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Chapter XV

A Dream Turned Upside Down


"Just one more week and we go back to Redmond," said Anne.
She was happy at the thought of returning to work, classes
and Redmond friends.  Pleasing visions were also being woven
around Patty's Place.  There was a warm pleasant sense of home
in the thought of it, even though she had never lived there.

But the summer had been a very happy one, too -- a time of glad living
with summer suns and skies, a time of keen delight in wholesome things;
a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships; a time in which
she had learned to live more nobly, to work more patiently, to play
more heartily.

"All life lessons are not learned at college," she thought.
"Life teaches them everywhere."

But alas, the final week of that pleasant vacation was spoiled for Anne,
by one of those impish happenings which are like a dream turned upside down.

"Been writing any more stories lately?" inquired Mr. Harrison genially
one evening when Anne was taking tea with him and Mrs. Harrison.

"No," answered Anne, rather crisply.

"Well, no offense meant.  Mrs. Hiram Sloane told me the other
day that a big envelope addressed to the Rollings Reliable Baking
Powder Company of Montreal had been dropped into the post office
box a month ago, and she suspicioned that somebody was trying for
the prize they'd offered for the best story that introduced the
name of their baking powder.  She said it wasn't addressed in
your writing, but I thought maybe it was you."

"Indeed, no!  I saw the prize offer, but I'd never dream of
competing for it.  I think it would be perfectly disgraceful to
write a story to advertise a baking powder.  It would be almost
as bad as Judson Parker's patent medicine fence."

So spake Anne loftily, little dreaming of the valley of
humiliation awaiting her.  That very evening Diana popped into
the porch gable, bright-eyed and rosy cheeked, carrying a letter.

"Oh, Anne, here's a letter for you.  I was at the office, so I
thought I'd bring it along.  Do open it quick.  If it is what I
believe it is I shall just be wild with delight."  Anne, puzzled,
opened the letter and glanced over the typewritten contents.


      Miss Anne Shirley,
      Green Gables,
      Avonlea, P.E. Island.

"DEAR MADAM: We have much pleasure in informing you that
your charming story `Averil's Atonement' has won the prize
of twenty-five dollars offered in our recent competition.
We enclose the check herewith.  We are arranging for the
publication of the story in several prominent Canadian
newspapers, and we also intend to have it printed in
pamphlet form for distribution among our patrons.
Thanking you for the interest you have shown in
our enterprise, we remain,

                                   Yours very truly,
                                THE ROLLINGS RELIABLE
                                   BAKING POWDER Co."


"I don't understand," said Anne, blankly.

Diana clapped her hands.

"Oh, I KNEW it would win the prize -- I was sure of it.
_I_ sent your story into the competition, Anne."

"Diana -- Barry!"

"Yes, I did," said Diana gleefully, perching herself on the bed.
"When I saw the offer I thought of your story in a minute, and at
first I thought I'd ask you to send it in.  But then I was afraid
you wouldn't -- you had so little faith left in it.  So I just
decided I'd send the copy you gave me, and say nothing about it.
Then, if it didn't win the prize, you'd never know and you wouldn't
feel badly over it, because the stories that failed were not to be
returned, and if it did you'd have such a delightful surprise."

Diana was not the most discerning of mortals, but just at this
moment it struck her that Anne was not looking exactly overjoyed.
The surprise was there, beyond doubt -- but where was the delight?

"Why, Anne, you don't seem a bit pleased!" she exclaimed.

Anne instantly manufactured a smile and put it on.

"Of course I couldn't be anything but pleased over your unselfish
wish to give me pleasure," she said slowly.  "But you know -- I'm
so amazed -- I can't realize it -- and I don't understand.  There
wasn't a word in my story about -- about -- " Anne choked a little
over the word -- "baking powder."

"Oh, _I_ put that in," said Diana, reassured.  "It was as easy as
wink -- and of course my experience in our old Story Club helped me.
You know the scene where Averil makes the cake?  Well, I just stated
that she used the Rollings Reliable in it, and that was why it turned
out so well; and then, in the last paragraph, where PERCEVAL clasps
AVERIL in his arms and says, `Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years
will bring us the fulfilment of our home of dreams,' I added, `in which
we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.'"

"Oh," gasped poor Anne, as if some one had dashed cold water on her.

"And you've won the twenty-five dollars," continued Diana jubilantly.
"Why, I heard Priscilla say once that the Canadian Woman only pays
five dollars for a story!"

Anne held out the hateful pink slip in shaking fingers.

"I can't take it -- it's yours by right, Diana.  You sent the
story in and made the alterations.  I -- I would certainly never
have sent it.  So you must take the check."

"I'd like to see myself," said Diana scornfully.  "Why, what I
did wasn't any trouble.  The honor of being a friend of the
prizewinner is enough for me.  Well, I must go.  I should have
gone straight home from the post office for we have company.
But I simply had to come and hear the news.  I'm so glad for
your sake, Anne."

Anne suddenly bent forward, put her arms about Diana, and kissed
her cheek.

"I think you are the sweetest and truest friend in the world,
Diana," she said, with a little tremble in her voice, "and I
assure you I appreciate the motive of what you've done."

Diana, pleased and embarrassed, got herself away, and poor Anne,
after flinging the innocent check into her bureau drawer as if it
were blood-money, cast herself on her bed and wept tears of shame
and outraged sensibility.  Oh, she could never live this down -- never!

Gilbert arrived at dusk, brimming over with congratulations,
for he had called at Orchard Slope and heard the news.  But his
congratulations died on his lips at sight of Anne's face.

"Why, Anne, what is the matter?  I  expected to find you radiant
over winning Rollings Reliable prize.  Good for you!"

"Oh, Gilbert, not you," implored Anne, in an ET-TU BRUTE tone.
"I thought YOU would understand.  Can't you see how awful it is?"

"I must confess I can't.  WHAT is wrong?"

"Everything," moaned Anne.  "I feel as if I were disgraced forever.
What do you think a mother would feel like if she found her
child tattooed over with a baking powder advertisement?
I feel just the same.  I loved my poor little story, and I
wrote it out of the best that was in me.  And it is SACRILEGE to
have it degraded to the level of a baking powder advertisement.
Don't you remember what Professor Hamilton used to tell us in the
literature class at Queen's?  He said we were never to write a
word for a low or unworthy motive, but always to cling to the
very highest ideals.  What will he think when he hears I've
written a story to advertise Rollings Reliable?  And, oh, when it
gets out at Redmond!  Think how I'll be teased and laughed at!"

"That you won't," said Gilbert, wondering uneasily if it were
that confounded Junior's opinion in particular over which Anne
was worried.  "The Reds will think just as I thought -- that you,
being like nine out of ten of us, not overburdened with worldly
wealth, had taken this way of earning an honest penny to help
yourself through the year.  I don't see that there's anything low
or unworthy about that, or anything ridiculous either.  One would
rather write masterpieces of literature no doubt -- but meanwhile
board and tuition fees have to be paid."

This commonsense, matter-of-fact view of the case cheered Anne a
little.  At least it removed her dread of being laughed at,
though the deeper hurt of an outraged ideal remained.




Chapter XVI

Adjusted Relationships


"It's the homiest spot I ever saw -- it's homier than home,"
avowed Philippa Gordon, looking about her with delighted eyes.
They were all assembled at twilight in the big living-room at
Patty's Place -- Anne and Priscilla, Phil and Stella, Aunt Jamesina,
Rusty, Joseph, the Sarah-Cat, and Gog and Magog.  The firelight
shadows were dancing over the walls; the cats were purring;
and a huge bowl of hothouse chrysanthemums, sent to Phil by one
of the victims, shone through the golden gloom like creamy moons.

It was three weeks since they had considered themselves settled,
and already all believed the experiment would be a success.  The
first fortnight after their return had been a pleasantly exciting
one; they had been busy setting up their household goods, organizing
their little establishment, and adjusting different opinions.

Anne was not over-sorry to leave Avonlea when the time came to
return to college.  The last few days of her vacation had not
been pleasant.  Her prize story had been published in the Island
papers; and Mr. William Blair had, upon the counter of his
store, a huge pile of pink, green and yellow pamphlets,
containing it, one of which he gave to every customer.  He sent a
complimentary bundle to Anne, who promptly dropped them all in
the kitchen stove.  Her humiliation was the consequence of her
own ideals only, for Avonlea folks thought it quite splendid
that she should have won the prize.  Her many friends regarded
her with honest admiration; her few foes with scornful envy.
Josie Pye said she believed Anne Shirley had just copied the story;
she was sure she remembered reading it in a paper years before.
The Sloanes, who had found out or guessed that Charlie had been
"turned down," said they didn't think it was much to be proud of;
almost any one could have done it, if she tried.  Aunt Atossa
told Anne she was very sorry to hear she had taken to writing
novels; nobody born and bred in Avonlea would do it; that was
what came of adopting orphans from goodness knew where, with
goodness knew what kind of parents.  Even Mrs. Rachel Lynde was
darkly dubious about the propriety of writing fiction, though she
was almost reconciled to it by that twenty-five dollar check.

"It is perfectly amazing, the price they pay for such lies,
that's what," she said, half-proudly, half-severely.

All things considered, it was a relief when going-away time came.
And it was very jolly to be back at Redmond, a wise, experienced
Soph with hosts of friends to greet on the merry opening day.
Pris and Stella and Gilbert were there, Charlie Sloane, looking
more important than ever a Sophomore looked before, Phil, with
the Alec-and-Alonzo question still unsettled, and Moody Spurgeon
MacPherson.  Moody Spurgeon had been teaching school ever since
leaving Queen's, but his mother had concluded it was high time
he gave it up and turned his attention to learning how to be a
minister.  Poor Moody Spurgeon fell on hard luck at the very
beginning of his college career.  Half a dozen ruthless Sophs,
who were among his fellow-boarders, swooped down upon him one
night and shaved half of his head.  In this guise the luckless
Moody Spurgeon had to go about until his hair grew again.  He
told Anne bitterly that there were times when he had his doubts
as to whether he was really called to be a minister.

Aunt Jamesina did not come until the girls had Patty's Place
ready for her.  Miss Patty had sent the key to Anne, with a
letter in which she said Gog and Magog were packed in a box under
the spare-room bed, but might be taken out when wanted; in a
postscript she added that she hoped the girls would be careful
about putting up pictures.  The living room had been newly
papered five years before and she and Miss Maria did not want any
more holes made in that new paper than was absolutely necessary.
For the rest she trusted everything to Anne.

How those girls enjoyed putting their nest in order!  As Phil said,
it was almost as good as getting married.  You had the fun of
homemaking without the bother of a husband.  All brought something
with them to adorn or make comfortable the little house.  Pris and
Phil and Stella had knick-knacks and pictures galore, which latter
they proceeded to hang according to taste, in reckless disregard
of Miss Patty's new paper.

"We'll putty the holes up when we leave, dear -- she'll never know,"
they said to protesting Anne.

Diana had given Anne a pine needle cushion and Miss Ada had given
both her and Priscilla a fearfully and wonderfully embroidered one.
Marilla had sent a big box of preserves, and darkly hinted at a
hamper for Thanksgiving, and Mrs. Lynde gave Anne a patchwork quilt
and loaned her five more.

"You take them," she said authoritatively.  "They might as well be
in use as packed away in that trunk in the garret for moths to gnaw."

No moths would ever have ventured near those quilts, for they
reeked of mothballs to such an extent that they had to be hung in
the orchard of Patty's Place a full fortnight before they could
be endured indoors.  Verily, aristocratic Spofford Avenue had
rarely beheld such a display.  The gruff old millionaire who
lived "next door" came over and wanted to buy the gorgeous red
and yellow "tulip-pattern" one which Mrs. Rachel had given Anne.
He said his mother used to make quilts like that, and by Jove, he
wanted one to remind him of her.  Anne would not sell it, much to
his disappointment, but she wrote all about it to Mrs. Lynde.
That highly-gratified lady sent word back that she had one just
like it to spare, so the tobacco king got his quilt after all,
and insisted on having it spread on his bed, to the disgust of
his fashionable wife.

Mrs. Lynde's quilts served a very useful purpose that winter.
Patty's Place for all its many virtues, had its faults also.
It was really a rather cold house; and when the frosty nights
came the girls were very glad to snuggle down under Mrs. Lynde's
quilts, and hoped that the loan of them might be accounted unto
her for righteousness.  Anne had the blue room she had coveted
at sight.  Priscilla and Stella had the large one.  Phil was
blissfully content with the little one over the kitchen; and
Aunt Jamesina was to have the downstairs one off the living-room.
Rusty at first slept on the doorstep.

Anne, walking home from Redmond a few days after her return,
became aware that the people that she met surveyed her with a
covert, indulgent smile.  Anne wondered uneasily what was the
matter with her.  Was her hat crooked?  Was her belt loose?
Craning her head to investigate, Anne, for the first time,
saw Rusty.

Trotting along behind her, close to her heels, was quite the
most forlorn specimen of the cat tribe she had ever beheld.
The animal was well past kitten-hood, lank, thin, disreputable
looking.  Pieces of both ears were lacking, one eye was
temporarily out of repair, and one jowl ludicrously swollen.
As for color, if a once black cat had been well and thoroughly
singed the result would have resembled the hue of this waif's
thin, draggled, unsightly fur.

Anne "shooed," but the cat would not "shoo."  As long as she
stood he sat back on his haunches and gazed at her reproachfully
out of his one good eye; when she resumed her walk he followed.
Anne resigned herself to his company until she reached the gate
of Patty's Place, which she coldly shut in his face, fondly
supposing she had seen the last of him.  But when, fifteen
minutes later, Phil opened the door, there sat the rusty-brown
cat on the step.  More, he promptly darted in and sprang upon
Anne's lap with a half-pleading, half-triumphant "miaow."

"Anne," said Stella severely, "do you own that animal?"

"No, I do NOT," protested disgusted Anne.  "The creature followed
me home from somewhere.  I couldn't get rid of him.  Ugh, get down.
I like decent cats reasonably well; but I don't like beasties of
your complexion."

Pussy, however, refused to get down.  He coolly curled up in
Anne's lap and began to purr.

"He has evidently adopted you," laughed Priscilla.

"I won't BE adopted," said Anne stubbornly.

"The poor creature is starving," said Phil pityingly.  "Why, his
bones are almost coming through his skin."

"Well, I'll give him a square meal and then he must return to
whence he came," said Anne resolutely.

The cat was fed and put out.  In the morning he was still
on the doorstep.  On the doorstep he continued to sit, bolting
in whenever the door was opened.  No coolness of welcome had
the least effect on him; of nobody save Anne did he take the
least notice.  Out of compassion the girls fed him; but when
a week had passed they decided that something must be done.
The cat's appearance had improved.  His eye and cheek had
resumed their normal appearance; he was not quite so thin;
and he had been seen washing his face.

"But for all that we can't keep him," said Stella.  "Aunt Jimsie
is coming next week and she will bring the Sarah-cat with her.

We can't keep two cats; and if we did this Rusty Coat would
fight all the time with the Sarah-cat.  He's a fighter by nature.
He had a pitched battle last evening with the tobacco-king's cat
and routed him, horse, foot and artillery."

"We must get rid of him," agreed Anne, looking darkly at the
subject of their discussion, who was purring on the hearth rug
with an air of lamb-like meekness.  "But the question is -- how?
How can four unprotected females get rid of a cat who won't be
got rid of?"

We must chloroform him," said Phil briskly.  "That is the most
humane way."

"Who of us knows anything about chloroforming a cat?" demanded
Anne gloomily.

"I do, honey.  It's one of my few -- sadly few -- useful accomplishments.
I've disposed of several at home.  You take the cat in the morning and
give him a good breakfast.  Then you take an old burlap bag -- there's
one in the back porch -- put the cat on it and turn over him a wooden box.
Then take a two-ounce bottle of chloroform, uncork it, and slip it under
the edge of the box.  Put a heavy weight on top of the box and leave it
till evening.  The cat will be dead, curled up peacefully as if he
were asleep.  No pain -- no struggle."

"It sounds easy," said Anne dubiously.

"It IS easy.  Just leave it to me.  I'll see to it," said Phil reassuringly.

Accordingly the chloroform was procured, and the next morning Rusty was
lured to his doom.  He ate his breakfast, licked his chops, and climbed
into Anne's lap.  Anne's heart misgave her.  This poor creature loved her
-- trusted her.  How could she be a party to this destruction?

"Here, take him," she said hastily to Phil.  "I feel like a murderess."

"He won't suffer, you know," comforted Phil, but Anne had fled.

The fatal deed was done in the back porch.  Nobody went near it
that day.  But at dusk Phil declared that Rusty must be buried.

"Pris and Stella must dig his grave in the orchard," declared Phil,
"and Anne must come with me to lift the box off.  That's the part
I always hate."

The two conspirators tip-toed reluctantly to the back porch.
Phil gingerly lifted the stone she had put on the box.  Suddenly,
faint but distinct, sounded an unmistakable mew under the box.

"He -- he isn't dead," gasped Anne, sitting blankly down on the
kitchen doorstep.

"He must be," said Phil incredulously.

Another tiny mew proved that he wasn't.  The two girls stared at
each other."

What will we do?" questioned Anne.

"Why in the world don't you come?" demanded Stella, appearing in
the doorway.  "We've got the grave ready.  `What silent still and
silent all?'" she quoted teasingly.

"`Oh, no, the voices of the dead Sound like the distant torrent's fall,'"
promptly counter-quoted Anne, pointing solemnly to the box.

A burst of laughter broke the tension.

"We must leave him here till morning," said Phil, replacing the stone.
"He hasn't mewed for five minutes.  Perhaps the mews we heard were his
dying groan.  Or perhaps we merely imagined them, under the strain of
our guilty consciences."

But, when the box was lifted in the morning, Rusty bounded at one gay
leap to Anne's shoulder where he began to lick her face affectionately.
Never was there a cat more decidedly alive.

"Here's a knot hole in the box," groaned Phil.  "I never saw it.
That's why he didn't die.  Now, we've got to do it all over again."

"No, we haven't," declared Anne suddenly.  "Rusty isn't going to be
killed again.  He's my cat -- and you've just got to make the best of it."

"Oh, well, if you'll settle with Aunt Jimsie and the Sarah-cat,"
said Stella, with the air of one washing her hands of the whole affair.

From that time Rusty was one of the family.  He slept o'nights on the
scrubbing cushion in the back porch and lived on the fat of the land.
By the time Aunt Jamesina came he was plump and glossy and tolerably
respectable.  But, like Kipling's cat, he "walked by himself."
His paw was against every cat, and every cat's paw against him.
One by one he vanquished the aristocratic felines of Spofford Avenue.
As for human beings, he loved Anne and Anne alone.  Nobody else even
dared stroke him.  An angry spit and something that sounded much like
very improper language greeted any one who did.

"The airs that cat puts on are perfectly intolerable," declared Stella.

"Him was a nice old pussens, him was," vowed Anne, cuddling her pet defiantly.

"Well, I don't know how he and the Sarah-cat will ever make out
to live together," said Stella pesimistically.  "Cat-fights in
the orchard o'nights are bad enough.  But cat-fights here in the
livingroom are unthinkable."  In due time Aunt Jamesina arrived.
Anne and Priscilla and Phil had awaited her advent rather dubiously;
but when Aunt Jamesina was enthroned in the rocking chair before the
open fire they figuratively bowed down and worshipped her.

Aunt Jamesina was a tiny old woman with a little, softly-triangular face,
and large, soft blue eyes that were alight with unquenchable youth, and
as full of hopes as a girl's.  She had pink cheeks and snow-white hair
which she wore in quaint little puffs over her ears.

"It's a very old-fashioned way," she said, knitting industriously
at something as dainty and pink as a sunset cloud.  "But _I_ am old-fashioned.
My clothes are, and it stands to reason my opinions are, too.  I don't say
they're any the better of that, mind you.  In fact, I daresay they're a good
deal the worse.  But they've worn nice and easy.  New shoes are smarter than
old ones, but the old ones are more comfortable.  I'm old enough to indulge
myself in the matter of shoes and opinions.  I mean to take it real easy here.
I know you expect me to look after you and keep you proper, but I'm not going
to do it.

You're old enough to know how to behave if you're ever going to be.
So, as far as I am concerned," concluded Aunt Jamesina, with a twinkle
in her young eyes, "you can all go to destruction in your own way."

"Oh, will somebody separate those cats?" pleaded Stella, shudderingly.

Aunt Jamesina had brought with her not only the Sarah-cat but Joseph.
Joseph, she explained, had belonged to a dear friend of hers who had
gone to live in Vancouver.

"She couldn't take Joseph with her so she begged me to take him.
I really couldn't refuse.  He's a beautiful cat -- that is, his
disposition is beautiful.  She called him Joseph because his coat
is of many colors."

It certainly was.  Joseph, as the disgusted Stella said, looked
like a walking rag-bag.  It was impossible to say what his ground
color was.  His legs were white with black spots on them.
His back was gray with a huge patch of yellow on one side and a
black patch on the other.  His tail was yellow with a gray tip.
One ear was black and one yellow.  A black patch over one eye gave
him a fearfully rakish look.  In reality he was meek and inoffensive,
of a sociable disposition.  In one respect, if in no other, Joseph
was like a lily of the field.  He toiled not neither did he spin
or catch mice.  Yet Solomon in all his glory slept not on softer
cushions, or feasted more fully on fat things.

Joseph and the Sarah-cat arrived by express in separate boxes.
After they had been released and fed, Joseph selected the cushion
and corner which appealed to him, and the Sarah-cat gravely sat
herself down before the fire and proceeded to wash her face.  She
was a large, sleek, gray-and-white cat, with an enormous dignity
which was not at all impaired by any consciousness of her plebian
origin.  She had been given to Aunt Jamesina by her washerwoman.

"Her name was Sarah, so my husband always called puss the
Sarah-cat," explained Aunt Jamesina.  "She is eight years old,
and a remarkable mouser.  Don't worry, Stella.  The Sarah-cat
NEVER fights and Joseph rarely."

"They'll have to fight here in self-defense," said Stella.

At this juncture Rusty arrived on the scene.  He bounded
joyously half way across the room before he saw the intruders.
Then he stopped short; his tail expanded until it was as big as
three tails.  The fur on his back rose up in a defiant arch;
Rusty lowered his head, uttered a fearful shriek of hatred and
defiance, and launched himself at the Sarah-cat.

The stately animal had stopped washing her face and was looking
at him curiously.  She met his onslaught with one contemptuous
sweep of her capable paw.  Rusty went rolling helplessly over on
the rug; he picked himself up dazedly.  What sort of a cat was
this who had boxed his ears?  He looked dubiously at the Sarah-cat.
Would he or would he not?  The Sarah-cat deliberately turned her
back on him and resumed her toilet operations.  Rusty decided that
he would not.  He never did.  From that time on the Sarah-cat ruled
the roost.  Rusty never again interfered with her.

But Joseph rashly sat up and yawned.  Rusty, burning to avenge
his disgrace, swooped down upon him.  Joseph, pacific by nature,
could fight upon occasion and fight well.  The result was a
series of drawn battles.  Every day Rusty and Joseph fought at
sight.  Anne took Rusty's part and detested Joseph.  Stella was
in despair.  But Aunt Jamesina only laughed.

Let them fight it out," she said tolerantly.  "They'll make friends
after a bit.  Joseph needs some exercise -- he was getting too fat.
And Rusty has to learn he isn't the only cat in the world."

Eventually Joseph and Rusty accepted the situation and from sworn
enemies became sworn friends.  They slept on the same cushion with
their paws about each other, and gravely washed each other's faces.

"We've all got used to each other," said Phil.  "And I've learned
how to wash dishes and sweep a floor."

"But you needn't try to make us believe you can chloroform a cat,"
laughed Anne.

"It was all the fault of the knothole," protested Phil.

"It was a good thing the knothole was there," said Aunt Jamesina
rather severely.  "Kittens HAVE to be drowned, I admit, or the
world would be overrun.  But no decent, grown-up cat should be
done to death -- unless he sucks eggs."

"You wouldn't have thought Rusty very decent if you'd seen him when
he came here," said Stella.  "He positively looked like the Old Nick."

"I don't believe Old Nick can be so very, ugly" said Aunt Jamesina
reflectively.  "He wouldn't do so much harm if he was.  _I_ always
think of him as a rather handsome gentleman."




Chapter XVII

A Letter from Davy


"It's beginning to snow, girls," said Phil, coming in one
November evening, "and there are the loveliest little stars and
crosses all over the garden walk.  I never noticed before what
exquisite things snowflakes really are.  One has time to notice
things like that in the simple life.  Bless you all for permitting
me to live it.  It's really delightful to feel worried because
butter has gone up five cents a pound."

