plan the more
I like it.  We could have such good, independent times.

"Now, if you and Priscilla agree to it, wouldn't it be a good
idea for you, who are on the spot, to look around and see if you
can find a suitable house this spring?  That would be better than
leaving it till the fall.  If you could get a furnished one so
much the better, but if not, we can scare up a few sticks of
finiture between us and old family friends with attics.  Anyhow,
decide as soon as you can and write me, so that Aunt Jamesina
will know what plans to make for next year."

"I think it's a good idea," said Priscilla.

"So do I," agreed Anne delightedly.  "Of course, we have a nice
boardinghouse here, but, when all's said and done, a boardinghouse
isn't home.  So let's go house-hunting at once, before exams come on."

"I'm afraid it will be hard enough to get a really suitable house,"
warned Priscilla.  "Don't expect too much, Anne.  Nice houses in
nice localities will probably be away beyond our means.  We'll likely
have to content ourselves with a shabby little place on some street
whereon live people whom to know is to be unknown, and make life
inside compensate for the outside."

Accordingly they went house-hunting, but to find just what
they wanted proved even harder than Priscilla had feared.
Houses there were galore, furnished and unfurnished; but one
was too big, another too small; this one too expensive, that
one too far from Redmond.  Exams were on and over; the last
week of the term came and still their "house o'dreams," as
Anne called it, remained a castle in the air.

"We shall have to give up and wait till the fall, I suppose," said
Priscilla wearily, as they rambled through the park on one of April's
darling days of breeze and blue, when the harbor was creaming and
shimmering beneath the pearl-hued mists floating over it.  "We may
find some shack to shelter us then; and if not, boardinghouses we
shall have always with us."

"I'm not going to worry about it just now, anyway, and spoil this
lovely afternoon," said Anne, gazing around her with delight.
The fresh chill air was faintly charged with the aroma of pine
balsam, and the sky above was crystal clear and blue -- a great
inverted cup of blessing.  "Spring is singing in my blood today,
and the lure of April is abroad on the air.  I'm seeing visions
and dreaming dreams, Pris.  That's because the wind is from the
west.  I do love the west wind.  It sings of hope and gladness,
doesn't it?  When the east wind blows I always think of sorrowful
rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore.  When I get old
I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east."

"And isn't it jolly when you discard furs and winter garments
for the first time and sally forth, like this, in spring attire?"
laughed Priscilla.  "Don't you feel as if you had been made over new?"

"Everything is new in the spring," said Anne.  "Springs themselves
are always so new, too.  No spring is ever just like any other spring.
It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.
See how green the grass is around that little pond, and how the willow
buds are bursting."

"And exams are over and gone -- the time of Convocation will come
soon -- next Wednesday.  This day next week we'll be home."

"I'm glad," said Anne dreamily.  "There are so many things I want
to do.  I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze
blowing down over Mr. Harrison's fields.  I want to hunt ferns
in the Haunted Wood and gather violets in Violet Vale.  Do you
remember the day of our golden picnic, Priscilla?  I want to hear
the frogs singing and the poplars whispering.  But I've learned
to love Kingsport, too, and I'm glad I'm coming back next fall.
If I hadn't won the Thorburn I don't believe I could have.  I
COULDN'T take any of Marilla's little hoard."

"If we could only find a house!" sighed Priscilla.  "Look over
there at Kingsport, Anne -- houses, houses everywhere, and not
one for us."

"Stop it, Pris.  `The best is yet to be.'  Like the old Roman,
we'll find a house or build one.  On a day like this there's
no such word as fail in my bright lexicon."

They lingered in the park until sunset, living in the amazing
miracle and glory and wonder of the springtide; and they went
home as usual, by way of Spofford Avenue, that they might have
the delight of looking at Patty's Place.

"I feel as if something mysterious were going to happen right
away -- `by the pricking of my thumbs,' " said Anne, as they went
up the slope.  "It's a nice story-bookish feeling.  Why -- why --
why!  Priscilla Grant, look over there and tell me if it's true,
or am I seein' things?"

Priscilla looked.  Anne's thumbs and eyes had not deceived her.
Over the arched gateway of Patty's Place dangled a little, modest
sign.  It said "To Let, Furnished.  Inquire Within."

"Priscilla," said Anne, in a whisper, "do you suppose it's
possible that we could rent Patty's Place?"

"No, I don't," averred Priscilla.  "It would be too good to be
true.  Fairy tales don't happen nowadays.  I won't hope, Anne.
The disappointment would be too awful to bear.  They're sure to
want more for it than we can afford.  Remember, it's on Spofford
Avenue."

"We must find out anyhow," said Anne resolutely.  "It's too late
to call this evening, but we'll come tomorrow.  Oh, Pris, if we
can get this darling spot!  I've always felt that my fortunes
were linked with Patty's Place, ever since I saw it first."




Chapter X

Patty's Place


The next evening found them treading resolutely the herring-bone
walk through the tiny garden.  The April wind was filling the
pine trees with its roundelay, and the grove was alive with robins
-- great, plump, saucy fellows, strutting along the paths.
The girls rang rather timidly, and were admitted by a grim and
ancient handmaiden.  The door opened directly into a large
living-room, where by a cheery little fire sat two other ladies,
both of whom were also grim and ancient.  Except that one looked
to be about seventy and the other fifty, there seemed little
difference between them.  Each had amazingly big, light-blue eyes
behind steel-rimmed spectacles; each wore a cap and a gray shawl;
each was knitting without haste and without rest; each rocked
placidly and looked at the girls without speaking; and just
behind each sat a large white china dog, with round green spots
all over it, a green nose and green ears.  Those dogs captured
Anne's fancy on the spot; they seemed like the twin guardian
deities of Patty's Place.

For a few minutes nobody spoke.  The girls were too nervous to
find words, and neither the ancient ladies nor the china dogs
seemed conversationally inclined.  Anne glanced about the room.
What a dear place it was!  Another door opened out of it directly
into the pine grove and the robins came boldly up on the very step.
The floor was spotted with round, braided mats, such as Marilla
made at Green Gables, but which were considered out of date
everywhere else, even in Avonlea.  And yet here they were on
Spofford Avenue!  A big, polished grandfather's clock ticked
loudly and solemnly in a corner.  There were delightful little
cupboards over the mantelpiece, behind whose glass doors gleamed
quaint bits of china.  The walls were hung with old prints and
silhouettes.  In one corner the stairs went up, and at the first
low turn was a long window with an inviting seat.  It was all
just as Anne had known it must be.

By this time the silence had grown too dreadful, and Priscilla
nudged Anne to intimate that she must speak.

"We -- we -- saw by your sign that this house is to let," said Anne
faintly, addressing the older lady, who was evidently Miss Patty Spofford.

"Oh, yes," said Miss Patty.  "I intended to take that sign down today."

"Then -- then we are too late," said Anne sorrowfully.  "You've let it
to some one else?"

"No, but we have decided not to let it at all."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," exclaimed Anne impulsively.  "I love this place so.
I did hope we could have got it."

Then did Miss Patty lay down her knitting, take off her specs,
rub them, put them on again, and for the first time look at Anne
as at a human being.  The other lady followed her example so
perfectly that she might as well have been a reflection in a mirror.

"You LOVE it," said Miss Patty with emphasis.  "Does that mean
that you really LOVE it?  Or that you merely like the looks of it?
The girls nowadays indulge in such exaggerated statements that one
never can tell what they DO mean.  It wasn't so in my young days.
THEN a girl did not say she LOVED turnips, in just the same tone
as she might have said she loved her mother or her Savior."

Anne's conscience bore her up.

"I really do love it," she said gently.  "I've loved it ever since
I saw it last fall.  My two college chums and I want to keep house
next year instead of boarding, so we are looking for a little place
to rent; and when I saw that this house was to let I was so happy."

"If you love it, you can have it," said Miss Patty.  "Maria and I
decided today that we would not let it after all, because we did
not like any of the people who have wanted it.  We don't HAVE to
let it.  We can afford to go to Europe even if we don't let it.
It would help us out, but not for gold will I let my home pass
into the possession of such people as have come here and looked
at it.  YOU are different.  I believe you do love it and will be
good to it.  You can have it."

"If -- if we can afford to pay what you ask for it," hesitated Anne.

Miss Patty named the amount required.  Anne and Priscilla looked
at each other.  Priscilla shook her head.

"I'm afraid we can't afford quite so much," said Anne, choking
back her disappointment.  "You see, we are only college girls
and we are poor."

"What were you thinking you could afford?" demanded Miss Patty,
ceasing not to knit.

Anne named her amount.  Miss Patty nodded gravely.

"That will do.  As I told you, it is not strictly necessary that
we should let it at all.  We are not rich, but we have enough to
go to Europe on.  I have never been in Europe in my life, and never
expected or wanted to go.  But my niece there, Maria Spofford, has
taken a fancy to go.  Now, you know a young person like Maria can't
go globetrotting alone."

"No -- I -- I suppose not," murmured Anne, seeing that Miss Patty
was quite solemnly in earnest.

"Of course not.  So I have to go along to look after her.  I expect to
enjoy it, too; I'm seventy years old, but I'm not tired of living yet.
I daresay I'd have gone to Europe before if the idea had occurred to me.
We shall be away for two years, perhaps three.  We sail in June and we
shall send you the key, and leave all in order for you to take
possession when you choose.  We shall pack away a few things we
prize especially, but all the rest will be left."

"Will you leave the china dogs?" asked Anne timidly.

"Would you like me to?"

"Oh, indeed, yes.  They are delightful."

A pleased expression came into Miss Patty's face.

"I think a great deal of those dogs," she said proudly.  "They are
over a hundred years old, and they have sat on either side of this
fireplace ever since my brother Aaron brought them from London
fifty years ago.  Spofford Avenue was called after my brother Aaron."

"A fine man he was," said Miss Maria, speaking for the first time.
"Ah, you don't see the like of him nowadays."

"He was a good uncle to you, Maria," said Miss Patty, with evident emotion.
"You do well to remember him."

"I shall always remember him," said Miss Maria solemnly.  "I can see him,
this minute, standing there before that fire, with his hands under his
coat-tails, beaming on us."

Miss Maria took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but Miss Patty
came resolutely back from the regions of sentiment to those of business.

"I shall leave the dogs where they are, if you will promise to be
very careful of them," she said.  "Their names are Gog and Magog.
Gog looks to the right and Magog to the left.  And there's just
one thing more.  You don't object, I hope, to this house being
called Patty's Place?"

"No, indeed.  We think that is one of the nicest things about it."

"You have sense, I see," said Miss Patty in a tone of great satisfaction.
"Would you believe it?  All the people who came here to rent the house
wanted to know if they couldn't take the name off the gate during their
occupation of it.  I told them roundly that the name went with the house.
This has been Patty's Place ever since my brother Aaron left it to me in
his will, and Patty's Place it shall remain until I die and Maria dies.
After that happens the next possessor can call it any fool name he likes,"
concluded Miss Patty, much as she might have said, "After that -- the deluge."
"And now, wouldn't you like to go over the house and see it all before we
consider the bargain made?"

Further exploration still further delighted the girls.  Besides the
big living-room, there was a kitchen and a small bedroom downstairs.
Upstairs were three rooms, one large and two small.  Anne took an
especial fancy to one of the small ones, looking out into the big pines,
and hoped it would be hers.  It was papered in pale blue and had a
little, old-timey toilet table with sconces for candles.  There was
a diamond-paned window with a seat under the blue muslin frills that
would be a satisfying spot for studying or dreaming.

"It's all so delicious that I know we are going to wake up and find
it a fleeting vision of the night," said Priscilla as they went away.

"Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are
made of," laughed Anne.  "Can you fancy them `globe-trotting' --
especially in those shawls and caps?"

"I suppose they'll take them off when they really begin to trot,"
said Priscilla, "but I know they'll take their knitting with
them everywhere.  They simply couldn't be parted from it.
They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure.
Meanwhile, Anne, we shall be living in Patty's Place -- and on
Spofford Avenue.  I feel like a millionairess even now."

"I feel like one of the morning stars that sang for joy," said Anne.

Phil Gordon crept into Thirty-eight, St. John's, that night and
flung herself on Anne's bed.

"Girls, dear, I'm tired to death.  I feel like the man without a country --
or was it without a shadow?  I forget which.  Anyway, I've been packing up."

"And I suppose you are worn out because you couldn't decide which
things to pack first, or where to put them," laughed Priscilla.

"E-zackly.  And when I had got everything jammed in somehow, and
my landlady and her maid had both sat on it while I locked it, I
discovered I had packed a whole lot of things I wanted for
Convocation at the very bottom.  I had to unlock the old thing
and poke and dive into it for an hour before I fished out what I
wanted.  I would get hold of something that felt like what I was
looking for, and I'd yank it up, and it would be something else.
No, Anne, I did NOT swear."

"I didn't say you did."

"Well, you looked it.  But I admit my thoughts verged on the profane.
And I have such a cold in the head -- I can do nothing but sniffle,
sigh and sneeze.  Isn't that alliterative agony for you?  Queen Anne,
do say something to cheer me up."

"Remember that next Thursday night, you'll be back in the land of
Alec and Alonzo," suggested Anne.

Phil shook her head dolefully.

"More alliteration.  No, I don't want Alec and Alonzo when I have
a cold in the head.  But what has happened you two?  Now that I look
at you closely you seem all lighted up with an internal iridescence.
Why, you're actually SHINING!  What's up?"

"We are going to live in Patty's Place next winter," said Anne triumphantly.
"Live, mark you, not board!  We've rented it, and Stella Maynard is coming,
and her aunt is going to keep house for us."

Phil bounced up, wiped her nose, and fell on her knees before Anne.

"Girls -- girls -- let me come, too.  Oh, I'll be so good.  If
there's no room for me I'll sleep in the little doghouse in the
orchard -- I've seen it.  Only let me come."

"Get up, you goose."

"I won't stir off my marrow bones till you tell me I can live
with you next winter."

Anne and Priscilla looked at each other.  Then Anne said slowly,
"Phil dear, we'd love to have you.  But we may as well speak plainly.
I'm poor -- Pris is poor -- Stella Maynard is poor -- our housekeeping
will have to be very simple and our table plain.  You'd have to live as
we would.  Now, you are rich and your boardinghouse fare attests the fact."

"Oh, what do I care for that?" demanded Phil tragically.
"Better a dinner of herbs where your chums are than a stalled ox
in a lonely boardinghouse.  Don't think I'm ALL stomach, girls.
I'll be willing to live on bread and water -- with just a LEETLE
jam -- if you'll let me come."

"And then," continued Anne, "there will be a good deal of work to be done.
Stella's aunt can't do it all.  We all expect to have our chores to do.
Now, you -- "

"Toil not, neither do I spin," finished Philippa.  "But I'll learn
to do things.  You'll only have to show me once.  I CAN make my
own bed to begin with.  And remember that, though I can't cook,
I CAN keep my temper.  That's something.  And I NEVER growl about
the weather.  That's more.  Oh, please, please!  I never wanted
anything so much in my life -- and this floor is awfully hard."

"There's just one more thing," said Priscilla resolutely.
"You, Phil, as all Redmond knows, entertain callers almost every
evening.  Now, at Patty's Place we can't do that.  We have decided
that we shall be at home to our friends on Friday evenings only.
If you come with us you'll have to abide by that rule."

"Well, you don't think I'll mind that, do you?  Why, I'm glad of it.
I knew I should have had some such rule myself, but I hadn't
enough decision to make it or stick to it.  When I can shuffle
off the responsibility on you it will be a real relief.  If you
won't let me cast in my lot with you I'll die of the disappointment
and then I'll come back and haunt you.  I'll camp on the very doorstep
of Patty's Place and you won't be able to go out or come in without
falling over my spook."

Again Anne and Priscilla exchanged eloquent looks.

"Well," said Anne, "of course we can't promise to take you until
we've consulted with Stella; but I don't think she'll object,
and, as far as we are concerned, you may come and glad welcome."

"If you get tired of our simple life you can leave us, and no
questions asked," added Priscilla.

Phil sprang up, hugged them both jubilantly, and went on her way
rejoicing.

"I hope things will go right," said Priscilla soberly.

"We must MAKE them go right," avowed Anne.  "I think Phil will
fit into our 'appy little 'ome very well."

"Oh, Phil's a dear to rattle round with and be chums.  And, of course,
the more there are of us the easier it will be on our slim purses.
But how will she be to live with?  You have to summer and winter with
any one before you know if she's LIVABLE or not."

"Oh, well, we'll all be put to the test, as far as that goes.
And we must quit us like sensible folk, living and let live.
Phil isn't selfish, though she's a little thoughtless, and I
believe we will all get on beautifully in Patty's Place."