"Has it?" demanded Stella, who kept the household accounts.

"It has -- and here's your butter.  I'm getting quite expert at marketing.
It's better fun than flirting," concluded Phil gravely.

"Everything is going up scandalously," sighed Stella.

"Never mind.  Thank goodness air and salvation are still free,"
said Aunt Jamesina.

"And so is laughter," added Anne.  "There's no tax on it yet
and that is well, because you're all going to laugh presently.
I'm going to read you Davy's letter.  His spelling has improved
immensely this past year, though he is not strong on apostrophes,
and he certainly possesses the gift of writing an interesting letter.
Listen and laugh, before we settle down to the evening's study-grind."

"Dear Anne," ran Davy's letter, "I take my pen to tell you that
we are all pretty well and hope this will find you the same.
It's snowing some today and Marilla says the old woman in the sky
is shaking her feather beds.  Is the old woman in the sky God's
wife, Anne?  I want to know.

"Mrs. Lynde has been real sick but she is better now.  She fell
down the cellar stairs last week.  When she fell she grabbed hold
of the shelf with all the milk pails and stewpans on it, and it
gave way and went down with her and made a splendid crash.
Marilla thought it was an earthquake at first.

One of the stewpans was all dinged up and Mrs. Lynde straned her ribs.
The doctor came and gave her medicine to rub on her ribs but
she didn't under stand him and took it all inside instead.
The doctor said it was a wonder it dident kill her but it dident
and it cured her ribs and Mrs. Lynde says doctors dont know much
anyhow.  But we couldent fix up the stewpan.  Marilla had to
throw it out.  Thanksgiving was last week.  There was no school
and we had a great dinner.  I et mince pie and rost turkey and
frut cake and donuts and cheese and jam and choklut cake.
Marilla said I'd die but I dident.  Dora had earake after it,
only it wasent in her ears it was in her stummick.  I dident
have earake anywhere.

"Our new teacher is a man.  He does things for jokes.  Last week
he made all us third-class boys write a composishun on what kind
of a wife we'd like to have and the girls on what kind of a
husband.  He laughed fit to kill when he read them.  This was
mine.  I thought youd like to see it.

"`The kind of a wife I'd like to Have.

"`She must have good manners and get my meals on time and do
what I tell her and always be very polite to me.  She must be
fifteen yers old.  She must be good to the poor and keep her
house tidy and be good tempered and go to church regularly.
She must be very handsome and have curly hair.  If I get a wife
that is just what I like Ill be an awful good husband to her.
I think a woman ought to be awful good to her husband.  Some poor
women havent any husbands.

                                 `THE END.'"


"I was at Mrs. Isaac Wrights funeral at White Sands last week.
The husband of the corpse felt real sorry.  Mrs. Lynde says
Mrs. Wrights grandfather stole a sheep but Marilla says we mustent
speak ill of the dead.  Why mustent we, Anne?  I want to know.
It's pretty safe, ain't it?

"Mrs. Lynde was awful mad the other day because I asked her if
she was alive in Noah's time.  I dident mean to hurt her feelings.
I just wanted to know.  Was she, Anne?

"Mr. Harrison wanted to get rid of his dog.  So he hunged him
once but he come to life and scooted for the barn while Mr.
Harrison was digging the grave, so he hunged him again and he
stayed dead that time.  Mr. Harrison has a new man working for him.
He's awful okward.  Mr. Harrison says he is left handed in both
his feet.  Mr. Barry's hired man is lazy.  Mrs. Barry says that
but Mr. Barry says he aint lazy exactly only he thinks it easier
to pray for things than to work for them.

"Mrs. Harmon Andrews prize pig that she talked so much of died
in a fit.  Mrs. Lynde says it was a judgment on her for pride.
But I think it was hard on the pig.  Milty Boulter has been sick.
The doctor gave him medicine and it tasted horrid.  I offered to
take it for him for a quarter but the Boulters are so mean.
Milty says he'd rather take it himself and save his money.
I asked Mrs. Boulter how a person would go about catching a man and
she got awful mad and said she dident know, shed never chased men.

"The A.V.I.S. is going to paint the hall again.  They're tired
of having it blue.

"The new minister was here to tea last night.  He took three
pieces of pie.

If I did that Mrs. Lynde would call me piggy.  And he et fast and
took big bites and Marilla is always telling me not to do that.
Why can ministers do what boys can't?  I want to know.

"I haven't any more news.  Here are six kisses.  xxxxxx.  Dora
sends one.  Heres hers.  x.

                               "Your loving friend
                                         DAVID KEITH"


"P.S.  Anne, who was the devils father?  I want to know."




Chapter XVIII

Miss Josepine Remembers the Anne-girl


When Christmas holidays came the girls of Patty's Place scattered to
their respective homes, but Aunt Jamesina elected to stay where she was.

"I couldn't go to any of the places I've been invited and take
those three cats," she said.  "And I'm not going to leave the
poor creatures here alone for nearly three weeks.  If we had any
decent neighbors who would feed them I might, but there's nothing
except millionaires on this street.  So I'll stay here and keep
Patty's Place warm for you."

Anne went home with the usual joyous anticipations -- which were
not wholly fulfilled.  She found Avonlea in the grip of such an
early, cold, and stormy winter as even the "oldest inhabitant"
could not recall.  Green Gables was literally hemmed in by huge
drifts.  Almost every day of that ill-starred vacation it stormed
fiercely; and even on fine days it drifted unceasingly.  No
sooner were the roads broken than they filled in again.  It was
almost impossible to stir out.  The A.V.I.S. tried, on three
evenings, to have a party in honor of the college students, and
on each evening the storm was so wild that nobody could go, so
they gave up the attempt in despair.  Anne, despite her love of
and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of
Patty's Place, its cosy open fire, Aunt Jamesina's mirthful eyes,
the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness
of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of
grave and gay.

Anne was lonely; Diana, during the whole of the holidays, was
imprisoned at home with a bad attack of bronchitis.  She could
not come to Green Gables and it was rarely Anne could get to
Orchard Slope, for the old way through the Haunted Wood was
impassable with drifts, and the long way over the frozen Lake of
Shining Waters was almost as bad.  Ruby Gillis was sleeping in
the white-heaped graveyard; Jane Andrews was teaching a school on
western prairies.  Gilbert, to be sure, was still faithful, and
waded up to Green Gables every possible evening.  But Gilbert's
visits were not what they once were.  Anne almost dreaded them.
It was very disconcerting to look up in the midst of a sudden
silence and find Gilbert's hazel eyes fixed upon her with a quite
unmistakable expression in their grave depths; and it was still
more disconcerting to find herself blushing hotly and
uncomfortably under his gaze, just as if -- just as if -- well,
it was very embarrassing.  Anne wished herself back at Patty's
Place, where there was always somebody else about to take the
edge off a delicate situation.  At Green Gables Marilla went
promptly to Mrs. Lynde's domain when Gilbert came and insisted
on taking the twins with her.  The significance of this was
unmistakable and Anne was in a helpless fury over it.

Davy, however, was perfectly happy.  He reveled in getting out in
the morning and shoveling out the paths to the well and henhouse.
He gloried in the Christmas-tide delicacies which Marilla and
Mrs. Lynde vied with each other in preparing for Anne, and he
was reading an enthralling tale, in a school library book, of a
wonderful hero who seemed blessed with a miraculous faculty for
getting into scrapes from which he was usually delivered by an
earthquake or a volcanic explosion, which blew him high and dry
out of his troubles, landed him in a fortune, and closed the
story with proper ECLAT.

"I tell you it's a bully story, Anne," he said ecstatically.
"I'd ever so much rather read it than the Bible."

"Would you?" smiled Anne.

Davy peered curiously at her.

"You don't seem a bit shocked, Anne.  Mrs. Lynde was awful
shocked when I said it to her."

"No, I'm not shocked, Davy.  I think it's quite natural that a
nine-year-old boy would sooner read an adventure story than the
Bible.  But when you are older I hope and think that you will
realize what a wonderful book the Bible is."

"Oh, I think some parts of it are fine," conceded Davy.  "That
story about Joseph now -- it's bully.  But if I'd been Joseph _I_
wouldn't have forgive the brothers.  No, siree, Anne.  I'd have
cut all their heads off.  Mrs. Lynde was awful mad when I said that
and shut the Bible up and said she'd never read me any more of it if
I talked like that.  So I don't talk now when she reads it Sunday
afternoons; I just think things and say them to Milty Boulter next
day in school.  I told Milty the story about Elisha and the bears
and it scared him so he's never made fun of Mr. Harrison's bald
head once.  Are there any bears on P.E. Island, Anne?  I want to know."

"Not nowadays," said Anne, absently, as the wind blew a scud of
snow against the window.  "Oh, dear, will it ever stop storming."

"God knows," said Davy airily, preparing to resume his reading.

Anne WAS shocked this time.

"Davy!" she exclaimed reproachfully.

"Mrs. Lynde says that," protested Davy.  "One night last week
Marilla said `Will Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix EVER get
married" and Mrs. Lynde said, `God knows' -- just like that."

"Well, it wasn't right for her to say it," said Anne, promptly
deciding upon which horn of this dilemma to empale herself.
"It isn't right for anybody to take that name in vain or
speak it lightly, Davy.  Don't ever do it again."

"Not if I say it slow and solemn, like the minister?" queried
Davy gravely.

"No, not even then."

"Well, I won't.  Ludovic Speed and Theodora Dix live in Middle
Grafton and Mrs. Rachel says he has been courting her for a
hundred years.  Won't they soon be too old to get married, Anne?
I hope Gilbert won't court YOU that long.  When are you going to
be married, Anne?  Mrs. Lynde says it's a sure thing."

"Mrs. Lynde is a --" began Anne hotly; then stopped.  "Awful old
gossip," completed Davy calmly.  "That's what every one calls her.
But is it a sure thing, Anne?  I want to know."

"You're a very silly little boy, Davy," said Anne, stalking
haughtily out of the room.  The kitchen was deserted and she sat
down by the window in the fast falling wintry twilight.  The sun
had set and the wind had died down.  A pale chilly moon looked
out behind a bank of purple clouds in the west.  The sky faded
out, but the strip of yellow along the western horizon grew
brighter and fiercer, as if all the stray gleams of light were
concentrating in one spot; the distant hills, rimmed with
priest-like firs, stood out in dark distinctness against it.
Anne looked across the still, white fields, cold and lifeless
in the harsh light of that grim sunset, and sighed.  She was
very lonely; and she was sad at heart; for she was wondering
if she would be able to return to Redmond next year.  It did not
seem likely.  The only scholarship possible in the Sophomore year
was a very small affair.  She would not take Marilla's money;
and there seemed little prospect of being able to earn enough
in the summer vacation.

"I suppose I'll just have to drop out next year," she thought
drearily, "and teach a district school again until I earn enough
to finish my course.  And by that time all my old class will have
graduated and Patty's Place will be out of the question.  But there!
I'm not going to be a coward.  I'm thankful I can earn my way through
if necessary."

"Here's Mr. Harrison wading up the lane," announced Davy, running out.
"I hope he's brought the mail.  It's three days since we got it.
I want to see what them pesky Grits are doing.  I'm a Conservative, Anne.
And I tell you, you have to keep your eye on them Grits."

Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and merry letters from Stella
and Priscilla and Phil soon dissipated Anne's blues.  Aunt Jamesina,
too, had written, saying that she was keeping the hearth-fire alight,
and that the cats were all well, and the house plants doing fine.

"The weather has been real cold," she wrote, "so I let the cats sleep
in the house -- Rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the living-room, and
the Sarah-cat on the foot of my bed.  It's real company to hear her
purring when I wake up in the night and think of my poor daughter in
the foreign field.  If it was anywhere but in India I wouldn't worry,
but they say the snakes out there are terrible.  It takes all the
Sarah-cats's purring to drive away the thought of those snakes.
I have enough faith for everything but the snakes.  I can't think
why Providence ever made them.  Sometimes I don't think He did.
I'm inclined to believe the Old Harry had a hand in making THEM."

Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication till the last,
thinking it unimportant.  When she had read it she sat very
still, with tears in her eyes.

"What is the matter, Anne?" asked Marilla.

"Miss Josephine Barry is dead," said Anne, in a low tone.

"So she has gone at last," said Marilla.  "Well, she has been
sick for over a year, and the Barrys have been expecting to hear
of her death any time.  It is well she is at rest for she has
suffered dreadfully, Anne.  She was always kind to you."

"She has been kind to the last, Marilla.  This letter is from her lawyer.
She has left me a thousand dollars in her will."

"Gracious, ain't that an awful lot of money," exclaimed Davy.
"She's the woman you and Diana lit on when you jumped into
the spare room bed, ain't she?  Diana told me that story.
Is that why she left you so much?"

"Hush, Davy," said Anne gently.  She slipped away to the porch
gable with a full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs. Lynde to talk
over the news to their hearts' content.

"Do you s'pose Anne will ever get married now?" speculated Davy
anxiously.  "When Dorcas Sloane got married last summer she said
if she'd had enough money to live on she'd never have been
bothered with a man, but even a widower with eight children was
better'n living with a sister-in-law."

"Davy Keith, do hold your tongue," said Mrs. Rachel severely.
"The way you talk is scandalous for a small boy, that's what."




Chapter XIX

An Interlude


"To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left
my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the
hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading
in her pet chair.  They were alone in the living room.  Stella and
Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs
adorning herself for a party.

"I suppose you feel kind of, sorry" said Aunt Jamesina.  "The teens are
such a nice part of life.  I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself."

Anne laughed.

"You never will, Aunty.  You'll be eighteen when you should be a
hundred.  Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well.
Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my
character would be formed, for good or evil.  I don't feel that
it's what it should be.  It's full of flaws."

"So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully.  "Mine's cracked
in a hundred places.  Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are
twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction
or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line.  Don't worry over it,
Anne.  Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good
time.  That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well.  Where's
Phil off to tonight?"

"She's going to a dance, and she's got the sweetest dress for it
-- creamy yellow silk and cobwebby lace.  It just suits those
brown tints of hers."

"There's magic in the words `silk' and `lace,' isn't there?" said
Aunt Jamesina.  "The very sound of them makes me feel like
skipping off to a dance.  And YELLOW silk.  It makes one think of
a dress of sunshine.  I always wanted a yellow silk dress, but
first my mother and then my husband wouldn't hear of it.  The
very first thing I'm going to do when I get to heaven is to get a
yellow silk dress."

Amid Anne's peal of laughter Phil came downstairs, trailing clouds
of glory, and surveyed herself in the long oval mirror on the wall.

"A flattering looking glass is a promoter of amiability," she
said.  "The one in my room does certainly make me green.  Do I
look pretty nice, Anne?"

"Do you really know how pretty you are, Phil?" asked Anne,
in honest admiration.

"Of course I do.  What are looking glasses and men for?  That wasn't
what I meant.  Are all my ends tucked in?  Is my skirt straight?
And would this rose look better lower down?  I'm afraid it's too high
-- it will make me look lop-sided.  But I hate things tickling my ears."

"Everything is just right, and that southwest dimple of yours is lovely."

"Anne, there's one thing in particular I like about you -- you're
so ungrudging.  There isn't a particle of envy in you."

"Why should she be envious?" demanded Aunt Jamesina.  "She's not quite
as goodlooking as you, maybe, but she's got a far handsomer nose."

"I know it," conceded Phil.

"My nose always has been a great comfort to me," confessed Anne.

"And I love the way your hair grows on your forehead, Anne.  And
that one wee curl, always looking as if it were going to drop,
but never dropping, is delicious.  But as for noses, mine is a
dreadful worry to me.  I know by the time I'm forty it will be
Byrney.  What do you think I'll look like when I'm forty, Anne?"

"Like an old, matronly, married woman," teased Anne.

"I won't," said Phil, sitting down comfortably to wait for her escort.
"Joseph, you calico beastie, don't you dare jump on my lap.  I won't go
to a dance all over cat hairs.  No, Anne, I WON'T look matronly.  But no
doubt I'll be married."

"To Alec or Alonzo?" asked Anne.

"To one of them, I suppose," sighed Phil, "if I can ever decide which."

"It shouldn't be hard to decide," scolded Aunt Jamesina.

"I was born a see-saw Aunty, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering."

"You ought to be more levelheaded, Philippa."

"It's best to be levelheaded, of course," agreed Philippa, "but you miss
lots of fun.  As for Alec and Alonzo, if you knew them you'd understand
why it's difficult to choose between them.  They're equally nice."

"Then take somebody who is nicer" suggested Aunt Jamesina.
"There's that Senior who is so devoted to you -- Will Leslie.
He has such nice, large, mild eyes."

"They're a little bit too large and too mild -- like a cow's,"
said Phil cruelly.

"What do you say about George Parker?"

"There's nothing to say about him except that he always looks as
if he had just been starched and ironed."

"Marr Holworthy then.  You can't find a fault with him."

"No, he would do if he wasn't poor.  I must marry a rich man,
Aunt Jamesina.  That -- and good looks -- is an indispensable
qualification.  I'd marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich."

"Oh, would you?" said Anne, rather viciously.

"We don't like that idea a little bit, although we don't want
Gilbert ourselves, oh, no," mocked Phil.  "But don't let's talk
of disagreeable subjects.  I'll have to marry sometime, I suppose,
but I shall put off the evil day as long as I can."

"You mustn't marry anybody you don't love, Phil, when all's said
and done," said Aunt Jamesina.

      "`Oh, hearts that loved in the good old way
      Have been out o' the fashion this many a day.'"

trilled Phil mockingly.  "There's the carriage.  I fly -- Bi-bi,
you two old-fashioned darlings."

When Phil had gone Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly at Anne.

"That girl is pretty and sweet and goodhearted, but do you think
she is quite right in her mind, by spells, Anne?"

"Oh, I don't think there's anything the matter with Phil's mind,"
said Anne, hiding a smile.  "It's just her way of talking."

Aunt Jamesina shook her head.

"Well, I hope so, Anne.  I do hope so, because I love her.  But _I_
can't understand her -- she beats me.  She isn't like any of the
girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself."

"How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?"

"About half a dozen, my dear."




Chapter XX

Gilbert Speaks


"This has been a dull, prosy day," yawned Phil, stretching
herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two
exceedingly indignant cats.

Anne looked up from Pickwick Papers.  Now that spring
examinations were over she was treating herself to Dickens.

"It has been a prosy day for us," she said thoughtfully, "but to
some people it has been a wonderful day.  Some one has been
rapturously happy in it.  Perhaps a great deed has been done
somewhere today -- or a great poem written -- or a great man born.
And some heart has been broken, Phil."

"Why did you spoil your pretty thought by tagging that last
sentence on, honey?" grumbled Phil.  "I don't like to think of
broken hearts -- or anything unpleasant."

"Do you think you'll be able to shirk unpleasant things all your
life, Phil?"

"Dear me, no.  Am I not up against them now?  You don't call Alec and
Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they simply plague my life out?"

"You never take anything seriously, Phil."

"Why should I?  There are enough folks who do.  The world needs
people like me, Anne, just to amuse it.  It would be a terrible
place if EVERYBODY were intellectual and serious and in deep,
deadly earnest.  MY mission is, as Josiah Allen says, `to charm
and allure.'  Confess now.  Hasn't life at Patty's Place been
really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter because
I've been here to leaven you?"

"Yes, it has," owned Anne.

"And you all love me -- even Aunt Jamesina, who thinks I'm stark mad.
So why should I try to be different?  Oh, dear, I'm so sleepy.  I was
awake until one last night, reading a harrowing ghost story.  I read
it in bed, and after I had finished it do you suppose I could get out
of bed to put the light out?  No!  And if Stella had not fortunately
come in late that lamp would have burned good and bright till morning.
When I heard Stella I called her in, explained my predicament, and got
her to put out the light.  If I had got out myself to do it I knew
something would grab me by the feet when I was getting in again.
By the way, Anne, has Aunt Jamesina decided what to do this summer?"

"Yes, she's going to stay here.  I know she's doing it for the
sake of those blessed cats, although she says it's too much
trouble to open her own house, and she hates visiting."

"What are you reading?"

"Pickwick."

"That's a book that always makes me hungry," said Phil.  "There's so
much good eating in it.  The characters seem always to be reveling
on ham and eggs and milk punch.  I generally go on a cupboard rummage
after reading Pickwick.  The mere thought reminds me that I'm starving.
Is there any tidbit in the pantry, Queen Anne?"

"I made a lemon pie this morning.  You may have a piece of it."

Phil dashed out to the pantry and Anne betook herself to the
orchard in company with Rusty.  It was a moist, pleasantly-
odorous night in early spring.  The snow was not quite all gone
from the park; a little dingy bank of it yet lay under the pines
of the harbor road, screened from the influence of April suns.
It kept the harbor road muddy, and chilled the evening air.
But grass was growing green in sheltered spots and Gilbert
had found some pale, sweet arbutus in a hidden corner.
He came up from the park, his hands full of it.

Anne was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking
at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red
sunset with the very perfection of grace.  She was building a
castle in air -- a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and
stately halls were steeped in Araby's perfume, and where she
reigned queen and chatelaine.  She frowned as she saw Gilbert
coming through the orchard.  Of late she had managed not to be
left alone with Gilbert.  But he had caught her fairly now; and
even Rusty had deserted her.

Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.

"Don't these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?"

Anne took them and buried her face in them.

"I'm in Mr. Silas Sloane's barrens this very minute," she said rapturously.

"I suppose you will be there in reality in a few days?"

"No, not for a fortnight.  I'm going to visit with Phil in Bolingbroke
before I go home.  You'll be in Avonlea before I will."

"No, I shall not be in Avonlea at all this summer, Anne.  I've been
offered a job in the Daily News office and I'm going to take it."

"Oh," said Anne vaguely.  She wondered what a whole Avonlea summer
would be like without Gilbert.  Somehow she did not like the prospect.
"Well," she concluded flatly, "it is a good thing for you, of course."

"Yes, I've been hoping I would get it.  It will help me out next year."

"You mustn't work too HARD," said Anne, without any very clear
idea of what she was saying.  She wished desperately that Phil
would come out.  "You've studied very constantly this winter.
Isn't this a delightful evening?  Do you know, I found a cluster
of white violets under that old twisted tree over there today?
I felt as if I had discovered a gold mine."

"You are always discovering gold mines," said Gilbert -- also absently.

"Let us go and see if we can find some more," suggested Anne eagerly.
"I'll call Phil and -- "

"Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne," said Gilbert quietly,
taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it.  "There is
something I want to say to you."

"Oh, don't say it," cried Anne, pleadingly.  "Don't -- PLEASE, Gilbert."

"I must.  Things can't go on like this any longer.  Anne, I love you.
You know I do.  I -- I can't tell you how much.  Will you promise me
that some day you'll be my wife?"

"I -- I can't," said Anne miserably.  "Oh, Gilbert -- you --
you've spoiled everything."

"Don't you care for me at all?" Gilbert asked after a very
dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared to look up.

"Not -- not in that way.  I do care a great deal for you as a friend.
But I don't love you, Gilbert."

"But can't you give me some hope that you will -- yet?"

"No, I can't," exclaimed Anne desperately.  "I never, never can
love you -- in that way -- Gilbert.  You must never speak of this
to me again."

There was another pause -- so long and so dreadful that Anne was
driven at last to look up.  Gilbert's face was white to the lips.
And his eyes -- but Anne shuddered and looked away.  There was
nothing romantic about this.  Must proposals be either grotesque
or -- horrible?  Could she ever forget Gilbert's face?

"Is there anybody else?" he asked at last in a low voice.

"No -- no," said Anne eagerly.  "I don't care for any one like
THAT -- and I LIKE you better than anybody else in the world,
Gilbert.  And we must -- we must go on being friends, Gilbert."

Gilbert gave a bitter little laugh.

"Friends!  Your friendship can't satisfy me, Anne.  I want your love
-- and you tell me I can never have that."

"I'm sorry.  Forgive me, Gilbert," was all Anne could say.
Where, oh, where were all the gracious and graceful speeches
wherewith, in imagination, she had been wont to dismiss
rejected suitors?

Gilbert released her hand gently.

"There isn't anything to forgive.  There have been times when I thought
you did care.  I've deceived myself, that's all.  Goodbye, Anne."

Anne got herself to her room, sat down on her window seat behind
the pines, and cried bitterly.  She felt as if something incalculably
precious had gone out of her life.  It was Gilbert's friendship,
of course.  Oh, why must she lose it after this fashion?