Chapter XI

The Round of Life


Anne was back in Avonlea with the luster of the Thorburn Scholarship
on her brow.  People told her she hadn't changed much, in a tone
which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn't.
Avonlea had not changed, either.  At least, so it seemed at first.
But as Anne sat in the Green Gables pew, on the first Sunday after
her return, and looked over the congregation, she saw several little
changes which, all coming home to her at once, made her realize that
time did not quite stand still, even in Avonlea.  A new minister was in
the pulpit.  In the pews more than one familiar face was missing forever.
Old "Uncle Abe," his prophesying over and done with, Mrs. Peter Sloane,
who had sighed, it was to be hoped, for the last time, Timothy Cotton,
who, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde said "had actually managed to die at last
after practicing at it for twenty years," and old Josiah Sloane, whom
nobody knew in his coffin because he had his whiskers neatly trimmed,
were all sleeping in the little graveyard behind the church.  And Billy
Andrews was married to Nettie Blewett!  They "appeared out" that Sunday.
When Billy, beaming with pride and happiness, showed his be-plumed and
be-silked bride into the Harmon Andrews' pew, Anne dropped her lids to
hide her dancing eyes.  She recalled the stormy winter night of the
Christmas holidays when Jane had proposed for Billy.  He certainly
had not broken his heart over his rejection.  Anne wondered if Jane
had also proposed to Nettie for him, or if he had mustered enough
spunk to ask the fateful question himself.  All the Andrews family
seemed to share in his pride and pleasure, from Mrs. Harmon in the
pew to Jane in the choir.  Jane had resigned from the Avonlea school
and intended to go West in the fall.

"Can't get a beau in Avonlea, that's what," said Mrs. Rachel Lynde
scornfully.  "SAYS she thinks she'll have better health out West.
I never heard her health was poor before."

"Jane is a nice girl," Anne had said loyally.  "She never tried
to attract attention, as some did."

"Oh, she never chased the boys, if that's what you mean," said
Mrs. Rachel.  "But she'd like to be married, just as much as
anybody, that's what.  What else would take her out West to some
forsaken place whose only recommendation is that men are plenty
and women scarce?  Don't you tell me!"

But it was not at Jane, Anne gazed that day in dismay and surprise.
It was at Ruby Gillis, who sat beside her in the choir.  What had
happened to Ruby?  She was even handsomer than ever; but her blue
eyes were too bright and lustrous, and the color of her cheeks was
hectically brilliant; besides, she was very thin; the hands that
held her hymn-book were almost transparent in their delicacy.

"Is Ruby Gillis ill?" Anne asked of Mrs. Lynde, as they went
home from church.

"Ruby Gillis is dying of galloping consumption," said Mrs. Lynde
bluntly.  "Everybody knows it except herself and her FAMILY.
They won't give in.  If you ask THEM, she's perfectly well.
She hasn't been able to teach since she had that attack of
congestion in the winter, but she says she's going to teach
again in the fall, and she's after the White Sands school.
She'll be in her grave, poor girl, when White Sands school opens,
that's what."

Anne listened in shocked silence.  Ruby Gillis, her old school-chum,
dying?  Could it be possible?  Of late years they had grown apart;
but the old tie of school-girl intimacy was there, and made itself
felt sharply in the tug the news gave at Anne's heartstrings.
Ruby, the brilliant, the merry, the coquettish!  It was impossible
to associate the thought of her with anything like death.  She had
greeted Anne with gay cordiality after church, and urged her to
come up the next evening.

"I'll be away Tuesday and Wednesday evenings," she had whispered
triumphantly.  "There's a concert at Carmody and a party at White
Sands.  Herb Spencer's going to take me.  He's my LATEST.  Be sure
to come up tomorrow.  I'm dying for a good talk with you.  I want
to hear all about your doings at Redmond."

Anne knew that Ruby meant that she wanted to tell Anne all about
her own recent flirtations, but she promised to go, and Diana
offered to go with her.

"I've been wanting to go to see Ruby for a long while," she told Anne,
when they left Green Gables the next evening, "but I really couldn't
go alone.  It's so awful to hear Ruby rattling on as she does, and
pretending there is nothing the matter with her, even when she can
hardly speak for coughing.  She's fighting so hard for her life,
and yet she hasn't any chance at all, they say."

The girls walked silently down the red, twilit road.  The robins
were singing vespers in the high treetops, filling the golden air
with their jubilant voices.  The silver fluting of the frogs came
from marshes and ponds, over fields where seeds were beginning to
stir with life and thrill to the sunshine and rain that had
drifted over them.  The air was fragrant with the wild, sweet,
wholesome smell of young raspberry copses.  White mists were
hovering in the silent hollows and violet stars were shining
bluely on the brooklands.

"What a beautiful sunset," said Diana.  "Look, Anne, it's just like
a land in itself, isn't it?  That long, low back of purple cloud
is the shore, and the clear sky further on is like a golden sea."

"If we could sail to it in the moonshine boat Paul wrote of in
his old composition -- you remember?  -- how nice it would be,"
said Anne, rousing from her reverie.  "Do you think we could find
all our yesterdays there, Diana -- all our old springs and
blossoms?  The beds of flowers that Paul saw there are the roses
that have bloomed for us in the past?"

"Don't!" said Diana.  "You make me feel as if we were old women
with everything in life behind us."

"I think I've almost felt as if we were since I heard about poor Ruby,"
said Anne.  "If it is true that she is dying any other sad thing might
be true, too."

"You don't mind calling in at Elisha Wright's for a moment, do you?"
asked Diana.  "Mother asked me to leave this little dish of jelly
for Aunt Atossa."

"Who is Aunt Atossa?"

"Oh, haven't you heard?  She's Mrs. Samson Coates of Spencervale
-- Mrs. Elisha Wright's aunt.  She's father's aunt, too.  Her
husband died last winter and she was left very poor and lonely,
so the Wrights took her to live with them.  Mother thought we
ought to take her, but father put his foot down.  Live with Aunt
Atossa he would not."

"Is she so terrible?" asked Anne absently.

"You'll probably see what she's like before we can get away,"
said Diana significantly.  "Father says she has a face like a
hatchet -- it cuts the air.  But her tongue is sharper still."

Late as it was Aunt Atossa was cutting potato sets in the Wright
kitchen.  She wore a faded old wrapper, and her gray hair was
decidedly untidy.  Aunt Atossa did not like being "caught in a
kilter," so she went out of her way to be disagreeable.

"Oh, so you're Anne Shirley?" she said, when Diana introduced Anne.
"I've heard of you."  Her tone implied that she had heard nothing good.
"Mrs. Andrews was telling me you were home.  She said you had improved
a good deal."

There was no doubt Aunt Atossa thought there was plenty of room for
further improvement.  She ceased not from cutting sets with much energy.

"Is it any use to ask you to sit down?" she inquired sarcastically.
"Of course, there's nothing very entertaining here for you.  The rest
are all away."

"Mother sent you this little pot of rhubarb jelly," said Diana
pleasantly.  "She made it today and thought you might like some."

"Oh, thanks," said Aunt Atossa sourly.  "I never fancy your
mother's jelly -- she always makes it too sweet.  However, I'll
try to worry some down.  My appetite's been dreadful poor this
spring.  I'm far from well," continued Aunt Atossa solemnly, "but
still I keep a-doing.  People who can't work aren't wanted here.
If it isn't too much trouble will you be condescending enough
to set the jelly in the pantry?  I'm in a hurry to get these spuds
done tonight.  I suppose you two LADIES never do anything like this.
You'd be afraid of spoiling your hands."

"I used to cut potato sets before we rented the farm," smiled Anne.

"I do it yet," laughed Diana.  "I cut sets three days last week.
Of course," she added teasingly, "I did my hands up in lemon
juice and kid gloves every night after it."

Aunt Atossa sniffed.

"I suppose you got that notion out of some of those silly
magazines you read so many of.  I wonder your mother allows you.
But she always spoiled you.  We all thought when George married
her she wouldn't be a suitable wife for him."

Aunt Atossa sighed heavily, as if all forebodings upon the
occasion of George Barry's marriage had been amply and darkly
fulfilled.

"Going, are you?" she inquired, as the girls rose.  "Well, I
suppose you can't find much amusement talking to an old woman
like me.  It's such a pity the boys ain't home."

"We want to run in and see Ruby Gillis a little while," explained Diana.

"Oh, anything does for an excuse, of course," said Aunt Atossa, amiably.
"Just whip in and whip out before you have time to say how-do decently.
It's college airs, I s'pose.  You'd be wiser to keep away from Ruby Gillis.
The doctors say consumption's catching.  I always knew Ruby'd get something,
gadding off to Boston last fall for a visit.  People who ain't content to
stay home always catch something."

"People who don't go visiting catch things, too.  Sometimes they even die,"
said Diana solemnly.

"Then they don't have themselves to blame for it," retorted Aunt Atossa
triumphantly.  "I hear you are to be married in June, Diana."

"There is no truth in that report," said Diana, blushing.

"Well, don't put it off too long," said Aunt Atossa significantly.
"You'll fade soon -- you're all complexion and hair.  And the Wrights
are terrible fickle.  You ought to wear a hat, MISS SHIRLEY.  Your nose
is freckling scandalous.  My, but you ARE redheaded!  Well, I s'pose
we're all as the Lord made us!  Give Marilla Cuthbert my respects.
She's never been to see me since I come to Avonlea, but I s'pose I
oughtn't to complain.  The Cuthberts always did think themselves
a cut higher than any one else round here."

"Oh, isn't she dreadful?" gasped Diana, as they escaped down the lane.

"She's worse than Miss Eliza Andrews," said Anne.  "But then think
of living all your life with a name like Atossa!  Wouldn't it sour
almost any one?  She should have tried to imagine her name was Cordelia.
It might have helped her a great deal.  It certainly helped me in the
days when I didn't like ANNE."

"Josie Pye will be just like her when she grows up," said Diana.
"Josie's mother and Aunt Atossa are cousins, you know.  Oh, dear,
I'm glad that's over.  She's so malicious -- she seems to put a
bad flavor in everything.  Father tells such a funny story about her.
One time they had a minister in Spencervale who was a very good,
spiritual man but very deaf.  He couldn't hear any ordinary
conversation at all.  Well, they used to have a prayer meeting on
Sunday evenings, and all the church members present would get up
and pray in turn, or say a few words on some Bible verse.  But
one evening Aunt Atossa bounced up.  She didn't either pray or
preach.  Instead, she lit into everybody else in the church and
gave them a fearful raking down, calling them right out by name
and telling them how they all had behaved, and casting up all the
quarrels and scandals of the past ten years.  Finally she wound
up by saying that she was disgusted with Spencervale church and
she never meant to darken its door again, and she hoped a fearful
judgment would come upon it.  Then she sat down out of breath,
and the minister, who hadn't heard a word she said, immediately
remarked, in a very devout voice, `amen!  The Lord grant our dear
sister's prayer!'  You ought to hear father tell the story."

"Speaking of stories, Diana," remarked Anne, in a significant,
confidential tone, "do you know that lately I have been wondering
if I could write a short story -- a story that would be good
enough to be published?"

"Why, of course you could," said Diana, after she had grasped the
amazing suggestion.  "You used to write perfectly thrilling stories
years ago in our old Story Club."

"Well, I hardly meant one of that kind of stories," smiled Anne.
"I've been thinking about it a little of late, but I'm almost
afraid to try, for, if I should fail, it would be too humiliating."

"I heard Priscilla say once that all Mrs. Morgan's first stories
were rejected.  But I'm sure yours wouldn't be, Anne, for it's
likely editors have more sense nowadays."

"Margaret Burton, one of the Junior girls at Redmond, wrote a
story last winter and it was published in the Canadian Woman.
I really do think I could write one at least as good."

"And will you have it published in the Canadian Woman?"

"I might try one of the bigger magazines first.  It all depends
on what kind of a story I write."

"What is it to be about?"

"I don't know yet.  I want to get hold of a good plot.  I believe
this is very necessary from an editor's point of view.  The only
thing I've settled on is the heroine's name.  It is to be AVERIL
LESTER.  Rather pretty, don't you think?  Don't mention this to
any one, Diana.  I haven't told anybody but you and Mr. Harrison.
HE wasn't very encouraging -- he said there was far too much
trash written nowadays as it was, and he'd expected something
better of me, after a year at college."

"What does Mr. Harrison know about it?" demanded Diana scornfully.

They found the Gillis home gay with lights and callers.  Leonard
Kimball, of Spencervale, and Morgan Bell, of Carmody, were glaring
at each other across the parlor.  Several merry girls had dropped in.
Ruby was dressed in white and her eyes and cheeks were very brilliant.
She laughed and chattered incessantly, and after the other girls had
gone she took Anne upstairs to display her new summer dresses.

"I've a blue silk to make up yet, but it's a little heavy for
summer wear.  I think I'll leave it until the fall.  I'm going
to teach in White Sands, you know.  How do you like my hat?
That one you had on in church yesterday was real dinky.
But I like something brighter for myself.  Did you notice
those two ridiculous boys downstairs?  They've both come
determined to sit each other out.  I don't care a single bit
about either of them, you know.  Herb Spencer is the one I like.
Sometimes I really do think he's MR. RIGHT.  At Christmas I
thought the Spencervale schoolmaster was that.  But I found
out something about him that turned me against him.  He nearly
went insane when I turned him down.  I wish those two boys hadn't
come tonight.  I wanted to have a nice good talk with you, Anne,
and tell you such heaps of things.  You and I were always good
chums, weren't we?"

Ruby slipped her arm about Anne's waist with a shallow little laugh.
But just for a moment their eyes met, and, behind all the luster
of Ruby's, Anne saw something that made her heart ache.

"Come up often, won't you, Anne?" whispered Ruby.  "Come alone --
I want you."

"Are you feeling quite well, Ruby?"

"Me!  Why, I'm perfectly well.  I never felt better in my life.
Of course, that congestion last winter pulled me down a little.
But just see my color.  I don't look much like an invalid, I'm sure."

Ruby's voice was almost sharp.  She pulled her arm away from Anne,
as if in resentment, and ran downstairs, where she was gayer than
ever, apparently so much absorbed in bantering her two swains that
Diana and Anne felt rather out of it and soon went away.




Chapter XII

"Averil's Atonement"


"What are you dreaming of, Anne?"

The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the
brook.  Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and
wild pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it.

Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh.

"I was thinking out my story, Diana."

"Oh, have you really begun it?" cried Diana, all alight with
eager interest in a moment.

"Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty
well thought out.  I've had such a time to get a suitable plot.
None of the plots that suggested themselves suited a girl named
AVERIL."

"Couldn't you have changed her name?"

"No, the thing was impossible.  I tried to, but I couldn't do it,
any more than I could change yours.  AVERIL was so real to me
that no matter what other name I tried to give her I just thought
of her as AVERIL behind it all.  But finally I got a plot that
matched her.  Then came the excitement of choosing names for
all my characters.  You have no idea how fascinating that is.
I've lain awake for hours thinking over those names.  The hero's
name is PERCEVAL DALRYMPLE."

"Have you named ALL the characters?" asked Diana wistfully.  "If
you hadn't I was going to ask you to let me name one -- just some
unimportant person.  I'd feel as if I had a share in the story then."

"You may name the little hired boy who lived with the LESTERS,"
conceded Anne.  "He is not very important, but he is the only one
left unnamed."

"Call him RAYMOND FITZOSBORNE," suggested Diana, who had a store
of such names laid away in her memory, relics of the old "Story
Club," which she and Anne and Jane Andrews and Ruby Gillis had
had in their schooldays.

Anne shook her head doubtfully.

"I'm afraid that is too aristocratic a name for a chore boy,
Diana.  I couldn't imagine a Fitzosborne feeding pigs and picking
up chips, could you?"

Diana didn't see why, if you had an imagination at all, you
couldn't stretch it to that extent; but probably Anne knew best,
and the chore boy was finally christened ROBERT RAY, to be called
BOBBY should occasion require.

"How much do you suppose you'll get for it?" asked Diana.

But Anne had not thought about this at all.  She was in pursuit
of fame, not filthy lucre, and her literary dreams were as yet
untainted by mercenary considerations.

"You'll let me read it, won't you?" pleaded Diana.

"When it is finished I'll read it to you and Mr. Harrison, and I
shall want you to criticize it SEVERELY.  No one else shall see
it until it is published."

"How are you going to end it -- happily or unhappily?"

"I'm not sure.  I'd like it to end unhappily, because that would
be so much more romantic.  But I understand editors have a prejudice
against sad endings.  I heard Professor Hamilton say once that nobody
but a genius should try to write an unhappy ending.

And," concluded Anne modestly, "I'm anything but a genius."

"Oh I like happy endings best.  You'd better let him marry her,"
said Diana, who, especially since her engagement to Fred, thought
this was how every story should end.

"But you like to cry over stories?"

"Oh, yes, in the middle of them.  But I like everything to come
right at last."

"I must have one pathetic scene in it," said Anne thoughtfully.
"I might let ROBERT RAY be injured in an accident and have a
death scene."

"No, you mustn't kill BOBBY off," declared Diana, laughing.
"He belongs to me and I want him to live and flourish.  Kill
somebody else if you have to."

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to
mood, in her literary pursuits.  Now she would be jubilant over a
brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character
would NOT behave properly.  Diana could not understand this.

"MAKE them do as you want them to," she said.

"I can't," mourned Anne.  "Averil is such an unmanageable heroine.
She WILL do and say things I never meant her to.  Then that spoils
everything that went before and I have to write it all over again."