"What is the matter, honey?" asked Phil, coming in through
the moonlit gloom.

Anne did not answer.  At that moment she wished Phil were a
thousand miles away.

"I suppose you've gone and refused Gilbert Blythe.  You are an idiot,
Anne Shirley!"

"Do you call it idiotic to refuse to marry a man I don't love?"
said Anne coldly, goaded to reply.

"You don't know love when you see it.  You've tricked something
out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the
real thing to look like that.  There, that's the first sensible
thing I've ever said in my life.  I wonder how I managed it?"

"Phil," pleaded Anne, "please go away and leave me alone for
a little while.  My world has tumbled into pieces.  I want to
reconstruct it."

"Without any Gilbert in it?" said Phil, going.

A world without any Gilbert in it!  Anne repeated the words drearily.
Would it not be a very lonely, forlorn place?  Well, it was all
Gilbert's fault.  He had spoiled their beautiful comradeship.
She must just learn to live without it.




Chapter XXI

Roses of Yesterday


The fortnight Anne spent in Bolingbroke was a very pleasant one,
with a little under current of vague pain and dissatisfaction
running through it whenever she thought about Gilbert.  There was
not, however, much time to think about him.  "Mount Holly," the
beautiful old Gordon homestead, was a very gay place, overrun by
Phil's friends of both sexes.  There was quite a bewildering
succession of drives, dances, picnics and boating parties, all
expressively lumped together by Phil under the head of "jamborees";
Alec and Alonzo were so constantly on hand that Anne wondered if
they ever did anything but dance attendance on that will-o'-the-wisp
of a Phil.  They were both nice, manly fellows, but Anne would not
be drawn into any opinion as to which was the nicer.

"And I depended so on you to help me make up my mind which of them I
should promise to marry," mourned Phil.

"You must do that for yourself.  You are quite expert at making
up your mind as to whom other people should marry," retorted Anne,
rather caustically.

"Oh, that's a very different thing," said Phil, truly.

But the sweetest incident of Anne's sojourn in Bolingbroke was the
visit to her birthplace -- the little shabby yellow house in an
out-of-the-way street she had so often dreamed about.  She looked
at it with delighted eyes, as she and Phil turned in at the gate.

"It's almost exactly as I've pictured it," she said.  "There is
no honeysuckle over the windows, but there is a lilac tree by the
gate, and -- yes, there are the muslin curtains in the windows.
How glad I am it is still painted yellow."

A very tall, very thin woman opened the door.

"Yes, the Shirleys lived here twenty years ago," she said, in
answer to Anne's question.  "They had it rented.  I remember 'em.
They both died of fever at onct.  It was turrible sad.  They left
a baby.  I guess it's dead long ago.  It was a sickly thing.  Old
Thomas and his wife took it -- as if they hadn't enough of their own."

"It didn't die," said Anne, smiling.  "I was that baby."

"You don't say so!  Why, you have grown," exclaimed the woman,
as if she were much surprised that Anne was not still a baby.
"Come to look at you, I see the resemblance.  You're complected
like your pa.  He had red hair.  But you favor your ma in your
eyes and mouth.  She was a nice little thing.  My darter went to
school to her and was nigh crazy about her.  They was buried in
the one grave and the School Board put up a tombstone to them as
a reward for faithful service.  Will you come in?"

"Will you let me go all over the house?" asked Anne eagerly.

"Laws, yes, you can if you like.  'Twon't take you long -- there
ain't much of it.  I keep at my man to build a new kitchen, but
he ain't one of your hustlers.  The parlor's in there and there's
two rooms upstairs.  Just prowl about yourselves.  I've got to
see to the baby.  The east room was the one you were born in.
I remember your ma saying she loved to see the sunrise; and I
mind hearing that you was born just as the sun was rising and
its light on your face was the first thing your ma saw."

Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room
with a full heart.  It was as a shrine to her.  Here her mother
had dreamed the exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood;
here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred
hour of birth; here her mother had died.  Anne looked about her
reverently, her eyes with tears.  It was for her one of the jeweled
hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory.

"Just to think of it -- mother was younger than I am now when I was born,"
she whispered.

When Anne went downstairs the lady of the house met her in the hall.
She held out a dusty little packet tied with faded blue ribbon.

"Here's a bundle of old letters I found in that closet upstairs
when I came here," she said.  "I dunno what they are -- I never
bothered to look in 'em, but the address on the top one is
`Miss Bertha Willis,' and that was your ma's maiden name.
You can take 'em if you'd keer to have 'em."

"Oh, thank you -- thank you," cried Anne, clasping the packet rapturously.

"That was all that was in the house," said her hostess.  "The furniture
was all sold to pay the doctor bills, and Mrs. Thomas got your ma's
clothes and little things.  I reckon they didn't last long among that
drove of Thomas youngsters.  They was destructive young animals,
as I mind 'em."

"I haven't one thing that belonged to my mother," said Anne,
chokily.  "I -- I can never thank you enough for these letters."

"You're quite welcome.  Laws, but your eyes is like your ma's.
She could just about talk with hers.  Your father was sorter
homely but awful nice.  I mind hearing folks say when they was
married that there never was two people more in love with each
other -- Pore creatures, they didn't live much longer; but they
was awful happy while they was alive, and I s'pose that counts
for a good deal."

Anne longed to get home to read her precious letters; but she
made one little pilgrimage first.  She went alone to the green
corner of the "old" Bolingbroke cemetery where her father and
mother were buried, and left on their grave the white flowers
she carried.  Then she hastened back to Mount Holly, shut herself
up in her room, and read the letters.  Some were written by her
father, some by her mother.  There were not many -- only a dozen
in all -- for Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often
separated during their courtship.  The letters were yellow
and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years.
No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and
wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust.  The sweetness
of forgotten things clung to them -- the far-off, fond imaginings
of those long-dead lovers.  Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift
of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of
the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and
fragrance after the lapse of time.  The letters were tender,
intimate, sacred.  To Anne, the sweetest of all was the one
written after her birth to the father on a brief absence.
It was full of a proud young mother's accounts of "baby" --
her cleverness, her brightness, her thousand sweetnesses.

"I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake,"
Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript.  Probably it was the last
sentence she had ever penned.  The end was very near for her.

"This has been the most beautiful day of my life," Anne said to Phil
that night.  "I've FOUND my father and mother.  Those letters have
made them REAL to me.  I'm not an orphan any longer.  I feel as if
I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday, sweet and beloved,
between its leaves."




Chapter XXII

Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables


The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at
Green Gables, for the spring evening was chilly; through the open
east window drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the night.
Marilla was sitting by the fire -- at least, in body.  In spirit
she was roaming olden ways, with feet grown young.  Of late
Marilla had thus spent many an hour, when she thought she should
have been knitting for the twins.

"I suppose I'm growing old," she said.

Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years, save
to grow something thinner, and even more angular; there was a
little more gray in the hair that was still twisted up in the
same hard knot, with two hairpins -- WERE they the same hairpins?
-- still stuck through it.  But her expression was very different;
the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor
had developed wonderfully; her eyes were gentler and milder, her
smile more frequent and tender.

Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not
unhappy childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted
hopes of her girlhood, the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years
of dull middle life that followed.  And the coming of Anne --
the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of love,
and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and
radiance, until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like
the rose.  Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had
lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne.
And Anne would be home tomorrow night.

The kitchen door opened.  Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs.
Lynde.  Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her
hands full of Mayflowers and violets.

"Anne Shirley!" exclaimed Marilla.  For once in her life she was
surprised out of her reserve; she caught her girl in her arms and
crushed her and her flowers against her heart, kissing the bright
hair and sweet face warmly.  "I never looked for you till
tomorrow night.  How did you get from Carmody?"

"Walked, dearest of Marillas.  Haven't I done it a score of times
in the Queen's days?  The mailman is to bring my trunk tomorrow;
I just got homesick all at once, and came a day earlier.  And oh!
I've had such a lovely walk in the May twilight; I stopped by the
barrens and picked these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale;
it's just a big bowlful of violets now -- the dear, sky-tinted
things.  Smell them, Marilla -- drink them in."

Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more interested in Anne
than in drinking violets.

"Sit down, child.  You must be real tired.  I'm going to get you
some supper."

"There's a darling moonrise behind the hills tonight, Marilla,
and oh, how the frogs sang me home from Carmody!  I do love the
music of  the frogs.  It seems bound up with all my happiest
recollections of old spring evenings.  And it always reminds me
of the night I came here first.  Do you remember it, Marilla?"

"Well, yes," said Marilla with emphasis.  "I'm not likely to
forget it ever."

"They used to sing so madly in the marsh and brook that year.
I would listen to them at my window in the dusk, and wonder how
they could seem so glad and so sad at the same time.  Oh, but
it's good to be home again!  Redmond was splendid and Bolingbroke
delightful -- but Green Gables is HOME."

"Gilbert isn't coming home this summer, I hear," said Marilla.

"No."  Something in Anne's tone made Marilla glance at her
sharply, but Anne was apparently absorbed in arranging her
violets in a bowl.  "See, aren't they sweet?" she went on
hurriedly.  "The year is a book, isn't it, Marilla?  Spring's
pages are written in Mayflowers and violets, summer's in roses,
autumn's in red maple leaves, and winter in holly and evergreen."

"Did Gilbert do well in his examinations?" persisted Marilla.

"Excellently well.  He led his class.  But where are the twins
and Mrs. Lynde?"

"Rachel and Dora are over at Mr. Harrison's.  Davy is down at
Boulters'.  I think I hear him coming now."

Davy burst in, saw Anne, stopped, and then hurled himself upon
her with a joyful yell.

"Oh, Anne, ain't I glad to see you!  Say, Anne, I've grown two inches
since last fall.  Mrs. Lynde measured me with her tape today, and say,
Anne, see my front tooth.  It's gone.  Mrs. Lynde tied one end of a
string to it and the other end to the door, and then shut the door.
I sold it to Milty for two cents.  Milty's collecting teeth."

"What in the world does he want teeth for?" asked Marilla.

"To make a necklace for playing Indian Chief," explained Davy,
climbing upon Anne's lap.  "He's got fifteen already, and
everybody's else's promised, so there's no use in the rest of us
starting to collect, too.  I tell you the Boulters are great
business people."

"Were you a good boy at Mrs. Boulter's?" asked Marilla severely.

"Yes; but say, Marilla, I'm tired of being good."

"You'd get tired of being bad much sooner, Davy-boy," said Anne.

"Well, it'd be fun while it lasted, wouldn't it?" persisted Davy.
"I could be sorry for it afterwards, couldn't I?"

"Being sorry wouldn't do away with the consequences of being bad,
Davy.  Don't you remember the Sunday last summer when you ran
away from Sunday School?  You told me then that being bad wasn't
worth while.  What were you and Milty doing today?"

"Oh, we fished and chased the cat, and hunted for eggs, and
yelled at the echo.  There's a great echo in the bush behind the
Boulter barn.  Say, what is echo, Anne; I want to know."

"Echo is a beautiful nymph, Davy, living far away in the woods,
and laughing at the world from among the hills."

"What does she look like?"

"Her hair and eyes are dark, but her neck and arms are white as snow.
No mortal can ever see how fair she is.  She is fleeter than a deer,
and that mocking voice of hers is all we can know of her.  You can
hear her calling at night; you can hear her laughing under the stars.
But you can never see her.  She flies afar if you follow her, and
laughs at you always just over the next hill."

"Is that true, Anne?  Or is it a whopper?" demanded Davy staring.

"Davy," said Anne despairingly, "haven't you sense enough to
distinguish between a fairytale and a falsehood?"

"Then what is it that sasses back from the Boulter bush?  I want
to know," insisted Davy.

"When you are a little older, Davy, I'll explain it all to you."

The mention of age evidently gave a new turn to Davy's thoughts
for after a few moments of reflection, he whispered solemnly:

"Anne, I'm going to be married."

"When?" asked Anne with equal solemnity.

"Oh, not until I'm grown-up, of course."

"Well, that's a relief, Davy.  Who is the lady?"

"Stella Fletcher; she's in my class at school.  And say, Anne,
she's the prettiest girl you ever saw.  If I die before I grow up
you'll keep an eye on her, won't you?"

"Davy Keith, do stop talking such nonsense," said Marilla severely.

" 'Tisn't nonsense," protested Davy in an injured tone.  "She's
my promised wife, and if I was to die she'd be my promised widow,
wouldn't she?  And she hasn't got a soul to look after her except
her old grandmother."

"Come and have your supper, Anne," said Marilla, "and don't
encourage that child in his absurd talk."




Chapter XXIII

Paul Cannot Find the Rock People


Life was very pleasant in Avonlea that summer, although Anne,
amid all her vacation joys, was haunted by a sense of "something
gone which should be there."  She would not admit, even in her
inmost reflections, that this was caused by Gilbert's absence.
But when she had to walk home alone from prayer meetings and
A.V.I.S. pow-wows, while Diana and Fred, and many other gay couples,
loitered along the dusky, starlit country roads, there was a queer,
lonely ache in her heart which she could not explain away.  Gilbert
did not even write to her, as she thought he might have done.
She knew he wrote to Diana occasionally, but she would not inquire
about him; and Diana, supposing that Anne heard from him, volunteered
no information.  Gilbert's mother, who was a gay, frank, light-hearted
lady, but not overburdened with tact, had a very embarrassing habit of
asking Anne, always in a painfully distinct voice and always in the
presence of a crowd, if she had heard from Gilbert lately.  Poor Anne
could only blush horribly and murmur, "not very lately," which was
taken by all, Mrs. Blythe included, to be merely a maidenly evasion.

Apart from this, Anne enjoyed her summer.  Priscilla came for a
merry visit in June; and, when she had gone, Mr. and Mrs. Irving,
Paul and Charlotta the Fourth came "home" for July and August.

Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once more, and the echoes
over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in
the old garden behind the spruces.

"Miss Lavendar" had not changed, except to grow even sweeter and
prettier.  Paul adored her, and the companionship between them
was beautiful to see.

"But I don't call her `mother' just by itself," he explained to
Anne.  "You see, THAT name belongs just to my own little mother,
and I can't give it to any one else.  You know, teacher.  But I
call her `Mother Lavendar' and I love her next best to father.
I -- I even love her a LITTLE better than you, teacher."

"Which is just as it ought to be," answered Anne.

Paul was thirteen now and very tall for his years.  His face and
eyes were as beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism,
separating everything that fell upon it into rainbows.  He and Anne
had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore.  Never were there
two more thoroughly "kindred spirits."

Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood.  She
wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the
blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled,
her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.

"You don't think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss
Shirley, ma'am?" she demanded anxiously.

"I don't notice it, Charlotta."

"I'm real glad of that.  They said I did at home, but I thought
likely they just wanted to aggravate me.  I don't want no Yankee
accent.  Not that I've a word to say against the Yankees, Miss
Shirley, ma'am.  They're real civilized.  But give me old P.E.
Island every time."

Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in
Avonlea.  Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him
wild with eagerness to get to the shore -- Nora and the Golden
Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there.  He could hardly wait
to eat his supper.  Could he not see Nora's elfin face peering
around the point, watching for him wistfully?  But it was a very
sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight.

"Didn't you find your Rock People?" asked Anne.

Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.

"The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all," he said.
"Nora was there -- but Nora is not the same, teacher.  She is changed."

"Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed," said Anne.  "You have
grown too old for the Rock People.  They like only children for
playfellows.  I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come
to you in the pearly, enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine;
and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp.
Even Nora will not meet you much longer.  You must pay the penalty
of growing-up, Paul.  You must leave fairyland behind you."

"You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did," said old
Mrs. Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.

"Oh, no, we don't," said Anne, shaking her head gravely.  "We are
getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity.  We are never
half so interesting when we have learned that language is given
us to enable us to conceal our thoughts."

"But it isn't -- it is given us to exchange our thoughts," said
Mrs. Irving seriously.  She had never heard of Tallyrand and did
not understand epigrams.

Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the
golden prime of August.  While there she incidentally contrived
to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix,
as related duly in another chronicle of her history.[1]  Arnold
Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same
time, and added not a little to the general pleasantness of life.

([1] Chronicles of Avonlea.)

"What a nice play-time this has been," said Anne.  "I feel like a
giant refreshed.  And it's only a fortnight more till I go back
to Kingsport, and Redmond and Patty's Place.  Patty's Place
is the dearest spot, Miss Lavendar.  I feel as if I had two homes
-- one at Green Gables and one at Patty's Place.  But where has the
summer gone?  It doesn't seem a day since I came home that spring
evening with the Mayflowers.  When I was little I couldn't see from
one end of the summer to the other.  It stretched before me like
an unending season.  Now, `'tis a handbreadth, 'tis a tale.'"

"Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?"
asked Miss Lavendar quietly.

"I am just as much Gilbert's friend as ever I was, Miss Lavendar."

Miss Lavendar shook her head.

"I see something's gone wrong, Anne.  I'm going to be impertinent
and ask what.  Have you quarrelled?"

"No; it's only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can't
give him more."

"Are you sure of that, Anne?"

"Perfectly sure."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,"
said Anne petulantly.

"Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne -- that is why.
You needn't toss that young head of yours.  It's a fact."




Chapter XXIV

Enter Jonas


                                     "PROSPECT POINT,
                                          "August 20th.

"Dear Anne -- spelled -- with -- an -- E," wrote Phil, "I must
prop my eyelids open long enough to write you.  I've neglected
you shamefully this summer, honey, but all my other correspondents
have been neglected, too.  I have a huge pile of letters to answer,
so I must gird up the loins of my mind and hoe in.  Excuse my
mixed metaphors.  I'm fearfully sleepy.  Last night Cousin Emily
and I were calling at a neighbor's.  There were several other
callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures left,
our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces.
I knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and me as soon as the door
shut behind us.  When we came home Mrs. Lilly informed us that the
aforesaid neighbor's hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet
fever.  You can always trust Mrs. Lilly to tell you cheerful things
like that.  I have a horror of scarlet fever.  I couldn't sleep when
I went to bed for thinking of it.  I tossed and tumbled about,
dreaming fearful dreams when I did snooze for a minute; and at
three I wakened up with a high fever, a sore throat, and a
raging headache.  I knew I had scarlet fever; I got up in a
panic and hunted up Cousin Emily's 'doctor book' to read up
the symptoms.  Anne, I had them all.  So I went back to bed,
and knowing the worst, slept like a top the rest of the night.
Though why a top should sleep sounder than anything else I
never could understand.  But this morning I was quite well,
so it couldn't have been the fever.  I suppose if I did catch
it last night it couldn't have developed so soon.  I can remember
that in daytime, but at three o'clock at night I never can be logical.

"I suppose you wonder what I'm doing at Prospect Point.  Well, I
always like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and father
insists that I come to his second-cousin Emily's `select
boardinghouse' at Prospect Point.  So a fortnight ago I came as
usual.  And as usual old `Uncle Mark Miller' brought me from the
station with his ancient buggy and what he calls his `generous
purpose' horse.  He is a nice old man and gave me a handful of
pink peppermints.  Peppermints always seem to me such a religious
sort of candy -- I suppose because when I was a little girl
Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church.  Once I
asked, referring to the smell of peppermints, `Is that the odor
of sanctity?' I didn't like to eat Uncle Mark's peppermints
because he just fished them loose out of his pocket, and had to
pick some rusty nails and other things from among them before he
gave them to me.  But I wouldn't hurt his dear old feelings for
anything, so I carefully sowed them along the road at intervals.
When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark said, a little rebukingly,
`Ye shouldn't a'et all them candies to onct, Miss Phil.  You'll
likely have the stummick-ache.'

"Cousin Emily has only five boarders besides myself -- four old
ladies and one young man.  My right-hand neighbor is Mrs. Lilly.
She is one of those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure
in detailing all their many aches and pains and sicknesses.
You cannot mention any ailment but she says, shaking her head, `Ah,
I know too well what that is' -- and then you get all the details.
Jonas declares he once spoke of locomotor ataxia in hearing and
she said she knew too well what that was.  She suffered from it
for ten years and was finally cured by a traveling doctor.

"Who is Jonas?  Just wait, Anne Shirley.  You'll hear all about
Jonas in the proper time and place.  He is not to be mixed up
with estimable old ladies.

"My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Phinney.  She always
speaks with a wailing, dolorous voice -- you are nervously expecting
her to burst into tears every moment.  She gives you the impression
that life to her is indeed a vale of tears, and that a smile, never
to speak of a laugh, is a frivolity truly reprehensible.  She has a
worse opinion of me than Aunt Jamesina, and she doesn't love me hard
to atone for it, as Aunty J. does, either.

"Miss Maria Grimsby sits cati-corner from me.  The first day I
came I remarked to Miss Maria that it looked a little like rain
-- and Miss Maria laughed.  I said the road from the station was
very pretty -- and Miss Maria laughed.  I said there seemed to be
a few mosquitoes left yet -- and Miss Maria laughed.  I said that
Prospect Point was as beautiful as ever -- and Miss Maria laughed.
If I were to say to Miss Maria, `My father has hanged himself,
my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the penitentiary,
and I am in the last stages of consumption,' Miss Maria would laugh.
She can't help it -- she was born so; but is very sad and awful.

"The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant.  She is a sweet old thing;
but she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a
very uninteresting conversationalist.

"And now for Jonas, Anne.

"That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at
the table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle.
I knew, for Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake,
that he was a Theological Student from St. Columbia, and that he had
taken charge of the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.

"He is a very ugly young man -- really, the ugliest young man
I've ever seen.  He has a big, loose-jointed figure with absurdly
long legs.  His hair is tow-color and lank, his eyes are green,
and his mouth is big, and his ears -- but I never think about his
ears if I can help it.

"He has a lovely voice -- if you shut your eyes he is adorable --
and he certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.

"We were good chums right way.  Of course he is a graduate of
Redmond, and that is a link between us.  We fished and boated
together; and we walked on the sands by moonlight.  He didn't
look so homely by moonlight and oh, he was nice.  Niceness fairly
exhaled from him.  The old ladies -- except Mrs. Grant -- don't
approve of Jonas, because he laughs and jokes -- and because he
evidently likes the society of frivolous me better than theirs.

"Somehow, Anne, I don't want him to think me frivolous.  This is
ridiculous.  Why should I care what a tow-haired person called
Jonas, whom I never saw before thinks of me?

"Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church.  I went,
of course, but I couldn't realize that Jonas was going to preach.
The fact that he was a minister -- or going to be one -- persisted
in seeming a huge joke to me.

"Well, Jonas preached.  And, by the time he had preached ten
minutes, I felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must
be invisible to the naked eye.  Jonas never said a word about
women and he never looked at me.  But I realized then and there
what a pitiful, frivilous, small-souled little butterfly I was,
and how horribly different I must be from Jonas' ideal woman.
SHE would be grand and strong and noble.  He was so earnest
and tender and true.  He was everything a minister ought to be.
I wondered how I could ever have thought him ugly -- but he
really is!  -- with those inspired eyes and that intellectual
brow which the roughly-falling hair hid on week days.

"It was a splendid sermon and I could have listened to it forever,
and it made me feel utterly wretched.  Oh, I wish I was like YOU, Anne.

"He caught up with me on the road home, and grinned as cheerfully
as usual.  But his grin could never deceive me again.  I had seen
the REAL Jonas.  I wondered if he could ever see the REAL PHIL --
whom NOBODY, not even you, Anne, has ever seen yet.

"`Jonas,' I said -- I forgot to call him Mr. Blake.  Wasn't it dreadful?
But there are times when things like that don't matter -- `Jonas, you
were born to be a minister.  You COULDN'T be anything else.'

"`No, I couldn't,' he said soberly.  `I tried to be something
else for a long time -- I didn't want to be a minister.  But I
came to see at last that it was the work given me to do -- and
God helping me, I shall try to do it.'

"His voice was low and reverent.  I thought that he would do his
work and do it well and nobly; and happy the woman fitted by
nature and training to help him do it.  SHE would be no feather,
blown about by every fickle wind of fancy.  SHE would always know
what hat to put on.  Probably she would have only one.  Ministers
never have much money.  But she wouldn't mind having one hat or
none at all, because she would have Jonas.

"Anne Shirley, don't you dare to say or hint or think that I've
fallen in love with Mr. Blake.  Could I care for a lank, poor,
ugly theologue -- named Jonas?  As Uncle Mark says, `It's impossible,
and what's more it's improbable.'

                                            Good night,
                                                   PHIL."

"P.S.  It is impossible -- but I am horribly afraid it's true.
I'm happy and wretched and scared.  HE can NEVER care for me,
I know.  Do you think I could ever develop into a passable
minister's wife, Anne?  And WOULD they expect me to lead
in prayer?  P G."




Chapter XXV

Enter Prince Charming


"I'm contrasting the claims of indoors and out," said Anne, looking
from the window of Patty's Place to the distant pines of the park.

"I've an afternoon to spend in sweet doing nothing, Aunt Jimsie.
Shall I spend it here where there is a cosy fire, a plateful of
delicious russets, three purring and harmonious cats, and two
impeccable china dogs with green noses?  Or shall I go to the park,
where there is the lure of gray woods and of gray water lapping
on the harbor rocks?"

"If I was as young as you, I'd decide in favor of the park," said
Aunt Jamesina, tickling Joseph's yellow ear with a knitting needle.

"I thought that you claimed to be as young as any of us, Aunty,"
teased Anne.

"Yes, in my soul.  But I'll admit my legs aren't as young as yours.
You go and get some fresh air, Anne.  You look pale lately."

"I think I'll go to the park," said Anne restlessly.  "I don't
feel like tame domestic joys today.  I want to feel alone and
free and wild.  The park will be empty, for every one will be at
the football match."

"Why didn't you go to it?"

"`Nobody axed me, sir, she said' -- at least, nobody but that
horrid little Dan Ranger.  I wouldn't go anywhere with him;
but rather than hurt his poor little tender feelings I said I
wasn't going to the game at all.  I don't mind.  I'm not in
the mood for football today somehow."

"You go and get some fresh air," repeated Aunt Jamesina, "but take
your umbrella, for I believe it's going to rain.  I've rheumatism
in my leg."

"Only old people should have rheumatism, Aunty."

"Anybody is liable to rheumatism in her legs, Anne.  It's only
old people who should have rheumatism in their souls, though.
Thank goodness, I never have.  When you get rheumatism in your
soul you might as well go and pick out your coffin."

It was November -- the month of crimson sunsets, parting birds,
deep, sad hymns of the sea, passionate wind-songs in the pines.
Anne roamed through the pineland alleys in the park and, as she
said, let that great sweeping wind blow the fogs out of her soul.
Anne was not wont to be troubled with soul fog.  But, somehow, since
her return to Redmond for this third year, life had not mirrored
her spirit back to her with its old, perfect, sparkling clearness.

Outwardly, existence at Patty's Place was the same pleasant
round of work and study and recreation that it had always been.
On Friday evenings the big, fire-lighted livingroom was crowded by
callers and echoed to endless jest and laughter, while Aunt Jamesina
smiled beamingly on them all.  The "Jonas" of Phil's letter came often,
running up from St. Columbia on the early train and departing on the late.
He was a general favorite at Patty's Place, though Aunt Jamesina shook her
head and opined that divinity students were not what they used to be.

"He's VERY nice, my dear," she told Phil, "but ministers ought to be
graver and more dignified."

"Can't a man laugh and laugh and be a Christian still?" demanded Phil.

"Oh, MEN -- yes.  But I was speaking of MINISTERS, my dear,"
said Aunt Jamesina rebukingly."  And you shouldn't flirt so with
Mr. Blake -- you really shouldn't."

"I'm not flirting with him," protested Phil.

Nobody believed her, except Anne.  The others thought she was amusing
herself as usual, and told her roundly that she was behaving very badly.

"Mr. Blake isn't of the Alec-and-Alonzo type, Phil," said Stella severely.
"He takes things seriously.  You may break his heart."

"Do you really think I could?" asked Phil.  "I'd love to think so."

"Philippa Gordon!  I never thought you were utterly unfeeling.
The idea of you saying you'd love to break a man's heart!"

"I didn't say so, honey.  Quote me correctly.  I said I'd like to think
I COULD break it.  I would like to know I had the POWER to do it."

"I don't understand you, Phil.  You are leading that man on deliberately
-- and you know you don't mean anything by it."

"I mean to make him ask me to marry him if I can," said Phil calmly.

"I give you up," said Stella hopelessly.

Gilbert came occasionally on Friday evenings.  He seemed
always in good spirits, and held his own in the jests and
repartee that flew about.  He neither sought nor avoided Anne.
When circumstances brought them in contact he talked to her
pleasantly and courteously, as to any newly-made acquaintance.
The old camaraderie was gone entirely.  Anne felt it keenly;
but she told herself she was very glad and thankful that Gilbert
had got so completely over his disappointment in regard to her.
She had really been afraid, that April evening in the orchard,
that she had hurt him terribly and that the wound would be
long in healing.  Now she saw that she need not have worried.
Men have died and the worms have eaten them but not for love.
Gilbert evidently was in no danger of immediate dissolution.
He was enjoying life, and he was full of ambition and zest.
For him there was to be no wasting in despair because a woman
was fair and cold.  Anne, as she listened to the ceaseless badinage
that went on between him and Phil, wondered if she had only imagined
that look in his eyes when she had told him she could never care for him.

There were not lacking those who would gladly have stepped into
Gilbert's vacant place.  But Anne snubbed them without fear and
without reproach.  If the real Prince Charming was never to come
she would have none of a substitute.  So she sternly told herself
that gray day in the windy park.

Suddenly the rain of Aunt Jamesina's prophecy came with a swish
and rush.  Anne put up her umbrella and hurried down the slope.
As she turned out on the harbor road a savage gust of wind tore
along it.  Instantly her umbrella turned wrong side out.  Anne
clutched at it in despair.  And then -- there came a voice
close to her.

"Pardon me -- may I offer you the shelter of my umbrella?"

Anne looked up.  Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking
-- dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes -- melting, musical,
sympathetic voice -- yes, the very hero of her dreams stood
before her in the flesh.  He could not have more closely
resembled her ideal if he had been made to order.

"Thank you," she said confusedly.

"We'd better hurry over to that little pavillion on the point,"
suggested the unknown.  "We can wait there until this shower
is over.  It is not likely to rain so heavily very long."

The words were very commonplace, but oh, the tone!  And the smile
which accompanied them!  Anne felt her heart beating strangely.

Together they scurried to the pavilion and sat breathlessly down
under its friendly roof.  Anne laughingly held up her false umbrella.

"It is when my umbrella turns inside out that I am convinced of
the total depravity of inanimate things," she said gaily.

The raindrops sparkled on her shining hair; its loosened rings
curled around her neck and forehead.  Her cheeks were flushed,
her eyes big and starry.  Her companion looked down at her
admiringly.  She felt herself blushing under his gaze.
Who could he be?  Why, there was a bit of the Redmond white and
scarlet pinned to his coat lapel.  Yet she had thought she knew,
by sight at least, all the Redmond students except the Freshmen.
And this courtly youth surely was no Freshman.

"We are schoolmates, I see," he said, smiling at Anne's colors.
"That ought to be sufficient introduction.  My name is Royal Gardner.
And you are the Miss Shirley who read the Tennyson paper at the
Philomathic the other evening, aren't you?"

"Yes; but I cannot place you at all," said Anne, frankly.
"Please, where DO you belong?"

"I feel as if I didn't belong anywhere yet.  I put in my Freshman
and Sophomore years at Redmond two years ago.  I've been in
Europe ever since.  Now I've come back to finish my Arts course."

"This is my Junior year, too," said Anne.

"So we are classmates as well as collegemates.  I am reconciled
to the loss of the years that the locust has eaten," said her
companion, with a world of meaning in those wonderful eyes of his.

The rain came steadily down for the best part of an hour.  But
the time seemed really very short.  When the clouds parted and a
burst of pale November sunshine fell athwart the harbor and the
pines Anne and her companion walked home together.  By the time
they had reached the gate of Patty's Place he had asked
permission to call, and had received it.  Anne went in with
cheeks of flame and her heart beating to her fingertips.  Rusty,
who climbed into her lap and tried to kiss her, found a very
absent welcome.  Anne, with her soul full of romantic thrills,
had no attention to spare just then for a crop-eared pussy cat.

That evening a parcel was left at Patty's Place for Miss Shirley.
It was a box containing a dozen magnificent roses.  Phil pounced
impertinently on the card that fell from it, read the name and
the poetical quotation written on the back.

"Royal Gardner!" she exclaimed.  "Why, Anne, I didn't know you
were acquainted with Roy Gardner!"

"I met him in the park this afternoon in the rain," explained Anne
hurriedly.  "My umbrella turned inside out and he came to my rescue
with his."

"Oh!" Phil peered curiously at Anne."  And is that exceedingly
commonplace incident any reason why he should send us longstemmed
roses by the dozen, with a very sentimental rhyme?  Or why we
should blush divinest rosy-red when we look at his card?  Anne,
thy face betrayeth thee."

"Don't talk nonsense, Phil.  Do you know Mr. Gardner?"

"I've met his two sisters, and I know of him.  So does everybody
worthwhile in Kingsport.  The Gardners are among the richest,
bluest, of Bluenoses.  Roy is adorably handsome and clever.
Two years ago his mother's health failed and he had to leave
college and go abroad with her -- his father is dead.  He must
have been greatly disappointed to have to give up his class, but
they say he was perfectly sweet about it.  Fee -- fi -- fo -- fum,
Anne.  I smell romance.  Almost do I envy you, but not quite.
After all, Roy Gardner isn't Jonas."

"You goose!" said Anne loftily.  But she lay long awake that night,
nor did she wish for sleep.  Her waking fancies were more alluring
than any vision of dreamland.  Had the real Prince come at last?
Recalling those glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into
her own, Anne was very strongly inclined to think he had.




Chapter XXVI

Enter Christine


The girls at Patty's Place were dressing for the reception which
the Juniors were giving for the Seniors in February.  Anne surveyed
herself in the mirror of the blue room with girlish satisfaction.
She had a particularly pretty gown on.  Originally it had been
only a simple little slip of cream silk with a chiffon overdress.
But Phil had insisted on taking it home with her in the Christmas
holidays and embroidering tiny rosebuds all over the chiffon.
Phil's fingers were deft, and the result was a dress which was
the envy of every Redmond girl.  Even Allie Boone, whose frocks
came from Paris, was wont to look with longing eyes on that rosebud
concoction as Anne trailed up the main staircase at Redmond in it.

Anne was trying the effect of a white orchid in her hair.
Roy Gardner had sent her white orchids for the reception,
and she knew no other Redmond girl would have them that night
-- when Phil came in with admiring gaze.

"Anne, this is certainly your night for looking handsome.
Nine nights out of ten I can easily outshine you.  The tenth
you blossom out suddenly into something that eclipses me altogether.
How do you manage it?"

"It's the dress, dear.  Fine feathers."

"`Tisn't.  The last evening you flamed out into beauty you
wore your old blue flannel shirtwaist that Mrs. Lynde made you.
If Roy hadn't already lost head and heart about you he certainly
would tonight.  But I don't like orchids on you, Anne.  No; it
isn't jealousy.  Orchids don't seem to BELONG to you.  They're
too exotic -- too tropical -- too insolent.  Don't put them in
your hair, anyway."

"Well, I won't.  I admit I'm not fond of orchids myself.  I don't
think they're related to me.  Roy doesn't often send them -- he
knows I like flowers I can live with.  Orchids are only things
you can visit with."

"Jonas sent me some dear pink rosebuds for the evening -- but --
he isn't coming himself.  He said he had to lead a prayer-meeting
in the slums!  I don't believe he wanted to come.  Anne, I'm
horribly afraid Jonas doesn't really care anything about me.  And
I'm trying to decide whether I'll pine away and die, or go on and
get my B.A. and be sensible and useful."

"You couldn't possibly be sensible and useful, Phil, so you'd
better pine away and die," said Anne cruelly.

"Heartless Anne!"

"Silly Phil!  You know quite well that Jonas loves you."

"But -- he won't TELL me so.  And I can't MAKE him.  He LOOKS it,
I'll admit.  But speak-to-me-only-with-thine-eyes isn't a really
reliable reason for embroidering doilies and hemstitching
tablecloths.  I don't want to begin such work until I'm really
engaged.  It would be tempting Fate."

"Mr. Blake is afraid to ask you to marry him, Phil.  He is poor
and can't offer you a home such as you've always had.  You know
that is the only reason he hasn't spoken long ago."

"I suppose so," agreed Phil dolefully.  "Well" -- brightening up
-- "if he WON'T ask me to marry him I'll ask him, that's all.
So it's bound to come right.  I won't worry.  By the way,
Gilbert Blythe is going about constantly with Christine Stuart.
Did you know?"

Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat.
She suddenly found the clasp difficult to manage.  WHAT was the
matter with it -- or with her fingers?

"No," she said carelessly."  Who is Christine Stuart?"

"Ronald Stuart's sister.  She's in Kingsport this winter studying
music.  I haven't seen her, but they say she's very pretty and
that Gilbert is quite crazy over her.  How angry I was when you
refused Gilbert, Anne.  But Roy Gardner was foreordained for you.
I can see that now.  You were right, after all."

Anne did not blush, as she usually did when the girls assumed
that her eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing.
All at once she felt rather dull.  Phil's chatter seemed trivial
and the reception a bore.  She boxed poor Rusty's ears.

"Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you!  Why don't you
stay down where you belong?"

Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs, where Aunt Jamesina
was presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm.
Roy Gardner was waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah-cat while
he waited.  The Sarah-cat did not approve of him.  She always
turned her back on him.  But everybody else at Patty's Place liked
him very much.  Aunt Jamesina, carried away by his unfailing and
deferential courtesy, and the pleading tones of his delightful voice,
declared he was the nicest young man she ever knew, and that Anne
was a very fortunate girl.  Such remarks made Anne restive.  Roy's
wooing had certainly been as romantic as girlish heart could desire,
but -- she wished Aunt Jamesina and the girls would not take things
so for granted.  When Roy murmured a poetical compliment as he helped
her on with her coat, she did not blush and thrill as usual; and he
found her rather silent in their brief walk to Redmond.  He thought
she looked a little pale when she came out of the coeds' dressing room;
but as they entered the reception room her color and sparkle suddenly
returned to her.  She turned to Roy with her gayest expression.
He smiled back at her with what Phil called "his deep, black,
velvety smile."  Yet she really did not see Roy at all.  She was
acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just
across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stuart.

She was very handsome, in the stately style destined to become
rather massive in middle life.  A tall girl, with large dark-blue
eyes, ivory outlines, and a gloss of darkness on her smooth hair.

"She looks just as I've always wanted to look," thought Anne
miserably.  "Rose-leaf complexion -- starry violet eyes -- raven
hair -- yes, she has them all.  It's a wonder her name isn't
Cordelia Fitzgerald into the bargain!  But I don't believe her
figure is as good as mine, and her nose certainly isn't."

Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.




Chapter XXVII

Mutual Confidences


March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs,
bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each
followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in
an elfland of moonshine.

Over the girls at Patty's Place was falling the shadow of April
examinations.  They were studying hard; even Phil had settled down
to text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.

"I'm going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics," she
announced calmly.  "I could take the one in Greek easily, but I'd
rather take the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas
that I'm really enormously clever."

"Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked
smile than for all the brains you carry under your curls," said Anne.

"When I was a girl it wasn't considered lady-like to know anything
about Mathematics," said Aunt Jamesina.  "But times have changed.
I don't know that it's all for the better.  Can you cook, Phil?"

"No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and
it was a failure -- flat in the middle and hilly round the edges.
You know the kind.  But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest to
learn to cook don't you think the brains that enable me to win a
mathematical scholarship will also enable me to learn cooking
just as well?"

"Maybe," said Aunt Jamesina cautiously.  "I am not decrying the
higher education of women.  My daughter is an M.A.  She can cook,
too.  But I taught her to cook BEFORE I let a college professor
teach her Mathematics."

In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford, saying that
she and Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year.

"So you may have Patty's Place next winter, too," she wrote.
"Maria and I are going to run over Egypt.  I want to see the
Sphinx once before I die."

"Fancy those two dames `running over Egypt'!  I wonder if they'll
look up at the Sphinx and knit," laughed Priscilla.

"I'm so glad we can keep Patty's Place for another year," said
Stella.  "I was afraid they'd come back.  And then our jolly
little nest here would be broken up -- and we poor callow
nestlings thrown out on the cruel world of boardinghouses again."

"I'm off for a tramp in the park," announced Phil, tossing her
book aside.  "I think when I am eighty I'll be glad I went for a
walk in the park tonight."

"What do you mean?" asked Anne.

"Come with me and I'll tell you, honey."

They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a
March evening.  Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great,
white, brooding silence -- a silence which was yet threaded
through with many little silvery sounds which you could hear if
you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears.  The girls
wandered down a long pineland aisle that seemed to lead right out
into the heart of a deep-red, overflowing winter sunset.

"I'd go home and write a poem this blessed minute if I only knew how,"
declared Phil, pausing in an open space where a rosy light was staining
the green tips of the pines.  "It's all so wonderful here -- this great,
white stillness, and those dark trees that always seem to be thinking."

"`The woods were God's first temples,'" quoted Anne softly.
"One can't help feeling reverent and adoring in such a place.
I always feel so near Him when I walk among the pines."

"Anne, I'm the happiest girl in the world," confessed Phil suddenly.

"So Mr. Blake has asked you to marry him at last?" said Anne calmly.

"Yes.  And I sneezed three times while he was asking me.
Wasn't that horrid?  But I said `yes' almost before he finished
-- I was so afraid he might change his mind and stop.  I'm besottedly
happy.  I couldn't really believe before that Jonas would ever care
for frivolous me."

"Phil, you're not really frivolous," said Anne gravely.  "'Way
down underneath that frivolous exterior of yours you've got a
dear, loyal, womanly little soul.  Why do you hide it so?"

"I can't help it, Queen Anne.  You are right -- I'm not frivolous
at heart.  But there's a sort of frivolous skin over my soul and
I can't take it off.  As Mrs. Poyser says, I'd have to be hatched
over again and hatched different before I could change it.  But
Jonas knows the real me and loves me, frivolity and all.  And I
love him.  I never was so surprised in my life as I was when I
found out I loved him.  I'd never thought it possible to fall in
love with an ugly man.  Fancy me coming down to one solitary
beau.  And one named Jonas!  But I mean to call him Jo.  That's
such a nice, crisp little name.  I couldn't nickname Alonzo."

"What about Alec and Alonzo?"

"Oh, I told them at Christmas that I never could marry either of
them.  It seems so funny now to remember that I ever thought it
possible that I might.  They felt so badly I just cried over both
of them -- howled.  But I knew there was only one man in the
world I could ever marry.  I had made up my own mind for once and
it was real easy, too.  It's very delightful to feel so sure, and
know it's your own sureness and not somebody else's."

"Do you suppose you'll be able to keep it up?"

"Making up my mind, you mean?  I don't know, but Jo has given me
a splendid rule.  He says, when I'm perplexed, just to do what I
would wish I had done when I shall be eighty.  Anyhow, Jo can
make up his mind quickly enough, and it would be uncomfortable
to have too much mind in the same house."

"What will your father and mother say?"

"Father won't say much.  He thinks everything I do right.
But mother WILL talk.  Oh, her tongue will be as Byrney as
her nose.  But in the end it will be all right."

"You'll have to give up a good many things you've always had,
when you marry Mr. Blake, Phil."

"But I'll have HIM.  I won't miss the other things.  We're to be
married a year from next June.  Jo graduates from St. Columbia
this spring, you know.  Then he's going to take a little mission
church down on Patterson Street in the slums.  Fancy me in the
slums!  But I'd go there or to Greenland's icy mountains with him."

"And this is the girl who would NEVER marry a man who wasn't rich,"
commented Anne to a young pine tree.

"Oh, don't cast up the follies of my youth to me.  I shall be
poor as gaily as I've been rich.  You'll see.  I'm going to learn
how to cook and make over dresses.  I've learned how to market
since I've lived at Patty's Place; and once I taught a Sunday
School class for a whole summer.  Aunt Jamesina says I'll ruin
Jo's career if I marry him.  But I won't.  I know I haven't much
sense or sobriety, but I've got what is ever so much better --
the knack of making people like me.  There is a man in
Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting.
He says, 'If you can't thine like an electric thtar thine like
a candlethtick.'  I'll be Jo's little candlestick."

"Phil, you're incorrigible.  Well, I love you so much that
I can't make nice, light, congratulatory little speeches.
But I'm heart-glad of your happiness."

"I know.  Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with
real friendship, Anne.  Some day I'll look the same way at you.
You're going to marry Roy, aren't you, Anne?"

"My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter,
who `refused a man before he'd axed her'?  I am not going to
emulate that celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting any
one before he `axes' me."

"All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you," said Phil candidly."
And you DO love him, don't you, Anne?"

"I -- I suppose so," said Anne reluctantly.  She felt that she ought
to be blushing while making such a confession; but she was not;
on the other hand, she always blushed hotly when any one said
anything about Gilbert Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing.
Gilbert Blythe and Christine Stuart were nothing to her --
absolutely nothing.  But Anne had given up trying to analyze
the reason of her blushes.  As for Roy, of course she was in
love with him -- madly so.  How could she help it?  Was he not
her ideal?  Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that
pleading voice?  Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious?
And what a charming sonnet he had sent her, with a box of violets,
on her birthday!  Anne knew every word of it by heart.  It was very
good stuff of its kind, too.  Not exactly up to the level of Keats or
Shakespeare -- even Anne was not so deeply in love as to think that.
But it was very tolerable magazine verse.  And it was addressed to HER --
not to Laura or Beatrice or the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley.
To be told in rhythmical cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning
-- that her cheek had the flush it stole from the sunrise -- that her
lips were redder than the roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic.
Gilbert would never have dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows.
But then, Gilbert could see a joke.  She had once told Roy a funny story
-- and he had not seen the point of it.  She recalled the chummy laugh
she and Gilbert had had together over it, and wondered uneasily if life
with a man who had no sense of humor might not be somewhat uninteresting
in the long run.  But who could expect a melancholy, inscrutable hero to
see the humorous side of things?  It would be flatly unreasonable.




Chapter XXVIII

A June Evening


"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was
always June," said Anne, as she came through the spice and bloom
of the twilit orchard to the front door steps, where Marilla and
Mrs. Rachel were sitting, talking over Mrs. Samson Coates' funeral,
which they had attended that day.  Dora sat between them, diligently
studying her lessons; but Davy was sitting tailor-fashion on the grass,
looking as gloomy and depressed as his single dimple would let him.

"You'd get tired of it," said Marilla, with a sigh.

"I daresay; but just now I feel that it would take me a long
time to get tired of it, if it were all as charming as today.
Everything loves June.  Davy-boy, why this melancholy November
face in blossom-time?"

"I'm just sick and tired of living," said the youthful pessimist.

"At ten years?  Dear me, how sad!"

"I'm not making fun," said Davy with dignity.  "I'm dis -- dis --
discouraged" -- bringing out the big word with a valiant effort.

"Why and wherefore?" asked Anne, sitting down beside him.

"'Cause the new teacher that come when Mr. Holmes got sick give
me ten sums to do for Monday.  It'll take me all day tomorrow to
do them.  It isn't fair to have to work Saturdays.  Milty Boulter
said he wouldn't do them, but Marilla says I've got to.  I don't
like Miss Carson a bit."

"Don't talk like that about your teacher, Davy Keith," said
Mrs. Rachel severely.  "Miss Carson is a very fine girl.
There is no nonsense about her."

"That doesn't sound very attractive," laughed Anne.  "I like
people to have a little nonsense about them.  But I'm inclined
to have a better opinion of Miss Carson than you have.  I saw her
in prayer-meeting last night, and she has a pair of eyes that
can't always look sensible.  Now, Davy-boy, take heart of grace.
`Tomorrow will bring another day' and I'll help you with the sums
as far as in me lies.  Don't waste this lovely hour `twixt light
and dark worrying over arithmetic."

"Well, I won't," said Davy, brightening up.  "If you help me
with the sums I'll have 'em done in time to go fishing with Milty.
I wish old Aunt Atossa's funeral was tomorrow instead of today.
I wanted to go to it 'cause Milty said his mother said Aunt Atossa
would be sure to rise up in her coffin and say sarcastic things to
the folks that come to see her buried.  But Marilla said she didn't."

"Poor Atossa laid in her coffin peaceful enough," said Mrs. Lynde
solemnly.  "I never saw her look so pleasant before, that's what.
Well, there weren't many tears shed over her, poor old soul.
The Elisha Wrights are thankful to be rid of her, and I can't
say I blame them a mite."