Finally, however, the story was finished, and Anne read it to
Diana in the seclusion of the porch gable.  She had achieved her
"pathetic scene" without sacrificing ROBERT RAY, and she kept a
watchful eye on Diana as she read it.  Diana rose to the occasion
and cried properly; but, when the end came, she looked a little
disappointed.

"Why did you kill MAURICE LENNOX?" she asked reproachfully.

"He was the villain," protested Anne.  "He had to be punished."

"I like him best of them all," said unreasonable Diana.

"Well, he's dead, and he'll have to stay dead," said Anne,
rather resentfully.  "If I had let him live he'd have gone
on persecuting AVERIL and PERCEVAL."

"Yes -- unless you had reformed him."

"That wouldn't have been romantic, and, besides, it would have
made the story too long."

"Well, anyway, it's a perfectly elegant story, Anne, and will
make you famous, of that I'm sure.  Have you got a title for it?"

"Oh, I decided on the title long ago.  I call it AVERIL'S
ATONEMENT.  Doesn't that sound nice and alliterative?  Now,
Diana, tell me candidly, do you see any faults in my story?"

"Well," hesitated Diana, "that part where AVERIL makes the cake
doesn't seem to me quite romantic enough to match the rest.  It's
just what anybody might do.  Heroines shouldn't do cooking, _I_ think."

"Why, that is where the humor comes in, and it's one of the best
parts of the whole story," said Anne.  And it may be stated that
in this she was quite right.

Diana prudently refrained from any further criticism, but
Mr. Harrison was much harder to please.  First he told her
there was entirely too much description in the story.

"Cut out all those flowery passages," he said unfeelingly.

Anne had an uncomfortable conviction that Mr. Harrison was right,
and she forced herself to expunge most of her beloved descriptions,
though it took three re-writings before the story could be pruned
down to please the fastidious Mr. Harrison.

"I've left out ALL the descriptions but the sunset," she said at last.
"I simply COULDN'T let it go.  It was the best of them all."

"It hasn't anything to do with the story," said Mr. Harrison,
"and you shouldn't have laid the scene among rich city people.
What do you know of them?  Why didn't you lay it right here in
Avonlea -- changing the name, of course, or else Mrs. Rachel
Lynde would probably think she was the heroine."

"Oh, that would never have done," protested Anne.  "Avonlea is
the dearest place in the world, but it isn't quite romantic
enough for the scene of a story."

"I daresay there's been many a romance in Avonlea -- and many a
tragedy, too," said Mr. Harrison drily.  "But your folks ain't
like real folks anywhere.  They talk too much and use too
high-flown language.  There's one place where that DALRYMPLE chap
talks even on for two pages, and never lets the girl get a word in
edgewise.  If he'd done that in real life she'd have pitched him."

"I don't believe it," said Anne flatly.  In her secret soul she
thought that the beautiful, poetical things said to AVERIL would
win any girl's heart completely.  Besides, it was gruesome to hear
of AVERIL, the stately, queen-like AVERIL, "pitching" any one.
AVERIL "declined her suitors."

"Anyhow," resumed the merciless Mr. Harrison, "I don't see why
MAURICE LENNOX didn't get her.  He was twice the man the other is.
He did bad things, but he did them.  Perceval hadn't time for
anything but mooning."

"Mooning."  That was even worse than "pitching!"

"MAURICE LENNOX was the villain," said Anne indignantly.
"I don't see why every one likes him better than PERCEVAL."

"Perceval is too good.  He's aggravating.  Next time you write
about a hero put a little spice of human nature in him."

"AVERIL couldn't have married MAURICE.  He was bad."

"She'd have reformed him.  You can reform a man; you can't reform
a jelly-fish, of course.  Your story isn't bad -- it's kind of
interesting, I'll admit.  But you're too young to write a story
that would be worth while.  Wait ten years."

Anne made up her mind that the next time she wrote a story she
wouldn't ask anybody to criticize it.  It was too discouraging.
She would not read the story to Gilbert, although she told him
about it.

"If it is a success you'll see it when it is published, Gilbert,
but if it is a failure nobody shall ever see it."

Marilla knew nothing about the venture.  In imagination Anne saw
herself reading a story out of a magazine to Marilla, entrapping
her into praise of it -- for in imagination all things are
possible -- and then triumphantly announcing herself the author.

One day Anne took to the Post Office a long, bulky envelope,
addressed, with the delightful confidence of youth and
inexperience, to the very biggest of the "big" magazines.
Diana was as excited over it as Anne herself.

"How long do you suppose it will be before you hear from it?"
she asked.

"It shouldn't be longer than a fortnight.  Oh, how happy and
proud I shall be if it is accepted!"

"Of course it will be accepted, and they will likely ask you to
send them more.  You may be as famous as Mrs. Morgan some day,
Anne, and then how proud I'll be of knowing you," said Diana, who
possessed, at least, the striking merit of an unselfish
admiration of the gifts and graces of her friends.

A week of delightful dreaming followed, and then came a bitter awakening.
One evening Diana found Anne in the porch gable, with suspicious-looking
eyes.  On the table lay a long envelope and a crumpled manuscript.

"Anne, your story hasn't come back?" cried Diana incredulously.

"Yes, it has," said Anne shortly.

"Well, that editor must be crazy.  What reason did he give?"

"No reason at all.  There is just a printed slip saying that it
wasn't found acceptable."

"I never thought much of that magazine, anyway," said Diana hotly.
"The stories in it are not half as interesting as those in the
Canadian Woman, although it costs so much more.  I suppose
the editor is prejudiced against any one who isn't a Yankee.
Don't be discouraged, Anne.  Remember how Mrs. Morgan's stories
came back.  Send yours to the Canadian Woman."

"I believe I will," said Anne, plucking up heart.  "And if it is
published I'll send that American editor a marked copy.  But I'll
cut the sunset out.  I believe Mr. Harrison was right."

Out came the sunset; but in spite of this heroic mutilation the
editor of the Canadian Woman sent Averil's Atonement back so
promptly that the indignant Diana declared that it couldn't have
been read at all, and vowed she was going to stop her subscription
immediately.  Anne took this second rejection with the calmness of
despair.  She locked the story away in the garret trunk where the
old Story Club tales reposed; but first she yielded to Diana's
entreaties and gave her a copy.

"This is the end of my literary ambitions," she said bitterly.

She never mentioned the matter to Mr. Harrison, but one evening
he asked her bluntly if her story had been accepted.

"No, the editor wouldn't take it," she answered briefly.

Mr. Harrison looked sidewise at the flushed, delicate profile.

"Well, I suppose you'll keep on writing them," he said encouragingly.

"No, I shall never try to write a story again," declared Anne, with
the hopeless finality of nineteen when a door is shut in its face.

"I wouldn't give up altogether," said Mr. Harrison reflectively.  "I'd
write a story once in a while, but I wouldn't pester editors with it.
I'd write of people and places like I knew, and I'd make my characters
talk everyday English; and I'd let the sun rise and set in the usual
quiet way without much fuss over the fact.  If I had to have villains
at all, I'd give them a chance, Anne -- I'd give them a chance.
There are some terrible bad men in the world, I suppose, but you'd
have to go a long piece to find them -- though Mrs. Lynde believes we're
all bad.  But most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us.
Keep on writing, Anne."

"No.  It was very foolish of me to attempt it.  When I'm through
Redmond I'll stick to teaching.  I can teach.  I can't write stories."

"It'll be time for you to be getting a husband when you're
through Redmond," said Mr. Harrison.  "I don't believe in
putting marrying off too long -- like I did."

Anne got up and marched home.  There were times when Mr. Harrison
was really intolerable.  "Pitching," "mooning," and "getting a
husband."  Ow!!




Chapter XIII

The Way of Transgressors


Davy and Dora were ready for Sunday School.  They were going alone,
which did not often happen, for Mrs. Lynde always attended Sunday School.
But Mrs. Lynde had twisted her ankle and was lame, so she was staying
home this morning.  The twins were also to represent the family at church,
for Anne had gone away the evening before to spend Sunday with friends
in Carmody, and Marilla had one of her headaches.

Davy came downstairs slowly.  Dora was waiting in the hall for him, having
been made ready by Mrs. Lynde.  Davy had attended to his own preparations.
He had a cent in his pocket for the Sunday School collection, and a five-cent
piece for the church collection; he carried his Bible in one hand and his
Sunday School quarterly in the other; he knew his lesson and his Golden Text
and his catechism question perfectly.  Had he not studied them -- perforce
-- in Mrs. Lynde's kitchen, all last Sunday afternoon?  Davy, therefore,
should have been in a placid frame of mind.  As a matter of fact, despite
text and catechism, he was inwardly as a ravening wolf.