"It seems to me a most dreadful thing to go out of the world and not
leave one person behind you who is sorry you are gone," said Anne, shuddering.

"Nobody except her parents ever loved poor Atossa, that's certain, not even
her husband," averred Mrs. Lynde.  "She was his fourth wife.  He'd sort of got
into the habit of marrying.  He only lived a few years after he married her.
The doctor said he died of dyspepsia, but I shall always maintain that he died
of Atossa's tongue, that's what.  Poor soul, she always knew everything about
her neighbors, but she never was very well acquainted with herself.  Well,
she's gone anyhow; and I suppose the next excitement will be Diana's wedding."

"It seems funny and horrible to think of Diana's being married,"
sighed Anne, hugging her knees and looking through the gap in the
Haunted Wood to the light that was shining in Diana's room.

"I don't see what's horrible about it, when she's doing so well,"
said Mrs. Lynde emphatically.  "Fred Wright has a fine farm and
he is a model young man."

"He certainly isn't the wild, dashing, wicked, young man Diana
once wanted to marry," smiled Anne.  "Fred is extremely good."

"That's just what he ought to be.  Would you want Diana to marry
a wicked man?  Or marry one yourself?"

"Oh, no.  I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked,
but I think I'd like it if he COULD be wicked and WOULDN'T.
Now, Fred is HOPELESSLY good."

"You'll have more sense some day, I hope," said Marilla.

Marilla spoke rather bitterly.  She was grievously disappointed.
She knew Anne had refused Gilbert Blythe.  Avonlea gossip buzzed
over the fact, which had leaked out, nobody knew how.  Perhaps
Charlie Sloane had guessed and told his guesses for truth.
Perhaps Diana had betrayed it to Fred and Fred had been indiscreet.
At all events it was known; Mrs. Blythe no longer asked Anne,
in public or private, if she had heard lately from Gilbert, but
passed her by with a frosty bow.  Anne, who had always liked Gilbert's
merry, young-hearted mother, was grieved in secret over this.
Marilla said nothing; but Mrs. Lynde gave Anne many exasperated
digs about it, until fresh gossip reached that worthy lady,
through the medium of Moody Spurgeon MacPherson's mother,
that Anne had another "beau" at college, who was rich and
handsome and good all in one.  After that Mrs. Rachel held
her tongue, though she still wished in her inmost heart that
Anne had accepted Gilbert.  Riches were all very well;
but even Mrs. Rachel, practical soul though she was, did not
consider them the one essential.  If Anne "liked" the Handsome
Unknown better than Gilbert there was nothing more to be said;
but Mrs. Rachel was dreadfully afraid that Anne was going to
make the mistake of marrying for money.  Marilla knew Anne too
well to fear this; but she felt that something in the universal
scheme of things had gone sadly awry.

"What is to be, will be," said Mrs. Rachel gloomily, "and what isn't
to be happens sometimes.  I can't help believing it's going to happen
in Anne's case, if Providence doesn't interfere, that's what."
Mrs. Rachel sighed.  She was afraid Providence wouldn't interfere;
and she didn't dare to.

Anne had wandered down to the Dryad's Bubble and was curled up
among the ferns at the root of the big white birch where she and
Gilbert had so often sat in summers gone by.  He had gone into
the newspaper office again when college closed, and Avonlea
seemed very dull without him.  He never wrote to her, and Anne
missed the letters that never came.  To be sure, Roy wrote twice
a week; his letters were exquisite compositions which would have
read beautifully in a memoir or biography.  Anne felt herself
more deeply in love with him than ever when she read them; but
her heart never gave the queer, quick, painful bound at sight of
his letters which it had given one day when Mrs. Hiram Sloane
had handed her out an envelope addressed in Gilbert's black,
upright handwriting.  Anne had hurried home to the east gable and
opened it eagerly -- to find a typewritten copy of some college
society report -- "only that and nothing more."  Anne flung the
harmless screed across her room and sat down to write an
especially nice epistle to Roy.

Diana was to be married in five more days.  The gray house at
Orchard Slope was in a turmoil of baking and brewing and boiling
and stewing, for there was to be a big, old-timey wedding.  Anne,
of course, was to be bridesmaid, as had been arranged when they
were twelve years old, and Gilbert was coming from Kingsport to
be best man.  Anne was enjoying the excitement of the various
preparations, but under it all she carried a little heartache.
She was, in a sense, losing her dear old chum; Diana's new home
would be two miles from Green Gables, and the old constant
companionship could never be theirs again.  Anne looked up at
Diana's light and thought how it had beaconed to her for many years;
but soon it would shine through the summer twilights no more.
Two big, painful tears welled up in her gray eyes.

"Oh," she thought, "how horrible it is that people have to grow
up -- and marry -- and CHANGE!"




Chapter XXIX

Diana's Wedding


"After all, the only real roses are the pink ones," said Anne, as
she tied white ribbon around Diana's bouquet in the westwardlooking
gable at Orchard Slope.  "They are the flowers of love and faith."

Diana was standing nervously in the middle of the room, arrayed
in her bridal white, her black curls frosted over with the film
of her wedding veil.  Anne had draped that veil, in accordance
with the sentimental compact of years before.

"It's all pretty much as I used to imagine it long ago, when I
wept over your inevitable marriage and our consequent parting,"
she laughed.  "You are the bride of my dreams, Diana, with
the `lovely misty veil'; and I am YOUR bridesmaid.  But, alas!
I haven't the puffed sleeves -- though these short lace ones are
even prettier.  Neither is my heart wholly breaking nor do I
exactly hate Fred."

"We are not really parting, Anne," protested Diana.  "I'm not
going far away.  We'll love each other just as much as ever.
We've always kept that `oath' of friendship we swore long ago,
haven't we?"

"Yes.  We've kept it faithfully.  We've had a beautiful
friendship, Diana.  We've never marred it by one quarrel or
coolness or unkind word; and I hope it will always be so.
But things can't be quite the same after this.  You'll have
other interests.  I'll just be on the outside.  But `such is
life' as Mrs. Rachel says.  Mrs. Rachel has given you one of
her beloved knitted quilts of the `tobacco stripe' pattern,
and she says when I am married she'll give me one, too."

"The mean thing about your getting married is that I won't be
able to be your bridesmaid," lamented Diana.

"I'm to be Phil's bridesmaid next June, when she marries
Mr. Blake, and then I must stop, for you know the proverb
`three times a bridesmaid, never a bride,' " said Anne,
peeping through the window over the pink and snow of the
blossoming orchard beneath.  "Here comes the minister, Diana."

"Oh, Anne," gasped Diana, suddenly turning very pale and
beginning to tremble.  "Oh, Anne -- I'm so nervous -- I can't
go through with it -- Anne, I know I'm going to faint."

"If you do I'll drag you down to the rainwater hogshed and drop
you in," said Anne unsympathetically.  "Cheer up, dearest.
Getting married can't be so very terrible when so many
people survive the ceremony.  See how cool and composed
I am, and take courage."

"Wait till your turn comes, Miss Anne.  Oh, Anne, I hear father
coming upstairs.  Give me my bouquet.  Is my veil right?  Am I
very pale?"

"You look just lovely.  Di, darling, kiss me good-bye for the
last time.  Diana Barry will never kiss me again."

"Diana Wright will, though.  There, mother's calling.  Come."

Following the simple, old-fashioned way in vogue then, Anne went
down to the parlor on Gilbert's arm.  They met at the top of the
stairs for the first time since they had left Kingsport, for
Gilbert had arrived only that day.  Gilbert shook hands courteously.
He was looking very well, though, as Anne instantly noted, rather thin.
He was not pale; there was a flush on his cheek that had burned into it
as Anne came along the hall towards him, in her soft, white dress with
lilies-of-the-valley in the shining masses of her hair.  As they entered
the crowded parlor together a little murmur of admiration ran around the
room.  "What a fine-looking pair they are," whispered the impressible
Mrs. Rachel to Marilla.

Fred ambled in alone, with a very red face, and then Diana swept
in on her father's arm.  She did not faint, and nothing untoward
occurred to interrupt the ceremony.  Feasting and merry-making
followed; then, as the evening waned, Fred and Diana drove away
through the moonlight to their new home, and Gilbert walked with
Anne to Green Gables.

Something of their old comradeship had returned during the
informal mirth of the evening.  Oh, it was nice to be walking
over that well-known road with Gilbert again!

The night was so very still that one should have been able to hear
the whisper of roses in blossom -- the laughter of daisies -- the
piping of grasses -- many sweet sounds, all tangled up together.
The beauty of moonlight on familiar fields irradiated the world.

"Can't we take a ramble up Lovers' Lane before you go in?" asked
Gilbert as they crossed the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters,
in which the moon lay like a great, drowned blossom of gold.

Anne assented readily.  Lovers' Lane was a veritable path in a
fairyland that night -- a shimmering, mysterious place, full of
wizardry in the white-woven enchantment of moonlight.  There had
been a time when such a walk with Gilbert through Lovers' Lane
would have been far too dangerous.  But Roy and Christine had
made it very safe now.  Anne found herself thinking a good deal
about Christine as she chatted lightly to Gilbert.  She had met
her several times before leaving Kingsport, and had been charmingly
sweet to her.  Christine had also been charmingly sweet.  Indeed,
they were a most cordial pair.  But for all that, their acquaintance
had not ripened into friendship.  Evidently Christine was not a
kindred spirit.

"Are you going to be in Avonlea all summer?" asked Gilbert.

"No.  I'm going down east to Valley Road next week.  Esther
Haythorne wants me to teach for her through July and August.
They have a summer term in that school, and Esther isn't feeling well.
So I'm going to substitute for her.  In one way I don't mind.
Do you know, I'm beginning to feel a little bit like a stranger
in Avonlea now?  It makes me sorry -- but it's true.  It's quite
appalling to see the number of children who have shot up into big
boys and girls -- really young men and women -- these past two years.
Half of my pupils are grown up.  It makes me feel awfully old to see
them in the places you and I and our mates used to fill."

Anne laughed and sighed.  She felt very old and mature and wise
-- which showed how young she was.  She told herself that she
longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was
seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an
indefinable something that had passed away forever.  Where was it
now -- the glory and the dream?

"`So wags the world away,' " quoted Gilbert practically, and a
trifle absently.  Anne wondered if he were thinking of Christine.
Oh, Avonlea was going to be so lonely now -- with Diana gone!




Chapter XXX

Mrs. Skinner's Romance


Anne stepped off the train at Valley Road station and looked
about to see if any one had come to meet her.  She was to board
with a certain Miss Janet Sweet, but she saw no one who answered
in the least to her preconception of that lady, as formed from
Esther's letter.  The only person in sight was an elderly woman,
sitting in a wagon with mail bags piled around her.  Two hundred
would have been a charitable guess at her weight; her face was
as round and red as a harvest-moon and almost as featureless.
She wore a tight, black, cashmere dress, made in the fashion of
ten years ago, a little dusty black straw hat trimmed with bows
of yellow ribbon, and faded black lace mits.

"Here, you," she called, waving her whip at Anne.  "Are you the
new Valley Road schoolma'am?"

"Yes."

"Well, I thought so.  Valley Road is noted for its good-looking
schoolma'ams, just as Millersville is noted for its humly ones.
Janet Sweet asked me this morning if I could bring you out.  I
said, `Sartin I kin, if she don't mind being scrunched up some.
This rig of mine's kinder small for the mail bags and I'm some
heftier than Thomas!' Just wait, miss, till I shift these bags a
bit and I'll tuck you in somehow.  It's only two miles to Janet's.
Her next-door neighbor's hired boy is coming for your trunk tonight.
My name is Skinner -- Amelia Skinner."

Anne was eventually tucked in, exchanging amused smiles with herself
during the process.

"Jog along, black mare," commanded Mrs. Skinner, gathering up the
reins in her pudgy hands.  "This is my first trip on the mail rowte.
Thomas wanted to hoe his turnips today so he asked me to come.
So I jest sot down and took a standing-up snack and started.
I sorter like it.  O' course it's rather tejus.  Part of the
time I sits and thinks and the rest I jest sits.  Jog along,
black mare.  I want to git home airly.  Thomas is terrible
lonesome when I'm away.  You see, we haven't been married very long."

"Oh!" said Anne politely.

"Just a month.  Thomas courted me for quite a spell, though.  It
was real romantic."  Anne tried to picture Mrs. Skinner on
speaking terms with romance and failed.

"Oh?" she said again.

"Yes.  Y'see, there was another man after me.  Jog along, black mare.
I'd been a widder so long folks had given up expecting me to marry again.
But when my darter -- she's a schoolma'am like you -- went out West to
teach I felt real lonesome and wasn't nowise sot against the idea.
Bime-by Thomas began to come up and so did the other feller --
William Obadiah Seaman, his name was.  For a long time I couldn't
make up my mind which of them to take, and they kep' coming and coming,
and I kep' worrying.  Y'see, W.O. was rich -- he had a fine place and
carried considerable style.  He was by far the best match.  Jog along,
black mare."

"Why didn't you marry him?" asked Anne.

"Well, y'see, he didn't love me," answered Mrs. Skinner, solemnly.

Anne opened her eyes widely and looked at Mrs. Skinner.  But there was
not a glint of humor on that lady's face.  Evidently Mrs. Skinner saw
nothing amusing in her own case.

"He'd been a widder-man for three yers, and his sister kept house for him.
Then she got married and he just wanted some one to look after his house.
It was worth looking after, too, mind you that.  It's a handsome house.
Jog along, black mare.  As for Thomas, he was poor, and if his house
didn't leak in dry weather it was about all that could be said for it,
though it looks kind of pictureaskew.  But, y'see, I loved Thomas, and
I didn't care one red cent for W.O.  So I argued it out with myself.
`Sarah Crowe,' say I -- my first was a Crowe -- `you can marry
your rich man if you like but you won't be happy.  Folks can't
get along together in this world without a little bit of love.
You'd just better tie up to Thomas, for he loves you and you love
him and nothing else ain't going to do you.'  Jog along, black mare.
So I told Thomas I'd take him.  All the time I was getting ready
I never dared drive past W.O.'s place for fear the sight of that
fine house of his would put me in the swithers again.  But now I
never think of it at all, and I'm just that comfortable and happy
with Thomas.  Jog along, black mare."

"How did William Obadiah take it?" queried Anne.

"Oh, he rumpussed a bit.  But he's going to see a skinny old maid
in Millersville now, and I guess she'll take him fast enough.
She'll make him a better wife than his first did.  W.O. never
wanted to marry her.  He just asked her to marry him 'cause his
father wanted him to, never dreaming but that she'd say `no.'
But mind you, she said 'yes.'  There was a predicament for you.
Jog along, black mare.  She was a great housekeeper, but most
awful mean.  She wore the same bonnet for eighteen years.  Then she
got a new one and W.O. met her on the road and didn't know her.
Jog along, black mare.  I feel that I'd a narrer escape.  I might
have married him and been most awful miserable, like my poor
cousin, Jane Ann.  Jane Ann married a rich man she didn't care
anything about, and she hasn't the life of a dog.  She come to
see me last week and says, says she, `Sarah Skinner, I envy you.
I'd rather live in a little hut on the side of the road with a
man I was fond of than in my big house with the one I've got.'
Jane Ann's man ain't such a bad sort, nuther, though he's so
contrary that he wears his fur coat when the thermometer's
at ninety.  The only way to git him to do anything is to coax
him to do the opposite.  But there ain't any love to smooth
things down and it's a poor way of living.  Jog along, black mare.
There's Janet's place in the hollow -- `Wayside,' she calls it.
Quite pictureaskew, ain't it?  I guess you'll be glad to git
out of this, with all them mail bags jamming round you."

"Yes, but I have enjoyed my drive with you very much," said
Anne sincerely.

"Git away now!" said Mrs. Skinner, highly flattered.  "Wait till
I tell Thomas that.  He always feels dretful tickled when I git
a compliment.  Jog along, black mare.  Well, here we are.  I hope
you'll git on well in the school, miss.  There's a short cut to
it through the ma'sh back of Janet's.  If you take that way be
awful keerful.  If you once got stuck in that black mud you'd be
sucked right down and never seen or heard tell of again till the
day of judgment, like Adam Palmer's cow.  Jog along, black mare."



Chapter XXXI

Anne to Philippa


"Anne Shirley to Philippa Gordon, greeting.

"Well-beloved, it's high time I was writing you.  Here am I,
installed once more as a country `schoolma'am' at Valley Road,
boarding at `Wayside,' the home of Miss Janet Sweet.  Janet is a
dear soul and very nicelooking; tall, but not over-tall; stoutish,
yet with a certain restraint of outline suggestive of a thrifty
soul who is not going to be overlavish even in the matter of
avoirdupois.  She has a knot of soft, crimpy, brown hair with
a thread of gray in it, a sunny face with rosy cheeks, and big,
kind eyes as blue as forget-me-nots.  Moreover, she is one of those
delightful, old-fashioned cooks who don't care a bit if they ruin
your digestion as long as they can give you feasts of fat things.

"I like her; and she likes me -- principally, it seems, because
she had a sister named Anne who died young.

"`I'm real glad to see you,' she said briskly, when I landed in her yard.
`My, you don't look a mite like I expected.  I was sure you'd be dark --
my sister Anne was dark.  And here you're redheaded!'

"For a few minutes I thought I wasn't going to like Janet as much
as I had expected at first sight.  Then I reminded myself that I
really must be more sensible than to be prejudiced against any
one simply because she called my hair red.  Probably the word
`auburn' was not in Janet's vocabulary at all.

"`Wayside' is a dear sort of little spot.  The house is small
and white, set down in a delightful little hollow that drops
away from the road.  Between road and house is an orchard and
flower-garden all mixed up together.  The front door walk is
bordered with quahog clam-shells -- `cow-hawks,' Janet calls them;
there is Virginia Creeper over the porch and moss on the roof.
My room is a neat little spot `off the parlor' -- just big
enough for the bed and me.  Over the head of my bed there is a
picture of Robby Burns standing at Highland Mary's grave,
shadowed by an enormous weeping willow tree.  Robby's face is
so lugubrious that it is no wonder I have bad dreams.  Why, the
first night I was here I dreamed I COULDN'T LAUGH.

"The parlor is tiny and neat.  Its one window is so shaded by a
huge willow that the room has a grotto-like effect of emerald gloom.
There are wonderful tidies on the chairs, and gay mats on the floor,
and books and cards carefully arranged on a round table, and vases
of dried grass on the mantel-piece.  Between the vases is a cheerful
decoration of preserved coffin plates -- five in all, pertaining
respectively to Janet's father and mother, a brother, her sister Anne,
and a hired man who died here once!  If I go suddenly insane some of
these days `know all men by these presents' that those coffin-plates
have caused it.

"But it's all delightful and I said so.  Janet loved me for it,
just as she detested poor Esther because Esther had said so much
shade was unhygienic and had objected to sleeping on a feather bed.
Now, I glory in feather-beds, and the more unhygienic and feathery
they are the more I glory.  Janet says it is such a comfort to see
me eat; she had been so afraid I would be like Miss Haythorne, who
wouldn't eat anything but fruit and hot water for breakfast and tried
to make Janet give up frying things.  Esther is really a dear girl,
but she is rather given to fads.  The trouble is that she hasn't
enough imagination and HAS a tendency to indigestion.

"Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young
men called!  I don't think there are many to call.  I haven't
seen a young man in Valley Road yet, except the next-door
hired boy -- Sam Toliver, a very tall, lank, tow-haired youth.
He came over one evening recently and sat for an hour on the
garden fence, near the front porch where Janet and I were doing
fancy-work.  The only remarks he volunteered in all that time
were, `Hev a peppermint, miss!  Dew now-fine thing for carARRH,
peppermints,' and, `Powerful lot o' jump-grasses round here
ternight.  Yep.'

"But there is a love affair going on here.  It seems to be my
fortune to be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love
affairs.  Mr. and Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about
their marriage.  Mrs. Stephen Clark of Carmody persists in being
most grateful to me for a suggestion which somebody else would
probably have made if I hadn't.  I do really think, though, that
Ludovic Speed would never have got any further along than placid
courtship if I had not helped him and Theodora Dix out.

"In the present affair I am only a passive spectator.  I've tried
once to help things along and made an awful mess of it.  So I
shall not meddle again.  I'll tell you all about it when we meet."




Chapter XXXII

Tea with Mrs. Douglas


On the first Thursday night of Anne's sojourn in Valley Road
Janet asked her to go to prayer-meeting.  Janet blossomed out
like a rose to attend that prayer-meeting.  She wore a pale-blue,
pansy-sprinkled muslin dress with more ruffles than one would ever
have supposed economical Janet could be guilty of, and a white
leghorn hat with pink roses and three ostrich feathers on it.
Anne felt quite amazed.  Later on, she found out Janet's motive
in so arraying herself -- a motive as old as Eden.

Valley Road prayer-meetings seemed to be essentially feminine.
There were thirty-two women present, two half-grown boys, and one
solitary man, beside the minister.  Anne found herself studying
this man.  He was not handsome or young or graceful; he had
remarkably long legs -- so long that he had to keep them coiled
up under his chair to dispose of them -- and he was stoopshouldered.
His hands were big, his hair wanted barbering, and his moustache
was unkempt.  But Anne thought she liked his face; it was kind and
honest and tender; there was something else in it, too -- just what,
Anne found it hard to define.  She finally concluded that this man had
suffered and been strong, and it had been made manifest in his face.
There was a sort of patient, humorous endurance in his expression
which indicated that he would go to the stake if need be, but would
keep on looking pleasant until he really had to begin squirming.

When prayer-meeting was over this man came up to Janet and said,

"May I see you home, Janet?"

Janet took his arm -- "as primly and shyly as if she were no more
than sixteen, having her first escort home," Anne told the girls
at Patty's Place later on.

"Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas," she said stiffly.

Mr. Douglas nodded and said, "I was looking at you in prayer-meeting,
miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were."

Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have
annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made
her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment.
She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on
the moonlit road.

So Janet had a beau!  Anne was delighted.  Janet would make a paragon
of a wife -- cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks.
It would be a flagrant waste on Nature's part to keep her a permanent
old maid.

"John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother," said
Janet the next day.  "She's bed-rid a lot of the time and never
goes out of the house.  But she's powerful fond of company and
always wants to see my boarders.  Can you go up this evening?"

Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas called on his
mother's behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening.

"Oh, why didn't you put on your pretty pansy dress?" asked Anne,
when they left home.  It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between
her excitement and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if
she were being broiled alive.

"Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible frivolous and unsuitable,
I'm afraid.  John likes that dress, though," she added wistfully.

The old Douglas homestead was half a mile from "Wayside" cresting
a windy hill.  The house itself was large and comfortable, old
enough to be dignified, and girdled with maple groves and orchards.
There were big, trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke prosperity.
Whatever the patient endurance in Mr. Douglas' face had meant it hadn't,
so Anne reflected, meant debts and duns.

John Douglas met them at the door and took them into the
sitting-room, where his mother was enthroned in an armchair.

Anne had expected old Mrs. Douglas to be tall and thin, because
Mr. Douglas was.  Instead, she was a tiny scrap of a woman, with
soft pink cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like a baby's.
Dressed in a beautiful, fashionably-made black silk dress,
with a fluffy white shawl over her shoulders, and her snowy
hair surmounted by a dainty lace cap, she might have posed
as a grandmother doll.

"How do you do, Janet dear?" she said sweetly.  "I am so glad to
see you again, dear."  She put up her pretty old face to be kissed.
"And this is our new teacher.  I'm delighted to meet you.  My son
has been singing your praises until I'm half jealous, and I'm sure
Janet ought to be wholly so."

Poor Janet blushed, Anne said something polite and conventional,
and then everybody sat down and made talk.  It was hard work,
even for Anne, for nobody seemed at ease except old Mrs. Douglas,
who certainly did not find any difficulty in talking.  She made
Janet sit by her and stroked her hand occasionally.  Janet sat
and smiled, looking horribly uncomfortable in her hideous dress,
and John Douglas sat without smiling.

At the tea table Mrs. Douglas gracefully asked Janet to pour
the tea.  Janet turned redder than ever but did it.  Anne wrote
a description of that meal to Stella.

"We had cold tongue and chicken and strawberry preserves, lemon
pie and tarts and chocolate cake and raisin cookies and pound cake
and fruit cake -- and a few other things, including more pie
-- caramel pie, I think it was.  After I had eaten twice as much
as was good for me, Mrs. Douglas sighed and said she feared she
had nothing to tempt my appetite.

"`I'm afraid dear Janet's cooking has spoiled you for any other,'
she said sweetly.  `Of course nobody in Valley Road aspires to
rival HER.  WON'T you have another piece of pie, Miss Shirley?
You haven't eaten ANYTHING.'

"Stella, I had eaten a helping of tongue and one of chicken,
three biscuits, a generous allowance of preserves, a piece of
pie, a tart, and a square of chocolate cake!"

After tea Mrs. Douglas smiled benevolently and told John to
take "dear Janet" out into the garden and get her some roses.
"Miss Shirley will keep me company while you are out --
won't you?" she said plaintively.  She settled down in her
armchair with a sigh.

"I am a very frail old woman, Miss Shirley.  For over twenty
years I've been a great sufferer.  For twenty long, weary years
I've been dying by inches."

"How painful!" said Anne, trying to be sympathetic and succeeding
only in feeling idiotic.

"There have been scores of nights when they've thought I could
never live to see the dawn," went on Mrs. Douglas solemnly.
"Nobody knows what I've gone through -- nobody can know but
myself.  Well, it can't last very much longer now.  My weary
pilgrimage will soon be over, Miss Shirley.  It is a great
comfort to me that John will have such a good wife to look after
him when his mother is gone -- a great comfort, Miss Shirley."

"Janet is a lovely woman," said Anne warmly.

"Lovely!  A beautiful character," assented Mrs. Douglas.  "And a
perfect housekeeper -- something I never was.  My health would
not permit it, Miss Shirley.  I am indeed thankful that John has
made such a wise choice.  I hope and believe that he will be happy.
He is my only son, Miss Shirley, and his happiness lies very near
my heart."

"Of course," said Anne stupidly.  For the first time in her life
she was stupid.  Yet she could not imagine why.  She seemed to
have absolutely nothing to say to this sweet, smiling, angelic
old lady who was patting her hand so kindly.

"Come and see me soon again, dear Janet," said Mrs. Douglas
lovingly, when they left.  "You don't come half often enough.
But then I suppose John will be bringing you here to stay all the
time one of these days."  Anne, happening to glance at John
Douglas, as his mother spoke, gave a positive start of dismay.
He looked as a tortured man might look when his tormentors gave
the rack the last turn of possible endurance. She felt sure he
must be ill and hurried poor blushing Janet away.

"Isn't old Mrs. Douglas a sweet woman?" asked Janet, as they
went down the road.

"M -- m," answered Anne absently.  She was wondering why John
Douglas had looked so.

"She's been a terrible sufferer," said Janet feelingly.
"She takes terrible spells.  It keeps John all worried up.
He's scared to leave home for fear his mother will take a
spell and nobody there but the hired girl."




Chapter XXXIII

"He Just Kept Coming and Coming"


Three days later Anne came home from school and found Janet crying.
Tears and Janet seemed so incongruous that Anne was honestly alarmed.

"Oh, what is the matter?" she cried anxiously.

"I'm -- I'm forty today," sobbed Janet.

"Well, you were nearly that yesterday and it didn't hurt,"
comforted Anne, trying not to smile.

"But -- but," went on Janet with a big gulp, "John Douglas won't
ask me to marry him."

"Oh, but he will," said Anne lamely.  "You must give him time, Janet

"Time!" said Janet with indescribable scorn.  "He has had twenty years.
How much time does he want?"

"Do you mean that John Douglas has been coming to see you for
twenty years?"

"He has.  And he has never so much as mentioned marriage to me.
And I don't believe he ever will now.  I've never said a word to
a mortal about it, but it seems to me I've just got to talk it
out with some one at last or go crazy.  John Douglas begun to go
with me twenty years ago, before mother died.  Well, he kept
coming and coming, and after a spell I begun making quilts and
things; but he never said anything about getting married, only
just kept coming and coming.  There wasn't anything I could do.
Mother died when we'd been going together for eight years.
I thought he maybe would speak out then, seeing as I was left
alone in the world.  He was real kind and feeling, and did
everything he could for me, but he never said marry.  And that's
the way it has been going on ever since.  People blame ME for it.
They say I won't marry him because his mother is so sickly and I
don't want the bother of waiting on her.  Why, I'd LOVE to wait on
John's mother!  But I let them think so.  I'd rather they'd blame
me than pity me!  It's so dreadful humiliating that John won't
ask me.  And WHY won't he?  Seems to me if I only knew his reason
I wouldn't mind it so much."

"Perhaps his mother doesn't want him to marry anybody," suggested Anne.

"Oh, she does.  She's told me time and again that she'd love to see
John settled before her time comes.  She's always giving him hints --
you heard her yourself the other day.  I thought I'd ha' gone through
the floor."

"It's beyond me," said Anne helplessly.  She thought of Ludovic Speed.
But the cases were not parallel.  John Douglas was not a man of
Ludovic's type.

"You should show more spirit, Janet," she went on resolutely.
"Why didn't you send him about his business long ago?"

"I couldn't," said poor Janet pathetically.  "You see, Anne, I've
always been awful fond of John.  He might just as well keep coming
as not, for there was never anybody else I'd want, so it didn't matter."

"But it might have made him speak out like a man," urged Anne.

Janet shook her head.

"No, I guess not.  I was afraid to try, anyway, for fear he'd
think I meant it and just go.  I suppose I'm a poor-spirited
creature, but that is how I feel.  And I can't help it."

"Oh, you COULD help it, Janet.  It isn't too late yet.  Take a
firm stand.  Let that man know you are not going to endure his
shillyshallying any longer.  I'LL back you up."

"I dunno," said Janet hopelessly.  "I dunno if I could ever get up
enough spunk.  Things have drifted so long.  But I'll think it over."

Anne felt that she was disappointed in John Douglas.  She had
liked him so well, and she had not thought him the sort of man who
would play fast and loose with a woman's feelings for twenty years.
He certainly should be taught a lesson, and Anne felt vindictively
that she would enjoy seeing the process.  Therefore she was delighted
when Janet told her, as they were going to prayer-meeting the next night,
that she meant to show some "sperrit."

"I'll let John Douglas see I'm not going to be trodden on any longer."

"You are perfectly right," said Anne emphatically.

When prayer-meeting was over John Douglas came up with his usual request.
Janet looked frightened but resolute.

"No, thank you," she said icily.  "I know the road home pretty well alone.
I ought to, seeing I've been traveling it for forty years.  So you needn't
trouble yourself, MR. Douglas."

Anne was looking at John Douglas; and, in that brilliant moonlight,
she saw the last twist of the rack again.  Without a word he turned
and strode down the road.

"Stop!  Stop!" Anne called wildly after him, not caring in the least
for the other dumbfounded onlookers.  "Mr. Douglas, stop!  Come back."

John Douglas stopped but he did not come back.  Anne flew down
the road, caught his arm and fairly dragged him back to Janet.

"You must come back," she said imploringly.  "It's all a mistake,
Mr. Douglas -- all my fault.  I made Janet do it.  She didn't
want to -- but it's all right now, isn't it, Janet?"

Without a word Janet took his arm and walked away.  Anne followed
them meekly home and slipped in by the back door.

"Well, you are a nice person to back me up," said Janet sarcastically.

"I couldn't help it, Janet," said Anne repentantly.  "I just felt
as if I had stood by and seen murder done.  I HAD to run after him."

"Oh, I'm just as glad you did.  When I saw John Douglas making
off down that road I just felt as if every little bit of joy and
happiness that was left in my life was going with him.  It was an
awful feeling."

"Did he ask you why you did it?" asked Anne.

"No, he never said a word about it," replied Janet dully.




Chapter XXXIV

John Douglas Speaks at Last


Anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of
it after all.  But nothing did.  John Douglas came and took Janet
driving, and walked home from prayer-meeting with her, as he had
been doing for twenty years, and as he seemed likely to do for
twenty years more.  The summer waned.  Anne taught her school and
wrote letters and studied a little.  Her walks to and from school
were pleasant.  She always went by way of the swamp; it was a
lovely place -- a boggy soil, green with the greenest of mossy
hillocks; a silvery brook meandered through it and spruces stood
erectly, their boughs a-trail with gray-green mosses, their roots
overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses.

Nevertheless, Anne found life in Valley Road a little monotonous.
To be sure, there was one diverting incident.

She had not seen the lank, tow-headed Samuel of the peppermints
since the evening of his call, save for chance meetings on the road.
But one warm August night he appeared, and solemnly seated himself
on the rustic bench by the porch.  He wore his usual working
habiliments, consisting of varipatched trousers, a blue jean shirt,
out at the elbows, and a ragged straw hat.  He was chewing a straw
and he kept on chewing it while he looked solemnly at Anne.  Anne
laid her book aside with a sigh and took up her doily.  Conversation
with Sam was really out of the question.

After a long silence Sam suddenly spoke.

"I'm leaving over there," he said abruptly, waving his straw in
the direction of the neighboring house.

"Oh, are you?" said Anne politely.

"Yep."

"And where are you going now?"

"Wall, I've been thinking some of gitting a place of my own.
There's one that'd suit me over at Millersville.  But ef I rents
it I'll want a woman."

"I suppose so," said Anne vaguely.

"Yep."

There was another long silence.  Finally Sam removed his straw
again and said,

"Will yeh hev me?"

"Wh -- a -- t!" gasped Anne.

"Will yeh hev me?"

"Do you mean -- MARRY you?" queried poor Anne feebly.

"Yep."

"Why, I'm hardly acquainted with you," cried Anne indignantly.

"But yeh'd git acquainted with me after we was married," said Sam.

Anne gathered up her poor dignity.

"Certainly I won't marry you," she said haughtily.

"Wall, yeh might do worse," expostulated Sam.  "I'm a good worker
and I've got some money in the bank."

"Don't speak of this to me again.  Whatever put such an idea into
your head?" said Anne, her sense of humor getting the better of
her wrath.  It was such an absurd situation.

"Yeh're a likely-looking girl and hev a right-smart way o' stepping,"
said Sam.  "I don't want no lazy woman.  Think it over.  I won't change
my mind yit awhile.  Wall, I must be gitting.  Gotter milk the cows."

Anne's illusions concerning proposals had suffered so much of
late years that there were few of them left.  So she could laugh
wholeheartedly over this one, not feeling any secret sting.  She
mimicked poor Sam to Janet that night, and both of them laughed
immoderately over his plunge into sentiment.

One afternoon, when Anne's sojourn in Valley Road was drawing to a
close, Alec Ward came driving down to "Wayside" in hot haste for Janet.

"They want you at the Douglas place quick," he said.  "I really
believe old Mrs. Douglas is going to die at last, after pretending
to do it for twenty years."

Janet ran to get her hat.  Anne asked if Mrs. Douglas was worse than usual.

"She's not half as bad," said Alec solemnly, "and that's what
makes me think it's serious.  Other times she'd be screaming and
throwing herself all over the place.  This time she's lying still
and mum.  When Mrs. Douglas is mum she is pretty sick, you bet."

"You don't like old Mrs. Douglas?" said Anne curiously.

"I like cats as IS cats.  I don't like cats as is women," was Alec's
cryptic reply.

Janet came home in the twilight.

"Mrs. Douglas is dead," she said wearily.  "She died soon after
I got there.  She just spoke to me once -- `I suppose you'll
marry John now?' she said.  It cut me to the heart, Anne.
To think John's own mother thought I wouldn't marry him
because of her!  I couldn't say a word either -- there were
other women there.  I was thankful John had gone out."

Janet began to cry drearily.  But Anne brewed her a hot drink of
ginger tea to her comforting.  To be sure, Anne discovered later
on that she had used white pepper instead of ginger; but Janet
never knew the difference.

The evening after the funeral Janet and Anne were sitting on the
front porch steps at sunset.  The wind had fallen asleep in the
pinelands and lurid sheets of heat-lightning flickered across the
northern skies.  Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked her
very worst, her eyes and nose red from crying.  They talked
little, for Janet seemed faintly to resent Anne's efforts to
cheer her up.  She plainly preferred to be miserable.

Suddenly the gate-latch clicked and John Douglas strode into the
garden.  He walked towards them straight over the geranium bed.
Janet stood up.  So did Anne.  Anne was a tall girl and wore a
white dress; but John Douglas did not see her.

"Janet," he said, "will you marry me?"

The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said
for twenty years and MUST be uttered now, before anything else.

Janet's face was so red from crying that it couldn't turn any redder,
so it turned a most unbecoming purple.

"Why didn't you ask me before?" she said slowly.

"I couldn't.  She made me promise not to -- mother made me
promise not to.  Nineteen years ago she took a terrible spell.
We thought she couldn't live through it.  She implored me to
promise not to ask you to marry me while she was alive.  I didn't
want to promise such a thing, even though we all thought she
couldn't live very long -- the doctor only gave her six months.
But she begged it on her knees, sick and suffering.  I had to promise."

"What had your mother against me?" cried Janet.

"Nothing -- nothing.  She just didn't want another woman
-- ANY woman -- there while she was living.  She said if I
didn't promise she'd die right there and I'd have killed her.
So I promised.  And she's held me to that promise ever since,
though I've gone on my knees to her in my turn to beg her
to let me ff."

"Why didn't you tell me this?" asked Janet chokingly.
"If I'd only KNOWN!  Why didn't you just tell me?"

"She made me promise I wouldn't tell a soul," said John hoarsely.
"She swore me to it on the Bible; Janet, I'd never have done it
if I'd dreamed it was to be for so long.  Janet, you'll never
know what I've suffered these nineteen years.  I know I've made
you suffer, too, but you'll marry me for all, won't you, Janet?
Oh, Janet, won't you?  I've come as soon as I could to ask you."

At this moment the stupefied Anne came to her senses and realized
that she had no business to be there.  She slipped away and did not
see Janet until the next morning, when the latter told her the rest
of the story.

"That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman!" cried Anne.

"Hush -- she's dead," said Janet solemnly.  "If she wasn't -- but she IS.
So we mustn't speak evil of her.  But I'm happy at last, Anne.  And I
wouldn't have minded waiting so long a bit if I'd only known why."

"When are you to be married?"

"Next month.  Of course it will be very quiet.  I suppose people
will talk terrible.  They'll say I made enough haste to snap John
up as soon as his poor mother was out of the way.  John wanted to
let them know the truth but I said, `No, John; after all she was
your mother, and we'll keep the secret between us, and not cast
any shadow on her memory.  I don't mind what people say, now that
I know the truth myself.  It don't matter a mite.  Let it all be
buried with the dead' says I to him.  So I coaxed him round to
agree with me."

"You're much more forgiving than I could ever be," Anne said,
rather crossly.

"You'll feel differently about a good many things when you get to
be my age," said Janet tolerantly.  "That's one of the things we
learn as we grow older -- how to forgive.  It comes easier at
forty than it did at twenty."




Chapter XXXV

The Last Redmond Year Opens


"Here we are, all back again, nicely sunburned and rejoicing as a
strong man to run a race," said Phil, sitting down on a suitcase
with a sigh of pleasure.  "Isn't it jolly to see this dear old
Patty's Place again -- and Aunty -- and the cats?  Rusty has lost
another piece of ear, hasn't he?"

"Rusty would be the nicest cat in the world if he had no ears at all,"
declared Anne loyally from her trunk, while Rusty writhed about her lap
in a frenzy of welcome.

"Aren't you glad to see us back, Aunty?" demanded Phil.

"Yes.  But I wish you'd tidy things up," said Aunt Jamesina plaintively,
looking at the wilderness of trunks and suitcases by which the four
laughing, chattering girls were surrounded.  "You can talk just as well
later on.  Work first and then play used to be my motto when I was a girl."

"Oh, we've just reversed that in this generation, Aunty.
OUR motto is play your play and then dig in.  You can do your
work so much better if you've had a good bout of play first."

"If you are going to marry a minister," said Aunt Jamesina,
picking up Joseph and her knitting and resigning herself to the
inevitable with the charming grace that made her the queen of
housemothers, "you will have to give up such expressions as `dig in.'"

"Why?" moaned Phil.  "Oh, why must a minister's wife be supposed
to utter only prunes and prisms?  I shan't.  Everybody on
Patterson Street uses slang -- that is to say, metaphorical
language -- and if I didn't they would think me insufferably
proud and stuck up."

"Have you broken the news to your family?" asked Priscilla,
feeding the Sarah-cat bits from her lunchbasket.

Phil nodded.

"How did they take it?"

"Oh, mother rampaged.  But I stood rockfirm -- even I, Philippa Gordon,
who never before could hold fast to anything.  Father was calmer.
Father's own daddy was a minister, so you see he has a soft spot
in his heart for the cloth.  I had Jo up to Mount Holly, after mother
grew calm, and they both loved him.  But mother gave him some frightful
hints in every conversation regarding what she had hoped for me.  Oh,
my vacation pathway hasn't been exactly strewn with roses, girls dear.
But -- I've won out and I've got Jo.  Nothing else matters."

"To you," said Aunt Jamesina darkly.

"Nor to Jo, either," retorted Phil.  "You keep on pitying him.
Why, pray?  I think he's to be envied.  He's getting brains,
beauty, and a heart of gold in ME."

"It's well we know how to take your speeches," said Aunt Jamesina
patiently.  "I hope you don't talk like that before strangers.
What would they think?"

"Oh, I don't want to know what they think.  I don't want to
see myself as others see me.  I'm sure it would be horribly
uncomfortable most of the time.  I don't believe Burns was
really sincere in that prayer, either."

"Oh, I daresay we all pray for some things that we really don't
want, if we were only honest enough to look into our hearts,"
owned Aunt Jamesina candidly.  "I've a notion that such prayers
don't rise very far.  _I_ used to pray that I might be enabled to
forgive a certain person, but I know now I really didn't want to
forgive her.  When I finally got that I DID want to I forgave her
without having to pray about it."

"I can't picture you as being unforgiving for long," said Stella.

"Oh, I used to be.  But holding spite doesn't seem worth while
when you get along in years."

"That reminds me," said Anne, and told the tale of John and Janet.

"And now tell us about that romantic scene you hinted so darkly
at in one of your letters," demanded Phil.

Anne acted out Samuel's proposal with great spirit.  The girls
shrieked with laughter and Aunt Jamesina smiled.

"It isn't in good taste to make fun of your beaux," she said
severely; "but," she added calmly, "I always did it myself."

"Tell us about your beaux, Aunty, "en treated Phil.  "You must
have had any number of them."

"They're not in the past tense," retorted Aunt Jamesina.
"I've got them yet.  There are three old widowers at home
who have been casting sheep's eyes at me for some time.
You children needn't think you own all the romance in the world."

"Widowers and sheep's eyes don't sound very romantic, Aunty."

"Well, no; but young folks aren't always romantic either.
Some of my beaux certainly weren't.  I used to laugh at them
scandalous, poor boys.  There was Jim Elwood -- he was always in
a sort of day-dream -- never seemed to sense what was going on.
He didn't wake up to the fact that I'd said `no' till a year
after I'd said it.  When he did get married his wife fell out of
the sleigh one night when they were driving home from church and
he never missed her.  Then there was Dan Winston.  He knew too much.
He knew everything in this world and most of what is in the next.
He could give you an answer to any question, even if you asked him
when the Judgment Day was to be.  Milton Edwards was real nice and
I liked him but I didn't marry him.  For one thing, he took a week
to get a joke through his head, and for another he never asked me.
Horatio Reeve was the most interesting beau I ever had.  But when he
told a story he dressed it up so that you couldn't see it for frills.
I never could decide whether he was lying or just letting his
imagination run loose."

"And what about the others, Aunty?"

"Go away and unpack," said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by
mistake for a needle.  "The others were too nice to make fun of.
I shall respect their memory.  There's a box of flowers in
your room, Anne.  They came about an hour ago."

After the first week the girls of Patty's Place settled down to a
steady grind of study; for this was their last year at Redmond
and graduation honors must be fought for persistently.  Anne
devoted herself to English, Priscilla pored over classics, and
Philippa pounded away at Mathematics.  Sometimes they grew tired,
sometimes they felt discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth
the struggle for it.  In one such mood Stella wandered up to the
blue room one rainy November evening.  Anne sat on the floor in a
little circle of light cast by the lamp beside her, amid a
surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.

"What in the world are you doing?"

"Just looking over some old Story Club yarns.  I wanted something
to cheer AND inebriate.  I'd studied until the world seemed azure.
So I came up here and dug these out of my trunk.  They are so drenched
in tears and tragedy that they are excruciatingly funny."

"I'm blue and discouraged myself," said Stella, throwing herself
on the couch.  "Nothing seems worthwhile.  My very thoughts are
old.  I've thought them all before.  What is the use of living
after all, Anne?"

"Honey, it's just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the weather.
A pouring rainy night like this, coming after a hard day's grind, would
squelch any one but a Mark Tapley.  You know it IS worthwhile to live."

"Oh, I suppose so.  But I can't prove it to myself just now."

"Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and
worked in the world," said Anne dreamily.  "Isn't it worthwhile
to come after them and inherit what they won and taught?  Isn't
it worthwhile to think we can share their inspiration?  And then,
all the great souls that will come in the future?  Isn't it
worthwhile to work a little and prepare the way for them --
make just one step in their path easier?"

"Oh, my mind agrees with you, Anne.  But my soul remains doleful
and uninspired.  I'm always grubby and dingy on rainy nights."

"Some nights I like the rain -- I like to lie in bed and hear it
pattering on the roof and drifting through the pines."

"I like it when it stays on the roof," said Stella.  "It doesn't
always.  I spent a gruesome night in an old country farmhouse
last summer.  The roof leaked and the rain came pattering down on
my bed.  There was no poetry in THAT.  I had to get up in the
`mirk midnight' and chivy round to pull the bedstead out of the
drip -- and it was one of those solid, old-fashioned beds that
weigh a ton -- more or less.  And then that drip-drop, drip-drop
kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces.  You've no
idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling with a
mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night.  It sounds like
ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing.  What are you
laughing over, Anne?"

"These stories.  As Phil would say they are killing -- in more senses
than one, for everybody died in them.  What dazzlingly lovely heroines
we had -- and how we dressed them!  Silks -- satins -- velvets -- jewels
-- laces -- they never wore anything else.  Here is one of Jane Andrews'
stories depicting her heroine as sleeping in a beautiful white satin
nightdress trimmed with seed pearls."

"Go on," said Stella.  "I begin to feel that life is worth living
as long as there's a laugh in it."

"Here's one I wrote.  My heroine is disporting herself at a ball
`glittering from head to foot with large diamonds of the first
water.'  But what booted beauty or rich attire?  `The paths of
glory lead but to the grave.'  They must either be murdered or die
of a broken heart.  There was no escape for them."

"Let me read some of your stories."

"Well, here's my masterpiece.  Note its cheerful title -- `My Graves.'
I shed quarts of tears while writing it, and the other girls shed gallons
while I read it.  Jane Andrews' mother scolded her frightfully because
she had so many handkerchiefs in the wash that week.  It's a harrowing
tale of the wanderings of a Methodist minister's wife.  I made her a
Methodist because it was necessary that she should wander.  She buried
a child every place she lived in.  There were nine of them and their
graves were severed far apart, ranging from Newfoundland to Vancouver.
I described the children, pictured their several death beds, and
detailed their tombstones and epitaphs.  I had intended to bury the
whole nine but when I had disposed of eight my invention of horrors
gave out and I permitted the ninth to live as a hopeless cripple."

While Stella read My Graves, punctuating its tragic paragraphs
with chuckles, and Rusty slept the sleep of a just cat who has
been out all night curled up on a Jane Andrews tale of a beautiful
maiden of fifteen who went to nurse in a leper colony -- of course
dying of the loathsome disease finally -- Anne glanced over the other
manuscripts and recalled the old days at Avonlea school when the members
of the Story Club, sitting under the spruce trees or down among the
ferns by the brook, had written them.  What fun they had had!
How the sunshine and mirth of those olden summers returned as she read.
Not all the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome could
weave such wizardry as those funny, tearful tales of the Story Club.
Among the manuscripts Anne found one written on sheets of wrapping paper.
A wave of laughter filled her gray eyes as she recalled the time and
place of its genesis.  It was the sketch she had written the day she
fell through the roof of the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road.

Anne glanced over it, then fell to reading it intently.  It was a
little dialogue between asters and sweet-peas, wild canaries in the
lilac bush, and the guardian spirit of the garden.  After she had
read it, she sat, staring into space; and when Stella had gone she
smoothed out the crumpled manuscript.

"I believe I will," she said resolutely.