Mrs. Lynde limped out of her kitchen as he joined Dora.

"Are you clean?" she demanded severely.

"Yes -- all of me that shows," Davy answered with a defiant scowl.

Mrs. Rachel sighed.  She had her suspicions about Davy's neck
and ears.  But she knew that if she attempted to make a personal
examination Davy would likely take to his heels and she could not
pursue him today.

"Well, be sure you behave yourselves," she warned them.  "Don't walk
in the dust.  Don't stop in the porch to talk to the other children.
Don't squirm or wriggle in your places.  Don't forget the Golden Text.
Don't lose your collection or forget to put it in.  Don't whisper at
prayer time, and don't forget to pay attention to the sermon."

Davy deigned no response.  He marched away down the lane,
followed by the meek Dora.  But his soul seethed within.
Davy had suffered, or thought he had suffered, many things at the
hands and tongue of Mrs. Rachel Lynde since she had come to Green
Gables, for Mrs. Lynde could not live with anybody, whether they
were nine or ninety, without trying to bring them up properly.
And it was only the preceding afternoon that she had interfered
to influence Marilla against allowing Davy to go fishing with the
Timothy Cottons.  Davy was still boiling over this.

As soon as he was out of the lane Davy stopped and twisted his
countenance into such an unearthly and terrific contortion that Dora,
although she knew his gifts in that respect, was honestly alarmed lest
he should never in the world be able to get it straightened out again.

"Darn her," exploded Davy.

"Oh, Davy, don't swear," gasped Dora in dismay.

"`Darn' isn't swearing -- not real swearing.  And I don't care
if it is," retorted Davy recklessly.

"Well, if you MUST say dreadful words don't say them on Sunday," pleaded Dora.

Davy was as yet far from repentance, but in his secret soul he felt that,
perhaps, he had gone a little too far.

"I'm going to invent a swear word of my own," he declared.

"God will punish you if you do," said Dora solemnly.

"Then I think God is a mean old scamp," retorted Davy.  "Doesn't
He know a fellow must have some way of 'spressing his feelings?"

"Davy!!!" said Dora.  She expected that Davy would be struck down
dead on the spot.  But nothing happened.

"Anyway, I ain't going to stand any more of Mrs. Lynde's bossing,"
spluttered Davy.  "Anne and Marilla may have the right to boss me,
but SHE hasn't.  I'm going to do every single thing she told me not to do.
You watch me."

In grim, deliberate silence, while Dora watched him with the
fascination of horror, Davy stepped off the green grass of the
roadside, ankle deep into the fine dust which four weeks of
rainless weather had made on the road, and marched along in it,
shuffling his feet viciously until he was enveloped in a hazy cloud.

"That's the beginning," he announced triumphantly."  And I'm
going to stop in the porch and talk as long as there's anybody
there to talk to.  I'm going to squirm and wriggle and whisper,
and I'm going to say I don't know the Golden Text.  And I'm going
to throw away both of my collections RIGHT NOW."

And Davy hurled cent and nickel over Mr. Barry's fence with
fierce delight.

"Satan made you do that," said Dora reproachfully.

"He didn't," cried Davy indignantly.  "I just thought it out for myself.
And I've thought of something else.  I'm not going to Sunday School or
church at all.  I'm going up to play with the Cottons.  They told me
yesterday they weren't going to Sunday School today, 'cause their mother
was away and there was nobody to make them.  Come along, Dora, we'll have
a great time."

"I don't want to go," protested Dora.

"You've got to," said Davy.  "If you don't come I'll tell Marilla
that Frank Bell kissed you in school last Monday."

"I couldn't help it.  I didn't know he was going to," cried Dora,
blushing scarlet.

"Well, you didn't slap him or seem a bit cross," retorted Davy.
"I'll tell her THAT, too, if you don't come.  We'll take the
short cut up this field."

"I'm afraid of those cows," protested poor Dora, seeing a
prospect of escape.

"The very idea of your being scared of those cows," scoffed Davy.
"Why, they're both younger than you."

"They're bigger," said Dora.

"They won't hurt you.  Come along, now.  This is great.  When I
grow up I ain't going to bother going to church at all.  I
believe I can get to heaven by myself."

"You'll go to the other place if you break the Sabbath day,"
said unhappy Dora, following him sorely against her will.

But Davy was not scared -- yet.  Hell was very far off, and the
delights of a fishing expedition with the Cottons were very near.
He wished Dora had more spunk.  She kept looking back as if she
were going to cry every minute, and that spoiled a fellow's fun.
Hang girls, anyway.  Davy did not say "darn" this time, even in thought.
He was not sorry -- yet -- that he had said it once, but it might be
as well not to tempt the Unknown Powers too far on one day.

The small Cottons were playing in their back yard, and hailed
Davy's appearance with whoops of delight.  Pete, Tommy, Adolphus,
and Mirabel Cotton were all alone.  Their mother and older
sisters were away.  Dora was thankful Mirabel was there, at least.
She had been afraid she would be alone in a crowd of boys.  Mirabel
was almost as bad as a boy -- she was so noisy and sunburned and reckless.
But at least she wore dresses.

"We've come to go fishing," announced Davy.

"Whoop," yelled the Cottons.  They rushed away to dig worms at once,
Mirabel leading the van with a tin can.  Dora could have sat down
and cried.  Oh, if only that hateful Frank Bell had never kissed her!
Then she could have defied Davy, and gone to her beloved Sunday School.

They dared not, of course, go fishing on the pond, where they
would be seen by people going to church.  They had to resort to
the brook in the woods behind the Cotton house.  But it was full
of trout, and they had a glorious time that morning -- at least
the Cottons certainly had, and Davy seemed to have it.  Not being
entirely bereft of prudence, he had discarded boots and stockings
and borrowed Tommy Cotton's overalls.  Thus accoutered, bog and
marsh and undergrowth had no terrors for him.  Dora was frankly
and manifestly miserable.  She followed the others in their
peregrinations from pool to pool, clasping her Bible and
quarterly tightly and thinking with bitterness of soul of her
beloved class where she should be sitting that very moment,
before a teacher she adored.  Instead, here she was roaming the
woods with those half-wild Cottons, trying to keep her boots clean
and her pretty white dress free from rents and stains.  Mirabel
had offered the loan of an apron but Dora had scornfully refused.

The trout bit as they always do on Sundays.  In an hour the
transgressors had all the fish they wanted, so they returned to
the house, much to Dora's relief.  She sat primly on a hencoop in
the yard while the others played an uproarious game of tag; and
then they all climbed to the top of the pig-house roof and cut
their initials on the saddleboard.  The flat-roofed henhouse and
a pile of straw beneath gave Davy another inspiration.  They
spent a splendid half hour climbing on the roof and diving off
into the straw with whoops and yells.

But even unlawful pleasures must come to an end.  When the rumble
of wheels over the pond bridge told that people were going home
from church Davy knew they must go.  He discarded Tommy's overalls,
resumed his own rightful attire, and turned away from his string
of trout with a sigh.  No use to think of taking them home.

"Well, hadn't we a splendid time?" he demanded defiantly, as they
went down the hill field.

"I hadn't," said Dora flatly.  "And I don't believe you had --
really -- either," she added, with a flash of insight that was
not to be expected of her.

"I had so," cried Davy, but in the voice of one who doth protest too much.
"No wonder you hadn't -- just sitting there like a -- like a mule."

"I ain't going to, 'sociate with the Cottons," said Dora loftily.

"The Cottons are all right," retorted Davy.  "And they have far better
times than we have.  They do just as they please and say just what they
like before everybody.  _I_'m going to do that, too, after this."

"There are lots of things you wouldn't dare say before everybody,"
averred Dora.

"No, there isn't."

"There is, too.  Would you," demanded Dora gravely, "would you
say `tomcat' before the minister?"

This was a staggerer.  Davy was not prepared for such a concrete
example of the freedom of speech.  But one did not have to be
consistent with Dora.

"Of course not," he admitted sulkily.

"`Tomcat' isn't a holy word.  I wouldn't mention such an animal
before a minister at all."

"But if you had to?" persisted Dora.

"I'd call it a Thomas pussy," said Davy.

"_I_ think `gentleman cat' would be more polite," reflected Dora.

"YOU thinking!" retorted Davy with withering scorn.

Davy was not feeling comfortable, though he would have died
before he admitted it to Dora.  Now that the exhilaration of
truant delights had died away, his conscience was beginning to
give him salutary twinges.  After all, perhaps it would have been
better to have gone to Sunday School and church.  Mrs. Lynde
might be bossy; but there was always a box of cookies in her
kitchen cupboard and she was not stingy.  At this inconvenient
moment Davy remembered that when he had torn his new school pants
the week before, Mrs. Lynde had mended them beautifully and
never said a word to Marilla about them.