Chapter XXXVI

The Gardners'Call


"Here is a letter with an Indian stamp for you, Aunt Jimsie,"
said Phil.  "Here are three for Stella, and two for Pris, and a
glorious fat one for me from Jo.  There's nothing for you, Anne,
except a circular."

Nobody noticed Anne's flush as she took the thin letter Phil tossed
her carelessly.  But a few minutes later Phil looked up to see a
transfigured Anne.

"Honey, what good thing has happened?"

"The Youth's Friend has accepted a little sketch I sent them a
fortnight ago," said Anne, trying hard to speak as if she were
accustomed to having sketches accepted every mail, but not
quite succeeding.

"Anne Shirley!  How glorious!  What was it?  When is it to be
published?  Did they pay you for it?"

"Yes; they've sent a check for ten dollars, and the editor writes
that he would like to see more of my work.  Dear man, he shall.
It was an old sketch I found in my box.  I re-wrote it and sent
it in -- but I never really thought it could be accepted because
it had no plot," said Anne, recalling the bitter experience of
Averil's Atonement.

"What are you going to do with that ten dollars, Anne?  Let's all
go up town and get drunk," suggested Phil.

"I AM going to squander it in a wild soulless revel of some sort,"
declared Anne gaily.  "At all events it isn't tainted money --
like the check I got for that horrible Reliable Baking Powder story.
I spent IT usefully for clothes and hated them every time I put them on."

"Think of having a real live author at Patty's Place," said Priscilla.

"It's a great responsibility," said Aunt Jamesina solemnly.

"Indeed it is," agreed Pris with equal solemnity.  "Authors are
kittle cattle.  You never know when or how they will break out.
Anne may make copy of us."

"I meant that the ability to write for the Press was a great
responsibility," said Aunt Jamesina severely.  "and I hope Anne
realizes, it.  My daughter used to write stories before she went
to the foreign field, but now she has turned her attention to
higher things.  She used to say her motto was `Never write a line
you would be ashamed to read at your own funeral.'  You'd better
take that for yours, Anne, if you are going to embark in literature.
Though, to be sure," added Aunt Jamesina perplexedly, "Elizabeth
always used to laugh when she said it.  She always laughed so much
that I don't know how she ever came to decide on being a missionary.
I'm thankful she did -- I prayed that she might -- but -- I wish
she hadn't."

Then Aunt Jamesina wondered why those giddy girls all laughed.

Anne's eyes shone all that day; literary ambitions sprouted and
budded in her brain; their exhilaration accompanied her to Jennie
Cooper's walking party, and not even the sight of Gilbert and
Christine, walking just ahead of her and Roy, could quite subdue
the sparkle of her starry hopes.  Nevertheless, she was not so
rapt from things of earth as to be unable to notice that
Christine's walk was decidedly ungraceful.

"But I suppose Gilbert looks only at her face.  So like a man,"
thought Anne scornfully.

"Shall you be home Saturday afternoon?" asked Roy.

"Yes."

"My mother and sisters are coming to call on you," said Roy quietly.

Something went over Anne which might be described as a thrill, but
it was hardly a pleasant one.  She had never met any of Roy's family;
she realized the significance of his statement; and it had, somehow,
an irrevocableness about it that chilled her.

"I shall be glad to see them," she said flatly; and then wondered
if she really would be glad.  She ought to be, of course.  But
would it not be something of an ordeal?  Gossip had filtered to
Anne regarding the light in which the Gardners viewed the
"infatuation" of son and brother.  Roy must have brought pressure
to bear in the matter of this call.  Anne knew she would be
weighed in the balance.  From the fact that they had consented to
call she understood that, willingly or unwillingly, they regarded
her as a possible member of their clan.

"I shall just be myself.  I shall not TRY to make a good impression,"
thought Anne loftily.  But she was wondering what dress she would
better wear Saturday afternoon, and if the new style of high
hair-dressing would suit her better than the old; and the walking
party was rather spoiled for her.  By night she had decided that she
would wear her brown chiffon on Saturday, but would do her hair low.

Friday afternoon none of the girls had classes at Redmond.
Stella took the opportunity to write a paper for the Philomathic
Society, and was sitting at the table in the corner of the
living-room with an untidy litter of notes and manuscript on the
floor around her.  Stella always vowed she never could write
anything unless she threw each sheet down as she completed it.
Anne, in her flannel blouse and serge skirt, with her hair rather
blown from her windy walk home, was sitting squarely in the
middle of the floor, teasing the Sarah-cat with a wishbone.
Joseph and Rusty were both curled up in her lap.  A warm plummy
odor filled the whole house, for Priscilla was cooking in the
kitchen.  Presently she came in, enshrouded in a huge work-apron,
with a smudge of flour on her nose, to show Aunt Jamesina the
chocolate cake she had just iced.

At this auspicious moment the knocker sounded.  Nobody paid any
attention to it save Phil, who sprang up and opened it, expecting
a boy with the hat she had bought that morning.  On the doorstep
stood Mrs. Gardner and her daughters.

Anne scrambled to her feet somehow, emptying two indignant cats
out of her lap as she did so, and mechanically shifting her
wishbone from her right hand to her left.  Priscilla, who would
have had to cross the room to reach the kitchen door, lost her
head, wildly plunged the chocolate cake under a cushion on the
inglenook sofa, and dashed upstairs.  Stella began feverishly
gathering up her manuscript.  Only Aunt Jamesina and Phil
remained normal.  Thanks to them, everybody was soon sitting at
ease, even Anne.  Priscilla came down, apronless and smudgeless,
Stella reduced her corner to decency, and Phil saved the
situation by a stream of ready small talk.

Mrs. Gardner was tall and thin and handsome, exquisitely
gowned, cordial with a cordiality that seemed a trifle forced.
Aline Gardner was a younger edition of her mother, lacking the
cordiality.  She endeavored to be nice, but succeeded only in
being haughty and patronizing.  Dorothy Gardner was slim and
jolly and rather tomboyish.  Anne knew she was Roy's favorite
sister and warmed to her.  She would have looked very much like
Roy if she had had dreamy dark eyes instead of roguish hazel
ones.  Thanks to her and Phil, the call really went off very
well, except for a slight sense of strain in the atmosphere
and two rather untoward incidents.  Rusty and Joseph, left to
themselves, began a game of chase, and sprang madly into
Mrs. Gardner's silken lap and out of it in their wild career.
Mrs. Gardner lifted her lorgnette and gazed after their flying
forms as if she had never seen cats before, and Anne, choking
back slightly nervous laughter, apologized as best she could.

"You are fond of cats?" said Mrs. Gardner, with a slight
intonation of tolerant wonder.

Anne, despite her affection for Rusty, was not especially fond of
cats, but Mrs. Gardner's tone annoyed her.  Inconsequently she
remembered that Mrs. John Blythe was so fond of cats that she
kept as many as her husband would allow.

"They ARE adorable animals, aren't they?" she said wickedly.

"I have never liked cats," said Mrs. Gardner remotely.

"I love them," said Dorothy.  "They are so nice and selfish.
Dogs are TOO good and unselfish.  They make me feel uncomfortable.
But cats are gloriously human."

"You have two delightful old china dogs there.  May I look at
them closely?" said Aline, crossing the room towards the fireplace
and thereby becoming the unconscious cause of the other accident.
Picking up Magog, she sat down on the cushion under which was
secreted Priscilla's chocolate cake.  Priscilla and Anne exchanged
agonized glances but could do nothing.  The stately Aline continued to
sit on the cushion and discuss china dogs until the time of departure.

Dorothy lingered behind a moment to squeeze Anne's hand and
whisper impulsively.

"I KNOW you and I are going to be chums.  Oh, Roy has told me all
about you.  I'm the only one of the family he tells things to,
poor boy -- nobody COULD confide in mamma and Aline, you know.
What glorious times you girls must have here!  Won't you let me
come often and have a share in them?"

"Come as often as you like," Anne responded heartily, thankful
that one of Roy's sisters was likable.  She would never like
Aline, so much was certain; and Aline would never like her,
though Mrs. Gardner might be won.  Altogether, Anne sighed with
relief when the ordeal was over.

            "`Of all sad words of tongue or pen
            The saddest are it might have been,'"

quoted Priscilla tragically, lifting the cushion.  "This cake is
now what you might call a flat failure.  And the cushion is
likewise ruined.  Never tell me that Friday isn't unlucky."

"People who send word they are coming on Saturday shouldn't come
on Friday," said Aunt Jamesina.

"I fancy it was Roy's mistake," said Phil.  "That boy isn't really
responsible for what he says when he talks to Anne.  Where IS Anne?"

Anne had gone upstairs.  She felt oddly like crying.  But she
made herself laugh instead.  Rusty and Joseph had been TOO awful!
And Dorothy WAS a dear.




Chapter XXXVII

Full-fledged B.A.'s


"I wish I were dead, or that it were tomorrow night," groaned Phil.

"If you live long enough both wishes will come true," said Anne calmly.

"It's easy for you to be serene.  You're at home in Philosophy.
I'm not -- and when I think of that horrible paper tomorrow I quail.
If I should fail in it what would Jo say?"

"You won't fail.  How did you get on in Greek today?"

"I don't know.  Perhaps it was a good paper and perhaps it was
bad enough to make Homer turn over in his grave.  I've studied
and mulled over notebooks until I'm incapable of forming an
opinion of anything.  How thankful little Phil will be when all
this examinating is over."

"Examinating?  I never heard such a word."

"Well, haven't I as good a right to make a word as any one else?"
demanded Phil.

"Words aren't made -- they grow," said Anne.

"Never mind -- I begin faintly to discern clear water ahead where
no examination breakers loom.  Girls, do you -- can you realize
that our Redmond Life is almost over?"

"I can't," said Anne, sorrowfully.  "It seems just yesterday
that Pris and I were alone in that crowd of Freshmen at Redmond.
And now we are Seniors in our final examinations."

"`Potent, wise, and reverend Seniors,'" quoted Phil.  "Do you
suppose we really are any wiser than when we came to Redmond?"

"You don't act as if you were by times," said Aunt Jamesina severely.

"Oh, Aunt Jimsie, haven't we been pretty good girls, take us by
and large, these three winters you've mothered us?" pleaded Phil.

"You've been four of the dearest, sweetest, goodest girls that
ever went together through college," averred Aunt Jamesina, who
never spoiled a compliment by misplaced economy.

"But I mistrust you haven't any too much sense yet.  It's not to
be expected, of course.  Experience teaches sense.  You can't
learn it in a college course.  You've been to college four years
and I never was, but I know heaps more than you do, young ladies."

      "`There are lots of things that never go by rule,
      There's a powerful pile o' knowledge
      That you never get at college,
      There are heaps of things you never learn at school,'"

quoted Stella.

"Have you learned anything at Redmond except dead languages and
geometry and such trash?" queried Aunt Jamesina.

"Oh, yes.  I think we have, Aunty," protested Anne.

"We've learned the truth of what Professor Woodleigh told us
last Philomathic," said Phil.  "He said, `Humor is the spiciest
condiment in the feast of existence.  Laugh at your mistakes
but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength
from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.'
Isn't that worth learning, Aunt Jimsie?"

"Yes, it is, dearie.  When you've learned to laugh at the things
that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't,
you've got wisdom and understanding."

"What have you got out of your Redmond course, Anne?" murmured
Priscilla aside.

"I think," said Anne slowly, "that I really have learned to look
upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as the
foreshadowing of victory.  Summing up, I think that is what
Redmond has given me."

"I shall have to fall back on another Professor Woodleigh
quotation to express what it has done for me," said Priscilla.
"You remember that he said in his address, `There is so much
in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and
the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves --
so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much
everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.'
I think Redmond has taught me that in some measure, Anne."

"Judging from what you all, say" remarked Aunt Jamesina,
"the sum and substance is that you can learn -- if you've got
natural gumption enough -- in four years at college what it
would take about twenty years of living to teach you.  Well,
that justifies higher education in my opinion.  It's a matter
I was always dubious about before."

"But what about people who haven't natural gumption, Aunt Jimsie?"

"People who haven't natural gumption never learn," retorted
Aunt Jamesina, "neither in college nor life.  If they live to
be a hundred they really don't know anything more than when they
were born.  It's their misfortune not their fault, poor souls.
But those of us who have some gumption should duly thank the
Lord for it."

"Will you please define what gumption is, Aunt Jimsie?" asked Phil.

"No, I won't, young woman.  Any one who has gumption knows what
it is, and any one who hasn't can never know what it is.  So there
is no need of defining it."

The busy days flew by and examinations were over.  Anne took
High Honors in English.  Priscilla took Honors in Classics, and
Phil in Mathematics.  Stella obtained a good all-round showing.
Then came Convocation.

"This is what I would once have called an epoch in my life,"
said Anne, as she took Roy's violets out of their box and gazed
at them thoughtfully.  She meant to carry them, of course, but
her eyes wandered to another box on her table.  It was filled
with lilies-of-the-valley, as fresh and fragrant as those which
bloomed in the Green Gables yard when June came to Avonlea.
Gilbert Blythe's card lay beside it.

Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for Convocation.
She had seen very little of him during the past winter.  He had come to
Patty's Place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays,
and they rarely met elsewhere.  She knew he was studying very hard,
aiming at High Honors and the Cooper Prize, and he took little part
in the social doings of Redmond.  Anne's own winter had been quite
gay socially.  She had seen a good deal of the Gardners; she and
Dorothy were very intimate; college circles expected the announcement
of her engagement to Roy any day.  Anne expected it herself.  Yet
just before she left Patty's Place for Convocation she flung Roy's
violets aside and put Gilbert's lilies-of-the-valley in their place.
She could not have told why she did it.  Somehow, old Avonlea days
and dreams and friendships seemed very close to her in this attainment
of her long-cherished ambitions.  She and Gilbert had once picturedout
merrily the day on which they should be capped and gowned graduates in
Arts.  The wonderful day had come and Roy's violets had no place in it.
Only her old friend's flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of
old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared.

For years this day had beckoned and allured to her; but when it
came the one single, keen, abiding memory it left with her was
not that of the breathless moment when the stately president of
Redmond gave her cap and diploma and hailed her B.A.; it was not
of the flash in Gilbert's eyes when he saw her lilies, nor the
puzzled pained glance Roy gave her as he passed her on the platform.
It was not of Aline Gardner's condescending congratulations, or
Dorothy's ardent, impulsive good wishes.  It was of one strange,
unaccountable pang that spoiled this long-expected day for her
and left in it a certain faint but enduring flavor of bitterness.

The Arts graduates gave a graduation dance that night.  When Anne
dressed for it she tossed aside the pearl beads she usually wore
and took from her trunk the small box that had come to Green Gables
on Christmas day.  In it was a thread-like gold chain with a tiny
pink enamel heart as a pendant.  On the accompanying card was written,
"With all good wishes from your old chum, Gilbert."  Anne, laughing
over the memory the enamel heart conjured up the fatal day when
Gilbert had called her "Carrots" and vainly tried to make his peace
with a pink candy heart, had written him a nice little note of thanks.
But she had never worn the trinket.  Tonight she fastened it about her
white throat with a dreamy smile.

She and Phil walked to Redmond together.  Anne walked in silence;
Phil chattered of many things.  Suddenly she said,

"I heard today that Gilbert Blythe's engagement to Christine
Stuart was to be announced as soon as Convocation was over.
Did you hear anything of it?"

"No," said Anne.

"I think it's true," said Phil lightly.

Anne did not speak.  In the darkness she felt her face burning.
She slipped her hand inside her collar and caught at the gold
chain.  One energetic twist and it gave way.  Anne thrust the
broken trinket into her pocket.  Her hands were trembling and
her eyes were smarting.

But she was the gayest of all the gay revellers that night, and
told Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full when he came to
ask her for a dance.  Afterwards, when she sat with the girls
before the dying embers at Patty's Place, removing the spring
chilliness from their satin skins, none chatted more blithely
than she of the day's events.

"Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight after you left,"
said Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the fire on.  "He didn't
know about the graduation dance.  That boy ought to sleep with a
rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out.
I had a beau once who did that and it improved him immensely.
It was I who suggested it to him and he took my advice, but he
never forgave me for it."

"Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young man," yawned Priscilla.
"He is concerned with graver matters than his ears.  He is going
to be a minister, you know."

"Well, I suppose the Lord doesn't regard the ears of a man,"
said Aunt Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism of
Moody Spurgeon.  Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the
cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.




Chapter XXXVIII

False Dawn


"Just imagine -- this night week I'll be in Avonlea -- delightful thought!"
said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. Rachel Lynde's
quilts. "But just imagine -- this night week I'll be gone forever from
Patty's Place -- horrible thought!"

"I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter will echo through the maiden
dreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria," speculated Phil.

Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home, after having trotted over
most of the habitable globe.

"We'll be back the second week in May" wrote Miss Patty.  "I expect
Patty's Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at
Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in.  And I'll be glad
enough to be home again.  When you start traveling late in life you're
apt to do too much of it because you know you haven't much time left,
and it's a thing that grows on you.  I'm afraid Maria will never be
contented again."

"I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next comer,"
said Anne, looking around the blue room wistfully -- her pretty blue
room where she had spent three such happy years.  She had knelt at
its window to pray and had bent from it to watch the sunset behind
the pines.  She had heard the autumn raindrops beating against it
and had welcomed the spring robins at its sill.  She wondered if
old dreams could haunt rooms -- if, when one left forever the room
where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something
of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not
remain behind like a voiceful memory.

"I think," said Phil, "that a room where one dreams and grieves
and rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those
processes and acquires a personality of its own.  I am sure if I
came into this room fifty years from now it would say 'Anne, Anne'
to me.  What nice times we've had here, honey!  What chats and
jokes and good chummy jamborees!  Oh, dear me!  I'm to marry Jo
in June and I know I will be rapturously happy.  But just now
I feel as if I wanted this lovely Redmond life to go on forever."

"I'm unreasonable enough just now to wish that, too," admitted Anne.
"No matter what deeper joys may come to us later on we'll never again
have just the same delightful, irresponsible existence we've had here.
It's over forever, Phil."

"What are you going to do with Rusty?" asked Phil, as that
privileged pussy padded into the room.

"I am going to take him home with me and Joseph and the Sarah-cat,"
announced Aunt Jamesina, following Rusty.  "It would be a shame
to separate those cats now that they have learned to live together.
It's a hard lesson for cats and humans to learn."

"I'm sorry to part with Rusty," said Anne regretfully, "but it
would be no use to take him to Green Gables.  Marilla detests
cats, and Davy would tease his life out.  Besides, I don't
suppose I'll be home very long.  I've been offered the
principalship of the Summerside High School."

"Are you going to accept it?" asked Phil.

"I -- I haven't decided yet," answered Anne, with a confused flush.

Phil nodded understandingly.  Naturally Anne's plans could not be
settled until Roy had spoken.  He would soon -- there was no doubt
of that.  And there was no doubt that Anne would say "yes" when he
said "Will you please?"  Anne herself regarded the state of affairs
with a seldom-ruffled complacency.  She was deeply in love with Roy.
True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be.  But was
anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination
of it?  It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated --
the same disappointment she had felt when she had first seen the
chill sparkle instead of the purple splendor she had anticipated.
"That's not my idea of a diamond," she had said.  But Roy was a
dear fellow and they would be very happy together, even if some
indefinable zest was missing out of life.  When Roy came down that
evening and asked Anne to walk in the park every one at Patty's
Place knew what he had come to say; and every one knew, or thought
they knew, what Anne's answer would be.

"Anne is a very fortunate girl," said Aunt Jamesina.

"I suppose so," said Stella, shrugging her shoulders.  "Roy is a
nice fellow and all that.  But there's really nothing in him."

"That sounds very like a jealous remark, Stella Maynard," said
Aunt Jamesina rebukingly.

"It does -- but I am not jealous," said Stella calmly.  "I love
Anne and I like Roy.  Everybody says she is making a brilliant
match, and even Mrs. Gardner thinks her charming now.  It all
sounds as if it were made in heaven, but I have my doubts.
Make the most of that, Aunt Jamesina."

Roy asked Anne to marry him in the little pavilion on the harbor
shore where they had talked on the rainy day of their first meeting.
Anne thought it very romantic that he should have chosen that spot.
And his proposal was as beautifully worded as if he had copied it,
as one of Ruby Gillis' lovers had done, out of a Deportment of
Courtship and Marriage.  The whole effect was quite flawless.
And it was also sincere.  There was no doubt that Roy meant
what he said.  There was no false note to jar the symphony.
Anne felt that she ought to be thrilling from head to foot.
But she wasn't; she was horribly cool.  When Roy paused
for his answer she opened her lips to say her fateful yes.
And then -- she found herself trembling as if she were reeling
back from a precipice.  To her came one of those moments when we
realize, as by a blinding flash of illumination, more than all
our previous years have taught us.  She pulled her hand from Roy's.

"Oh, I can't marry you -- I can't -- I can't," she cried, wildly.

Roy turned pale -- and also looked rather foolish.  He had --
small blame to him -- felt very sure.

"What do you mean?" he stammered.

"I mean that I can't marry you," repeated Anne desperately.
"I thought I could -- but I can't."

"Why can't you?" Roy asked more calmly.

"Because -- I don't care enough for you."

A crimson streak came into Roy's face.

"So you've just been amusing yourself these two years?" he said slowly.

"No, no, I haven't," gasped poor Anne.  Oh, how could she explain?
She COULDN'T explain.  There are some things that cannot be explained.
"I did think I cared -- truly I did -- but I know now I don't."

"You have ruined my life," said Roy bitterly.

"Forgive me," pleaded Anne miserably, with hot cheeks and
stinging eyes.

Roy turned away and stood for a few minutes looking out seaward.
When he came back to Anne, he was very pale again.

"You can give me no hope?" he said.

Anne shook her head mutely.

"Then -- good-bye," said Roy.  "I can't understand it -- I
can't believe you are not the woman I've believed you to be.
But reproaches are idle between us.  You are the only woman
I can ever love.  I thank you for your friendship, at least.
Good-bye, Anne."

"Good-bye," faltered Anne.  When Roy had gone she sat for a long
time in the pavilion, watching a white mist creeping subtly and
remorselessly landward up the harbor.  It was her hour of humiliation
and self-contempt and shame.  Their waves went over her.  And yet,
underneath it all, was a queer sense of recovered freedom.

She slipped into Patty's Place in the dusk and escaped to her room.
But Phil was there on the window seat.

"Wait," said Anne, flushing to anticipate the scene.  "Wait til
you hear what I have to say.  Phil, Roy asked me to marry him-and
I refused."

"You -- you REFUSED him?" said Phil blankly.

"Yes."

"Anne Shirley, are you in your senses?"

"I think so," said Anne wearily.  "Oh, Phil, don't scold me.
You don't understand."

"I certainly don't understand.  You've encouraged Roy Gardner in
every way for two years -- and now you tell me you've refused him.
Then you've just been flirting scandalously with him.  Anne, I
couldn't have believed it of YOU."

"I WASN'T flirting with him -- I honestly thought I cared up to the
last minute -- and then -- well, I just knew I NEVER could marry him."

"I suppose," said Phil cruelly, "that you intended to marry him
for his money, and then your better self rose up and prevented you."

"I DIDN'T.  I never thought about his money.  Oh, I can't explain
it to you any more than I could to him."

"Well, I certainly think you have treated Roy shamefully," said Phil
in exasperation.  "He's handsome and clever and rich and good.
What more do you want?"

"I want some one who BELONGS in my life.  He doesn't.  I was
swept off my feet at first by his good looks and knack of paying
romantic compliments; and later on I thought I MUST be in love
because he was my dark-eyed ideal."

"I am bad enough for not knowing my own mind, but you are worse,"
said Phil.

"_I_ DO know my own mind," protested Anne.  "The trouble is, my mind
changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again."

"Well, I suppose there is no use in saying anything to you."

"There is no need, Phil.  I'm in the dust.  This has spoiled
everything backwards.  I can never think of Redmond days without
recalling the humiliation of this evening.  Roy despises me --
and you despise me -- and I despise myself."

"You poor darling," said Phil, melting.  "Just come here and let
me comfort you.  I've no right to scold you.  I'd have married
Alec or Alonzo if I hadn't met Jo.  Oh, Anne, things are so
mixed-up in real life.  They aren't clear-cut and trimmed off,
as they are in novels."

"I hope that NO one will ever again ask me to marry him as long as
I live," sobbed poor Anne, devoutly believing that she meant it.




Chapter XXXIX

Deals with Weddings


Anne felt that life partook of the nature of an anticlimax during
the first few weeks after her return to Green Gables.  She missed
the merry comradeship of Patty's Place.  She had dreamed some
brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the
dust around her.  In her present mood of self-disgust, she could
not immediately begin dreaming again.  And she discovered that,
while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them
has few charms.

She had not seen Roy again after their painful parting in the
park pavilion; but Dorothy came to see her before she left Kingsport.

"I'm awfully sorry you won't marry Roy," she said.  "I did want you
for a sister.  But you are quite right.  He would bore you to death.
I love him, and he is a dear sweet boy, but really he isn't a bit
interesting.  He looks as if he ought to be, but he isn't."

"This won't spoil OUR friendship, will it, Dorothy?" Anne had
asked wistfully.

"No, indeed.  You're too good to lose.  If I can't have you for a
sister I mean to keep you as a chum anyway.  And don't fret over
Roy.  He is feeling terribly just now -- I have to listen to his
outpourings every day -- but he'll get over it.  He always does."

"Oh -- ALWAYS?" said Anne with a slight change of voice.
"So he has `got over it' before?"

"Dear me, yes," said Dorothy frankly.  "Twice before.  And he
raved to me just the same both times.  Not that the others
actually refused him -- they simply announced their engagements
to some one else.  Of course, when he met you he vowed to me that
he had never really loved before -- that the previous affairs had
been merely boyish fancies.  But I don't think you need worry."

Anne decided not to worry.  Her feelings were a mixture of relief
and resentment.  Roy had certainly told her she was the only one
he had ever loved.  No doubt he believed it.  But it was a comfort
to feel that she had not, in all likelihood, ruined his life.
There were other goddesses, and Roy, according to Dorothy, must
needs be worshipping at some shrine.  Nevertheless, life was
stripped of several more illusions, and Anne began to think
drearily that it seemed rather bare.

She came down from the porch gable on the evening of her return
with a sorrowful face.

"What has happened to the old Snow Queen, Marilla?"

"Oh, I knew you'd feel bad over that," said Marilla.  "I felt bad myself.
That tree was there ever since I was a young girl.  It blew down in the
big gale we had in March.  It was rotten at the core."

"I'll miss it so," grieved Anne.  "The porch gable doesn't seem
the same room without it.  I'll never look from its window again
without a sense of loss.  And oh, I never came home to Green Gables
before that Diana wasn't here to welcome me."

"Diana has something else to think of just now," said Mrs. Lynde
significantly.

"Well, tell me all the Avonlea news," said Anne, sitting down on
the porch steps, where the evening sunshine fell over her hair
in a fine golden rain.

"There isn't much news except what we've wrote you," said Mrs. Lynde.
"I suppose you haven't heard that Simon Fletcher broke his leg last week.
It's a great thing for his family.  They're getting a hundred things done
that they've always wanted to do but couldn't as long as he was about,
the old crank."

"He came of an aggravating family," remarked Marilla.

"Aggravating?  Well, rather!  His mother used to get up in
prayer-meeting and tell all her children's shortcomings and ask
prayers for them.  `Course it made them mad, and worse than ever."

"You haven't told Anne the news about Jane," suggested Marilla.

"Oh, Jane," sniffed Mrs. Lynde.  "Well," she conceded grudgingly,
"Jane Andrews is home from the West -- came last week -- and she's
going to be married to a Winnipeg millionaire.  You may be sure
Mrs. Harmon lost no time in telling it far and wide."

"Dear old Jane -- I'm so glad," said Anne heartily.  "She deserves
the good things of life."

"Oh, I ain't saying anything against Jane.  She's a nice enough girl.
But she isn't in the millionaire class, and you'll find there's not
much to recommend that man but his money, that's what.  Mrs. Harmon
says he's an Englishman who has made money in mines but _I_ believe
he'll turn out to be a Yankee.  He certainly must have money, for
he has just showered Jane with jewelry.  Her engagement ring is a
diamond cluster so big that it looks like a plaster on Jane's fat paw."

Mrs. Lynde could not keep some bitterness out of her tone.
Here was Jane Andrews, that plain little plodder, engaged
to a millionaire, while Anne, it seemed, was not yet bespoken
by any one, rich or poor.  And Mrs. Harmon Andrews did brag
insufferably.

"What has Gilbert Blythe been doing to at college?" asked Marilla.
"I saw him when he came home last week, and he is so pale and thin
I hardly knew him."

"He studied very hard last winter," said Anne.  "You know he
took High Honors in Classics and the Cooper Prize.  It hasn't
been taken for five years!  So I think he's rather run down.
We're all a little tired."

"Anyhow, you're a B.A. and Jane Andrews isn't and never will be,"
said Mrs. Lynde, with gloomy satisfaction.

A few evenings later Anne went down to see Jane, but the latter
was away in Charlottetown -- "getting sewing done," Mrs. Harmon
informed Anne proudly.  "Of course an Avonlea dressmaker wouldn't
do for Jane under the circumstances."

"I've heard something very nice about Jane," said Anne.

"Yes, Jane has done pretty well, even if she isn't a B.A.," said
Mrs. Harmon, with a slight toss of her head.  "Mr. Inglis is worth
millions, and they're going to Europe on their wedding tour.
When they come back they'll live in a perfect mansion of marble
in Winnipeg.  Jane has only one trouble -- she can cook so well
and her husband won't let her cook.  He is so rich he hires
his cooking done.  They're going to keep a cook and two other
maids and a coachman and a man-of-all-work.  But what about YOU,
Anne?  I don't hear anything of your being married, after all
your college-going."

"Oh," laughed Anne, "I am going to be an old maid.  I really
can't find any one to suit me."  It was rather wicked of her.
She deliberately meant to remind Mrs. Andrews that if she became
an old maid it was not because she had not had at least one
chance of marriage.  But Mrs. Harmon took swift revenge.

"Well, the over-particular girls generally get left, I notice.
And what's this I hear about Gilbert Blythe being engaged to a
Miss Stuart?  Charlie Sloane tells me she is perfectly beautiful.
Is it true?"

"I don't know if it is true that he is engaged to Miss Stuart,"
replied Anne, with Spartan composure, "but it is certainly true
that she is very lovely."

"I once thought you and Gilbert would have made a match of it,"
said Mrs. Harmon.  "If you don't take care, Anne, all of your
beaux will slip through your fingers."

Anne decided not to continue her duel with Mrs. Harmon.
You could not fence with an antagonist who met rapier thrust
with blow of battle axe.

"Since Jane is away," she said, rising haughtily, "I don't think
I can stay longer this morning.  I'll come down when she comes home."

"Do," said Mrs. Harmon effusively.  "Jane isn't a bit proud.
She just means to associate with her old friends the same as ever.
She'll be real glad to see you."

Jane's millionaire arrived the last of May and carried her off in
a blaze of splendor.  Mrs. Lynde was spitefully gratified to
find that Mr. Inglis was every day of forty, and short and thin
and grayish.  Mrs. Lynde did not spare him in her enumeration of
his shortcomings, you may be sure.

"It will take all his gold to gild a pill like him, that's what,"
said Mrs. Rachel solemnly.

"He looks kind and good-hearted," said Anne loyally, "and I'm
sure he thinks the world of Jane."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Rachel.

Phil Gordon was married the next week and Anne went over to
Bolingbroke to be her bridesmaid.  Phil made a dainty fairy of
a bride, and the Rev. Jo was so radiant in his happiness that
nobody thought him plain.

"We're going for a lovers' saunter through the land of Evangeline,"
said Phil, "and then we'll settle down on Patterson Street.
Mother thinks it is terrible -- she thinks Jo might at least
take a church in a decent place.  But the wilderness of the
Patterson slums will blossom like the rose for me if Jo is there.
Oh, Anne, I'm so happy my heart aches with it."

Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it
is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a
happiness that is not your own.  And it was just the same when
she went back to Avonlea.  This time it was Diana who was bathed
in the wonderful glory that comes to a woman when her first-born
is laid beside her.  Anne looked at the white young mother with a
certain awe that had never entered into her feelings for Diana
before.  Could this pale woman with the rapture in her eyes be
the little black-curled, rosy-cheeked Diana she had played with
in vanished schooldays?  It gave her a queer desolate feeling
that she herself somehow belonged only in those past years and
had no business in the present at all.

"Isn't he perfectly beautiful?" said Diana proudly.

The little fat fellow was absurdly like Fred -- just as round,
just as red.  Anne really could not say conscientiously that she
thought him beautiful, but she vowed sincerely that he was sweet
and kissable and altogether delightful.

"Before he came I wanted a girl, so that I could call her ANNE,"
said Diana.  "But now that little Fred is here I wouldn't exchange
him for a million girls.  He just COULDN'T have been anything but
his own precious self."

"`Every little baby is the sweetest and the best,' " quoted
Mrs. Allan gaily.  "If little Anne HAD come you'd have felt
just the same about her."

Mrs. Allan was visiting in Avonlea, for the first time since
leaving it.  She was as gay and sweet and sympathetic as ever.
Her old girl friends had welcomed her back rapturously.
The reigning minister's wife was an estimable lady, but she
was not exactly a kindred spirit.

"I can hardly wait till he gets old enough to talk," sighed Diana.
"I just long to hear him say `mother.'  And oh, I'm determined that
his first memory of me shall be a nice one.  The first memory I
have of my mother is of her slapping me for something I had done.
I am sure I deserved it, and mother was always a good mother and I
love her dearly.  But I do wish my first memory of her was nicer."

"I have just one memory of my mother and it is the sweetest of
all my memories," said Mrs. Allan.  "I was five years old, and I
had been allowed to go to school one day with my two older sisters.
When school came out my sisters went home in different groups, each
supposing I was with the other.  Instead I had run off with a little
girl I had played with at recess.  We went to her home, which was
near the school, and began making mud pies.  We were having a
glorious time when my older sister arrived, breathless and angry.

"`You naughty girl" she cried, snatching my reluctant hand and
dragging me along with her.  `Come home this minute.  Oh, you're
going to catch it!  Mother is awful cross.  She is going to give
you a good whipping.'

"I had never been whipped.  Dread and terror filled my poor
little heart.  I have never been so miserable in my life as I was
on that walk home.  I had not meant to be naughty.  Phemy Cameron
had asked me to go home with her and I had not known it was wrong
to go.  And now I was to be whipped for it.  When we got home my
sister dragged me into the kitchen where mother was sitting by
the fire in the twilight.  My poor wee legs were trembling so
that I could hardly stand.  And mother -- mother just took me up
in her arms, without one word of rebuke or harshness, kissed me
and held me close to her heart.  `I was so frightened you were
lost, darling,' she said tenderly.  I could see the love shining
in her eyes as she looked down on me.  She never scolded or
reproached me for what I had done -- only told me I must never go
away again without asking permission.  She died very soon
afterwards.  That is the only memory I have of her.  Isn't it a
beautiful one?"

Anne felt lonelier than ever as she walked home, going by way of
the Birch Path and Willowmere.  She had not walked that way for
many moons.  It was a darkly-purple bloomy night.  The air was
heavy with blossom fragrance -- almost too heavy.  The cloyed
senses recoiled from it as from an overfull cup.  The birches of
the path had grown from the fairy saplings of old to big trees.
Everything had changed.  Anne felt that she would be glad when
the summer was over and she was away at work again.  Perhaps life
would not seem so empty then.

      "`I've tried the world -- it wears no more
      The coloring of romance it wore,'"

sighed Anne -- and was straightway much comforted by the romance
in the idea of the world being denuded of romance!




Chapter XL

A Book of Revelation


The Irvings came back to Echo Lodge for the summer, and Anne spent
a happy three weeks there in July.  Miss Lavendar had not changed;
Charlotta the Fourth was a very grown-up young lady now, but still
adored Anne sincerely.

"When all's said and done, Miss Shirley, ma'am, I haven't seen
any one in Boston that's equal to you," she said frankly.

Paul was almost grown up, too.  He was sixteen, his chestnut
curls had given place to close-cropped brown locks, and he was
more interested in football than fairies.  But the bond between
him and his old teacher still held.  Kindred spirits alone do not
change with changing years.

It was a wet, bleak, cruel evening in July when Anne came back to
Green Gables.  One of the fierce summer storms which sometimes
sweep over the gulf was ravaging the sea.  As Anne came in the
first raindrops dashed against the panes.

"Was that Paul who brought you home?" asked Marilla.  "Why didn't
you make him stay all night.  It's going to be a wild evening."

"He'll reach Echo Lodge before the rain gets very heavy, I think.
Anyway, he wanted to go back tonight.  Well, I've had a splendid
visit, but I'm glad to see you dear folks again.  `East, west,
hame's best.'  Davy, have you been growing again lately?"

"I've growed a whole inch since you left," said Davy proudly.
"I'm as tall as Milty Boulter now.  Ain't I glad.  He'll have to
stop crowing about being bigger.  Say, Anne, did you know that
Gilbert Blythe is dying?"  Anne stood quite silent and motionless,
looking at Davy.  Her face had gone so white that Marilla thought
she was going to faint.

"Davy, hold your tongue," said Mrs. Rachel angrily.  "Anne,
don't look like that -- DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT!  We didn't mean
to tell you so suddenly."

"Is -- it -- true?" asked Anne in a voice that was not hers.

"Gilbert is very ill," said Mrs. Lynde gravely.  "He took down
with typhoid fever just after you left for Echo Lodge.  Did you
never hear of it?"

"No," said that unknown voice.

"It was a very bad case from the start.  The doctor said he'd
been terribly run down.  They've a trained nurse and everything's
been done.  DON'T look like that, Anne.  While there's life
there's hope."

"Mr. Harrison was here this evening and he said they had no hope of him,"
reiterated Davy.

Marilla, looking old and worn and tired, got up and marched Davy grimly
out of the kitchen.

"Oh, DON'T look so, dear," said Mrs. Rachel, putting her kind old arms
about the pallid girl.  "I haven't given up hope, indeed I haven't.
He's got the Blythe constitution in his favor, that's what."

Anne gently put Mrs. Lynde's arms away from her, walked blindly
across the kitchen, through the hall, up the stairs to her old room.
At its window she knelt down, staring out unseeingly. It was very dark.
The rain was beating down over the shivering fields.  The Haunted Woods
was full of the groans of mighty trees wrung in the tempest, and the
air throbbed with the thunderous crash of billows on the distant shore.
And Gilbert was dying!

There is a book of Revelation in every one's life, as there is in the Bible.
Anne read hers that bitter night, as she kept her agonized vigil through
the hours of storm and darkness.  She loved Gilbert -- had always loved him!
She knew that now.  She knew that she could no more cast him out of her life
without agony than she could have cut off her right hand and cast it from her.
And the knowledge had come too late -- too late even for the bitter solace
of being with him at the last.  If she had not been so blind -- so foolish
-- she would have had the right to go to him now.  But he would never know
that she loved him -- he would go away from this life thinking that she
did not care.  Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her!
She could not live through them -- she could not!  She cowered down by
her window and wished, for the first time in her gay young life, that
she could die, too.  If Gilbert went away from her, without one word or
sign or message, she could not live.  Nothing was of any value without him.
She belonged to him and he to her.  In her hour of supreme agony she had
no doubt of that.  He did not love Christine Stuart -- never had loved
Christine Stuart.  Oh, what a fool she had been not to realize what the
bond was that had held her to Gilbert -- to think that the flattered
fancy she had felt for Roy Gardner had been love.  And now she must pay
for her folly as for a crime.

Mrs. Lynde and Marilla crept to her door before they went to bed,
shook their heads doubtfully at each other over the silence,
and went away.  The storm raged all night, but when the dawn came
it was spent.  Anne saw a fairy fringe of light on the skirts of
darkness.  Soon the eastern hilltops had a fire-shot ruby rim.
The clouds rolled themselves away into great, soft, white masses
on the horizon; the sky gleamed blue and silvery.  A hush fell
over the world.

Anne rose from her knees and crept downstairs.  The freshness of
the rain-wind blew against her white face as she went out into
the yard, and cooled her dry, burning eyes.  A merry rollicking
whistle was lilting up the lane.  A moment later Pacifique Buote
came in sight.

Anne's physical strength suddenly failed her.  If she had not
clutched at a low willow bough she would have fallen.  Pacifique
was George Fletcher's hired man, and George Fletcher lived
next door to the Blythes.  Mrs. Fletcher was Gilbert's aunt.
Pacifique would know if -- if -- Pacifique would know what there
was to be known.

Pacifique strode sturdily on along the red lane, whistling.  He
did not see Anne.  She made three futile attempts to call him.
He was almost past before she succeeded in making her quivering
lips call, "Pacifique!"

Pacifique turned with a grin and a cheerful good morning.

"Pacifique," said Anne faintly, "did you come from George
Fletcher's this morning?"

"Sure," said Pacifique amiably.  "I got de word las' night dat my
fader, he was seeck.  It was so stormy dat I couldn't go den, so I
start vair early dis mornin'.  I'm goin' troo de woods for short cut."

"Did you hear how Gilbert Blythe was this morning?" Anne's
desperation drove her to the question.  Even the worst would be
more endurable than this hideous suspense.

"He's better," said Pacifique.  "He got de turn las' night.
De doctor say he'll be all right now dis soon while.  Had close
shave, dough!  Dat boy, he jus' keel himself at college.
Well, I mus' hurry.  De old man, he'll be in hurry to see me."

Pacifique resumed his walk and his whistle.  Anne gazed after him
with eyes where joy was driving out the strained anguish of the night.
He was a very lank, very ragged, very homely youth.  But in her sight
he was as beautiful as those who bring good tidings on the mountains.
Never, as long as she lived, would Anne see Pacifique's brown, round,
black-eyed face without a warm remembrance of the moment when he had
given to her the oil of joy for mourning.

Long after Pacifique's gay whistle had faded into the phantom of
music and then into silence far up under the maples of Lover's
Lane Anne stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness
of life when some great dread has been removed from it.  The
morning was a cup filled with mist and glamor.  In the corner
near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses.
The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree
above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood.  A sentence
from a very old, very true, very wonderful Book came to her lips,

"Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning."




XLI

Love Takes Up the Glass of Time


"I've come up to ask you to go for one of our old-time rambles
through September woods and `over hills where spices grow,' this
afternoon," said Gilbert, coming suddenly around the porch corner.
"Suppose we visit Hester Gray's garden."

Anne, sitting on the stone step with her lap full of a pale,
filmy, green stuff, looked up rather blankly.

"Oh, I wish I could," she said slowly, "but I really can't,
Gilbert.  I'm going to Alice Penhallow's wedding this evening,
you know.  I've got to do something to this dress, and by
the time it's finished I'll have to get ready.  I'm so sorry.
I'd love to go."

"Well, can you go tomorrow afternoon, then?" asked Gilbert,
apparently not much disappointed.

"Yes, I think so."

"In that case I shall hie me home at once to do something I
should otherwise have to do tomorrow.  So Alice Penhallow is
to be married tonight.  Three weddings for you in one summer,
Anne -- Phil's, Alice's, and Jane's.  I'll never forgive Jane
for not inviting me to her wedding."

"You really can't blame her when you think of the tremendous
Andrews connection who had to be invited.  The house could hardly
hold them all.  I was only bidden by grace of being Jane's old
chum -- at least on Jane's part.  I think Mrs. Harmon's motive
for inviting me was to let me see Jane's surpassing gorgeousness."

"Is it true that she wore so many diamonds that you couldn't tell
where the diamonds left off and Jane began?"

Anne laughed.

"She certainly wore a good many.  What with all the diamonds and
white satin and tulle and lace and roses and orange blossoms,
prim little Jane was almost lost to sight.  But she was VERY
happy, and so was Mr. Inglis -- and so was Mrs. Harmon."

"Is that the dress you're going to wear tonight?" asked Gilbert,
looking down at the fluffs and frills.

"Yes.  Isn't it pretty?  And I shall wear starflowers in my hair.
The Haunted Wood is full of them this summer."

Gilbert had a sudden vision of Anne, arrayed in a frilly green gown,
with the virginal curves of arms and throat slipping out of it,
and white stars shining against the coils of her ruddy hair.
The vision made him catch his breath.  But he turned lightly away.

"Well, I'll be up tomorrow.  Hope you'll have a nice time tonight."

Anne looked after him as he strode away, and sighed.  Gilbert was
friendly -- very friendly -- far too friendly.  He had come quite
often to Green Gables after his recovery, and something of their
old comradeship had returned.  But Anne no longer found it satisfying.
The rose of love made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless
by contrast.  And Anne had again begun to doubt if Gilbert now felt
anything for her but friendship.  In the common light of common
day her radiant certainty of that rapt morning had faded.  She was
haunted by a miserable fear that her mistake could never be rectified.
It was quite likely that it was Christine whom Gilbert loved after all.
Perhaps he was even engaged to her.  Anne tried to put all unsettling
hopes out of her heart, and reconcile herself to a future where work
and ambition must take the place of love.  She could do good, if not
noble, work as a teacher; and the success her little sketches were
beginning to meet with in certain editorial sanctums augured well
for her budding literary dreams.  But -- but -- Anne picked up her
green dress and sighed again.

When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Anne waiting for him,
fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the
preceding night.  She wore a green dress -- not the one she had
worn to the wedding, but an old one which Gilbert had told her
at a Redmond reception he liked especially.  It was just the shade
of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry
gray of her eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin.  Gilbert,
glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath,
thought she had never looked so lovely.  Anne, glancing sideways
at Gilbert, now and then, thought how much older he looked since
his illness.  It was as if he had put boyhood behind him forever.

The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful.  Anne was almost
sorry when they reached Hester Gray's garden, and sat down on the
old bench.  But it was beautiful there, too -- as beautiful as it
had been on the faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and
Jane and Priscilla and she had found it.  Then it had been lovely
with narcissus and violets; now golden rod had kindled its fairy
torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely.  The call of
the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches
with all its old allurement; the mellow air was full of the purr
of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery
gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the
shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west wind old
dreams returned.

"I think," said Anne softly, "that `the land where dreams come true'
is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley."

"Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?" asked Gilbert.

Something in his tone -- something she had not heard since that
miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's Place -- made Anne's
heart beat wildly.  But she made answer lightly.

"Of course.  Everybody has.  It wouldn't do for us to have all
our dreams fulfilled.  We would be as good as dead if we had
nothing left to dream about.  What a delicious aroma that
low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns.
I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them.  I'm sure
they would be very beautiful."

Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked.

"I have a dream," he said slowly.  "I persist in dreaming it,
although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true.
I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the
footsteps of friends -- and YOU!"

Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words.  Happiness was
breaking over her like a wave.  It almost frightened her.

"I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne.  If I ask it
again today will you give me a different answer?"

Still Anne could not speak.  But she lifted her eyes, shining
with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked
into his for a moment.  He wanted no other answer.

They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in
Eden must have been, crept over it.  There was so much to talk
over and recall -- things said and done and heard and thought and
felt and misunderstood.

"I thought you loved Christine Stuart," Anne told him, as
reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to
suppose that she loved Roy Gardner.

Gilbert laughed boyishly.

"Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town.  I knew it
and she knew I knew it.  When her brother graduated he told me
his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music,
and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one
and would be very lonely.  So I did.  And then I liked Christine
for her own sake.  She is one of the nicest girls I've ever
known.  I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with
each other.  I didn't care.  Nothing mattered much to me for a
time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne.
There was nobody else -- there never could be anybody else for me
but you.  I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate
over my head in school."

"I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a
little fool," said Anne.

"Well, I tried to stop," said Gilbert frankly, "not because I
thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there
was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene.  But I
couldn't -- and I can't tell you, either, what it's meant to me
these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be
told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the
point of being announced.  I believed it until one blessed day
when I was sitting up after the fever.  I got a letter from Phil
Gordon -- Phil Blake, rather -- in which she told me there was
really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to `try again.'
Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that."

Anne laughed -- then shivered.

"I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert.
Oh, I knew -- I KNEW then -- and I thought it was too late."

"But it wasn't, sweetheart.  Oh, Anne, this makes up for
everything, doesn't it?  Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to
perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us."

"It's the birthday of our happiness," said Anne softly.
"I've always loved this old garden of Hester Gray's,
and now it will be dearer than ever."

"But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,"
said Gilbert sadly.  "It will be three years before
I'll finish my medical course.  And even then there
will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls."

Anne laughed.

"I don't want sunbursts and marble halls.  I just want YOU.
You see I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it.  Sunbursts and
marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for
imagination' without them.  And as for the waiting, that doesn't
matter.  We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other
-- and dreaming.  Oh, dreams will be very sweet now."

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her.  Then they walked
home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal
realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest
flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds
of hope and memory blew.