But Davy's cup of iniquity was not yet full.  He was to discover
that one sin demands another to cover it.  They had dinner with
Mrs. Lynde that day, and the first thing she asked Davy was,

"Were all your class in Sunday School today?"

"Yes'm," said Davy with a gulp.  "All were there -- 'cept one."

"Did you say your Golden Text and catechism?"

"Yes'm."

"Did you put your collection in?"

"Yes'm."

"Was Mrs. Malcolm MacPherson in church?"

"I don't know."  This, at least, was the truth, thought wretched Davy.

"Was the Ladies' Aid announced for next week?"

"Yes'm" -- quakingly.

"Was prayer-meeting?"

"I -- I don't know."

"YOU should know.  You should listen more attentively to the announcements.
What was Mr. Harvey's text?"

Davy took a frantic gulp of water and swallowed it and the last
protest of conscience together.  He glibly recited an old Golden
Text learned several weeks ago.  Fortunately Mrs. Lynde now
stopped questioning him; but Davy did not enjoy his dinner.

He could only eat one helping of pudding.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded justly astonished Mrs. Lynde.
"Are you sick?"

"No," muttered Davy.

"You look pale.  You'd better keep out of the sun this afternoon,"
admonished Mrs. Lynde.

"Do you know how many lies you told Mrs. Lynde?" asked Dora
reproachfully, as soon as they were alone after dinner.

Davy, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely.

"I don't know and I don't care," he said.  "You just shut up,
Dora Keith."

Then poor Davy betook himself to a secluded retreat behind the
woodpile to think over the way of transgressors.

Green Gables was wrapped in darkness and silence when Anne
reached home.  She lost no time going to bed, for she was very
tired and sleepy.  There had been several Avonlea jollifications
the preceding week, involving rather late hours.  Anne's head was
hardly on her pillow before she was half asleep; but just then
her door was softly opened and a pleading voice said, "Anne."

Anne sat up drowsily.

"Davy, is that you?  What is the matter?"

A white-clad figure flung itself across the floor and on to the bed.

"Anne," sobbed Davy, getting his arms about her neck.  "I'm awful
glad you're home.  I couldn't go to sleep till I'd told somebody."

"Told somebody what?"

"How mis'rubul I am."

"Why are you miserable, dear?"

"'Cause I was so bad today, Anne.  Oh, I was awful bad --
badder'n I've ever been yet."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, I'm afraid to tell you.  You'll never like me again, Anne.
I couldn't say my prayers tonight.  I couldn't tell God what
I'd done.  I was 'shamed to have Him know."

"But He knew anyway, Davy."

"That's what Dora said.  But I thought p'raps He mightn't have
noticed just at the time.  Anyway, I'd rather tell you first."

"WHAT is it you did?"

Out it all came in a rush.

"I run away from Sunday School -- and went fishing with the
Cottons -- and I told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lynde -- oh!
'most half a dozen -- and -- and -- I -- I said a swear word,
Anne -- a pretty near swear word, anyhow -- and I called God names."

There was silence.  Davy didn't know what to make of it.  Was
Anne so shocked that she never would speak to him again?

"Anne, what are you going to do to me?" he whispered.

"Nothing, dear.  You've been punished already, I think."

"No, I haven't.  Nothing's been done to me."

"You've been very unhappy ever since you did wrong, haven't you?"

"You bet!" said Davy emphatically.

"That was your conscience punishing you, Davy."

"What's my conscience?  I want to know."

"It's something in you, Davy, that always tells you when you are
doing wrong and makes you unhappy if you persist in doing it.
Haven't you noticed that?"

"Yes, but I didn't know what it was.  I wish I didn't have it.
I'd have lots more fun.  Where is my conscience, Anne?  I want to know.
Is it in my stomach?"

"No, it's in your soul," answered Anne, thankful for the
darkness, since gravity must be preserved in serious matters.

"I s'pose I can't get clear of it then," said Davy with a sigh.
"Are you going to tell Marilla and Mrs. Lynde on me, Anne?"

"No, dear, I'm not going to tell any one.  You are sorry you were
naughty, aren't you?"

"You bet!"

"And you'll never be bad like that again."

"No, but -- " added Davy cautiously, "I might be bad some other way."

"You won't say naughty words, or run away on Sundays, or tell falsehoods
to cover up your sins?"

"No.  It doesn't pay," said Davy.

"Well, Davy, just tell God you are sorry and ask Him to forgive you."

"Have YOU forgiven me, Anne?"

"Yes, dear."

"Then," said Davy joyously, "I don't care much whether God does or not."

"Davy!"

"Oh -- I'll ask Him -- I'll ask Him," said Davy quickly,
scrambling off the bed, convinced by Anne's tone that he must
have said something dreadful.  "I don't mind asking Him, Anne.
-- Please, God, I'm awful sorry I behaved bad today and
I'll try to be good on Sundays always and please forgive me.
-- There now, Anne."

"Well, now, run off to bed like a good boy."

"All right.  Say, I don't feel mis'rubul any more.  I feel fine.
Good night."

"Good night."

Anne slipped down on her pillows with a sigh of relief.  Oh --
how sleepy -- she was!  In another second --

"Anne!"  Davy was back again by her bed.  Anne dragged her eyes open.

"What is it now, dear?" she asked, trying to keep a note of
impatience out of her voice.

"Anne, have you ever noticed how Mr. Harrison spits?  Do you
s'pose, if I practice hard, I can learn to spit just like him?"

Anne sat up.

"Davy Keith," she said, "go straight to your bed and don't let me
catch you out of it again tonight!  Go, now!"

Davy went, and stood not upon the order of his going.




Chapter XIV

The Summons


Anne was sitting with Ruby Gillis in the Gillis' garden after the day
had crept lingeringly through it and was gone.  It had been a warm,
smoky summer afternoon.  The world was in a splendor of out-flowering.
The idle valleys were full of hazes.  The woodways were pranked with
shadows and the fields with the purple of the asters.

Anne had given up a moonlight drive to the White Sands beach that
she might spend the evening with Ruby.  She had so spent many
evenings that summer, although she often wondered what good it did
any one, and sometimes went home deciding that she could not go again.

Ruby grew paler as the summer waned; the White Sands school was
given up -- "her father thought it better that she shouldn't
teach till New Year's" -- and the fancy work she loved oftener
and oftener fell from hands grown too weary for it.  But she was
always gay, always hopeful, always chattering and whispering of
her beaux, and their rivalries and despairs.  It was this that
made Anne's visits hard for her.  What had once been silly or
amusing was gruesome, now; it was death peering through a wilful
mask of life.  Yet Ruby seemed to cling to her, and never let her
go until she had promised to come again soon.  Mrs. Lynde
grumbled about Anne's frequent visits, and declared she would
catch consumption; even Marilla was dubious.

"Every time you go to see Ruby you come home looking tired out,"
she said.

"It's so very sad and dreadful," said Anne in a low tone.  "Ruby
doesn't seem to realize her condition in the least.  And yet I
somehow feel she needs help -- craves it -- and I want to give it
to her and can't.  All the time I'm with her I feel as if I were
watching her struggle with an invisible foe -- trying to push it
back with such feeble resistance as she has.  That is why I come
home tired."

But tonight Anne did not feel this so keenly.  Ruby was strangely
quiet.  She said not a word about parties and drives and dresses
and "fellows."  She lay in the hammock, with her untouched work
beside her, and a white shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders.
Her long yellow braids of hair -- how Anne had envied those
beautiful braids in old schooldays!  -- lay on either side of her.
She had taken the pins out -- they made her head ache, she said.
The hectic flush was gone for the time, leaving her pale and childlike.

The moon rose in the silvery sky, empearling the clouds
around her. Below, the pond shimmered in its hazy radiance.
Just beyond the Gillis homestead was the church, with the old
graveyard beside it.  The moonlight shone on the white stones,
bringing them out in clear-cut relief against the dark trees behind.

"How strange the graveyard looks by moonlight!" said Ruby suddenly.
"How ghostly!" she shuddered.  "Anne, it won't be long now before
I'll be lying over there.  You and Diana and all the rest will be
going about, full of life -- and I'll be there -- in the old graveyard
-- dead!"

The surprise of it bewildered Anne.  For a few moments she could not speak.

"You know it's so, don't you?" said Ruby insistently.

"Yes, I know," answered Anne in a low tone.  "Dear Ruby, I know."

"Everybody knows it," said Ruby bitterly.  "I know it -- I've
known it all summer, though I wouldn't give in.  And, oh, Anne"
-- she reached out and caught Anne's hand pleadingly, impulsively
-- "I don't want to die.  I'm AFRAID to die."

"Why should you be afraid, Ruby?" asked Anne quietly.

"Because -- because -- oh, I'm not afraid but that I'll go to
heaven, Anne.  I'm a church member.  But -- it'll be all so
different.  I think -- and think -- and I get so frightened --
and -- and -- homesick.  Heaven must be very beautiful, of course,
the Bible says so -- but, Anne, IT WON'T BE WHAT I'VE BEEN USED TO."

Through Anne's mind drifted an intrusive recollection of a funny
story she had heard Philippa Gordon tell -- the story of some old
man who had said very much the same thing about the world to come.
It had sounded funny then -- she remembered how she and
Priscilla had laughed over it.  But it did not seem in the
least humorous now, coming from Ruby's pale, trembling lips.
It was sad, tragic -- and true!  Heaven could not be what Ruby had
been used to.  There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life,
her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change,
or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and
unreal and undesirable.  Anne wondered helplessly what she could
say that would help her.  Could she say anything?  "I think, Ruby,"
she began hesitatingly -- for it was difficult for Anne to speak
to any one of the deepest thoughts of her heart, or the new
ideas that had vaguely begun to shape themselves in her mind,
concerning the great mysteries of life here and hereafter,
superseding her old childish conceptions, and it was hardest of
all to speak of them to such as Ruby Gillis -- "I think, perhaps,
we have very mistaken ideas about heaven -- what it is and what
it holds for us.  I don't think it can be so very different from
life here as most people seem to think.  I believe we'll just go
on living, a good deal as we live here -- and be OURSELVES just
the same -- only it will be easier to be good and to -- follow
the highest.  All the hindrances and perplexities will be taken
away, and we shall see clearly.  Don't be afraid, Ruby."

"I can't help it," said Ruby pitifully.  "Even if what you say
about heaven is true -- and you can't be sure -- it may be only
that imagination of yours -- it won't be JUST the same.  It CAN'T be.
I want to go on living HERE.  I'm so young, Anne.  I haven't had
my life.  I've fought so hard to live -- and it isn't any use
-- I have to die -- and leave EVERYTHING I care for."  Anne sat
in a pain that was almost intolerable.  She could not tell
comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said was so horribly
true.  She WAS leaving everything she cared for.  She had laid up
her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little
things of life -- the things that pass -- forgetting the great
things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between
the two lives and making of death a mere passing from one
dwelling to the other -- from twilight to unclouded day.  God
would take care of her there -- Anne believed -- she would learn
-- but now it was no wonder her soul clung, in blind helplessness,
to the only things she knew and loved.

Ruby raised herself on her arm and lifted up her bright, beautiful
blue eyes to the moonlit skies.

"I want to live," she said, in a trembling voice.  "I want to
live like other girls.  I -- I want to be married, Anne -- and --
and -- have little children.  You know I always loved babies, Anne.
I couldn't say this to any one but you.  I know you understand.
And then poor Herb -- he -- he loves me and I love him, Anne.
The others meant nothing to me, but HE does -- and if I could
live I would be his wife and be so happy.  Oh, Anne, it's hard."

Ruby sank back on her pillows and sobbed convulsively.  Anne
pressed her hand in an agony of sympathy -- silent sympathy,
which perhaps helped Ruby more than broken, imperfect words could
have done; for presently she grew calmer and her sobs ceased.

"I'm glad I've told you this, Anne," she whispered.  "It has
helped me just to say it all out.  I've wanted to all summer --
every time you came.  I wanted to talk it over with you -- but
I COULDN'T.  It seemed as if it would make death so SURE if I
SAID I was going to die, or if any one else said it or hinted it.
I wouldn't say it, or even think it.  In the daytime, when people
were around me and everything was cheerful, it wasn't so hard to
keep from thinking of it.  But in the night, when I couldn't sleep
-- it was so dreadful, Anne.  I couldn't get away from it then.
Death just came and stared me in the face, until I got so frightened
I could have screamed.

"But you won't be frightened any more, Ruby, will you?  You'll be brave,
and believe that all is going to be well with you."

"I'll try.  I'll think over what you have said, and try to believe it.
And you'll come up as often as you can, won't you, Anne?"

"Yes, dear."

"It -- it won't be very long now, Anne.  I feel sure of that.
And I'd rather have you than any one else.  I always liked you
best of all the girls I went to school with.  You were never
jealous, or mean, like some of them were.  Poor Em White was up
to see me yesterday.  You remember Em and I were such chums for
three years when we went to school?  And then we quarrelled the
time of the school concert.  We've never spoken to each other
since.  Wasn't it silly?  Anything like that seems silly NOW.
But Em and I made up the old quarrel yesterday.  She said she'd
have spoken years ago, only she thought I wouldn't.  And I never
spoke to her because I was sure she wouldn't speak to me.  Isn't
it strange how people misunderstand each other, Anne?"

"Most of the trouble in life comes from misunderstanding, I think,"
said Anne.  "I must go now, Ruby.  It's getting late -- and you
shouldn't be out in the damp."

"You'll come up soon again."

"Yes, very soon.  And if there's anything I can do to help you
I'll be so glad."

"I know.  You HAVE helped me already.  Nothing seems quite so
dreadful now.  Good night, Anne."

"Good night, dear."

Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight.  The evening had
changed something for her.  Life held a different meaning, a
deeper purpose.  On the surface it would go on just the same; but
the deeps had been stirred.  It must not be with her as with poor
butterfly Ruby.  When she came to the end of one life it must not
be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly
different -- something for which accustomed thought and ideal and
aspiration had unfitted her.  The little things of life, sweet
and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for;
the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must
be begun here on earth.

That good night in the garden was for all time.  Anne never saw
Ruby in life again.  The next night the A.V.I.S. gave a farewell
party to Jane Andrews before her departure for the West.  And,
while light feet danced and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues
chattered, there came a summons to a soul in Avonlea that might
not be disregarded or evaded.  The next morning the word went
from house to house that Ruby Gillis was dead.  She had died in
her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face was a smile --
as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead her
over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded.

Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after the funeral that Ruby
Gillis was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes on.  Her
loveliness, as she lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers
that Anne had placed about her, was remembered and talked of for
years in Avonlea.  Ruby had always been beautiful; but her beauty
had been of the earth, earthy; it had had a certain insolent
quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the beholder's eye;
spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never refined it.
But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out delicate
modelings and purity of outline never seen before -- doing what life
and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done
for Ruby.  Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old
playfellow, thought she saw the face God had meant Ruby to have,
and remembered it so always.

Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant room before the
funeral procession left the house, and gave her a small packet.

"I want you to have this," she sobbed.  "Ruby would have liked you
to have it.  It's the embroidered centerpiece she was working at.
It isn't quite finished -- the needle is sticking in it just where
her poor little fingers put it the last time she laid it down, the
afternoon before she died."

"There's always a piece of unfinished work left," said Mrs. Lynde,
with tears in her eyes.  "But I suppose there's always some one
to finish it."

"How difficult it is to realize that one we have always known
can really be dead," said Anne, as she and Diana walked home.
"Ruby is the first of our schoolmates to go.  One by one, sooner
or later, all the rest of us must follow."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Diana uncomfortably.  She did not
want to talk of that.  She would have preferred to have discussed
the details of the funeral -- the splendid white velvet casket
Mr. Gillis had insisted on having for Ruby -- "the Gillises must
always make a splurge, even at funerals," quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde
-- Herb Spencer's sad face, the uncontrolled, hysteric grief of
one of Ruby's sisters -- but Anne would not talk of these things.
She seemed wrapped in a reverie in which Diana felt lonesomely
that she had neither lot nor part.

"Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh," said Davy suddenly.
"Will she laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea, Anne?
I want to know."

"Yes, I think she will," said Anne.

"Oh, Anne," protested Diana, with a rather shocked smile.

"Well, why not, Diana?" asked Anne seriously.  "Do you think
we'll never laugh in heaven?"

"Oh -- I -- I don't know" floundered Diana.  "It doesn't seem
just right, somehow.  You know it's rather dreadful to laugh in
church."

"But heaven won't be like church -- all the time," said Anne.

"I hope it ain't," said Davy emphatically.  "If it is I don't
want to go.  Church is awful dull.  Anyway, I don't mean to go
for ever so long.  I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like
Mr. Thomas Blewett of White Sands.  He says he's lived so long
'cause he always smoked tobacco and it killed all the germs.
Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?"

"No, Davy, I hope you'll never use tobacco," said Anne absently.

"What'll you feel like if the germs kill me then?" demanded Davy.