“I only pulled six of them up,” protested Davy. “I wanted to see if

there was grubs at the roots. Milty Boulter said if it wasn’t the

moon’s fault it must be grubs. But I only found one grub. He was a

great big juicy curly grub. I put him on a stone and got another stone

and smashed him flat. He made a jolly sqush I tell you. I was sorry

there wasn’t more of them. Dora’s garden was planted same time’s mine

and her things are growing all right. It _can’t_ be the moon,” Davy

concluded in a reflective tone.

“Marilla, look at that apple tree,” said Anne. “Why, the thing is

human. It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts

daintily up and provoke us to admiration.”

“Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well,” said Marilla

complacently. “That tree’ll be loaded this year. I’m real glad. . .

they’re great for pies.”

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies

out of Yellow Duchess apples that year.

The twenty-third of May came . . . an unseasonably warm day, as none

realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils,

sweltering over fractions and syntax in the Avonlea schoolroom. A hot

breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a

heavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder.

She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the children might get

home before the storm came.

As they went out to the playground Anne perceived a certain shadow and

gloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still

shining brightly. Annetta Bell caught her hand nervously.

“Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud!”

Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay. In the northwest a mass

of cloud, such as she had never in all her life beheld before, was

rapidly rolling up. It was dead black, save where its curled and

fringed edges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about

it indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky; now

and again a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage

growl. It hung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of

the wooded hills.

Mr. Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon,

urging his team of grays to their utmost speed. He pulled them to a

halt opposite the school.

“Guess Uncle Abe’s hit it for once in his life, Anne,” he shouted. “His

storm’s coming a leetle ahead of time. Did ye ever see the like of that

cloud? Here, all you young ones, that are going my way, pile in, and

those that ain’t scoot for the post office if ye’ve more’n a quarter of

a mile to go, and stay there till the shower’s over.”

Anne caught Davy and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill, along

the Birch Path, and past Violet Vale and Willowmere, as fast as the

twins’ fat legs could go. They reached Green Gables not a moment too

soon and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her

ducks and chickens under shelter. As they dashed into the kitchen the

light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath; the

awful cloud rolled over the sun and a darkness as of late twilight fell

across the world. At the same moment, with a crash of thunder and a

blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the

landscape out in one white fury.

Through all the clamor of the storm came the thud of torn branches

striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass. In three

minutes every pane in the west and north windows was broken and the

hail poured in through the apertures covering the floor with stones,

the smallest of which was as big as a hen’s egg. For three quarters of

an hour the storm raged unabated and no one who underwent it ever

forgot it. Marilla, for once in her life shaken out of her composure by

sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen,

gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peals. Anne, white as

paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with a

twin on either side. Davy at the first crash had howled, “Anne, Anne,

is it the Judgment Day? Anne, Anne, I never _meant_ to be naughty,” and

then had buried his face in Anne’s lap and kept it there, his little

body quivering. Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her

hand clasped in Anne’s, quiet and motionless. It is doubtful if an

earthquake would have disturbed Dora.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased. The hail

stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the

sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed

an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could

have effected such a transformation.

Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her

rocker. Her face was haggard and she looked ten years older.

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

“You bet we have,” piped Davy cheerfully, quite his own man again. “I

wasn’t a bit scared either . . . only just at the first. It come on a

fellow so sudden. I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn’t

fight Teddy Sloane Monday as I’d promised; but now maybe I will. Say,

Dora, was you scared?”

“Yes, I was a little scared,” said Dora primly, “but I held tight to

Anne’s hand and said my prayers over and over again.”

“Well, I’d have said my prayers too if I’d have thought of it,” said

Davy; “but,” he added triumphantly, “you see I came through just as

safe as you for all I didn’t say them.”

Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent currant wine . . . _how_

potent it was Anne, in her earlier days, had had all too good reason to

know . . . and then they went to the door to look out on the strange

scene.

Far and wide was a white carpet, knee deep, of hailstones; drifts of

them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps. When, three or

four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought

was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden

was cut off. Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees

but great boughs and branches were wrenched away. And out of the two

hundred trees set out by the Improvers by far the greater number were

snapped off or torn to shreds.

“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne,

dazedly. “It _must_ have taken longer than that to play such havoc.”

“The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,” said

Marilla, “never. I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm,

but it was nothing to this. We’ll hear of terrible destruction, you may

be sure.”

“I do hope none of the children were caught out in it,” murmured Anne

anxiously. As it was discovered later, none of the children had been,

since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrews’

excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.

“There comes John Henry Carter,” said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared

grin.

“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to see

if yous had come out all right.”

“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and none of the

buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well.”

“Yas’m. Not quite so well, ma’am. We was struck. The lightning knocked

over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over

Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar.

Yas’m.”

“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.

“Yas’m. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed.” Later on Anne went over

to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking

Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.

“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but

the tears came into her eyes.

“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead. Well,

well, I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on I don’t care. I know

you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . .

. but don’t. If you did I’d cry like a baby. Hasn’t this been a

terrible storm? I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions

again. Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his

life that never happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the

very day though, don’t it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle

round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor.”

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare

damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the

hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late

with ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck,

people killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had

been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields

had perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith’s forge early in the morning and

spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe’s hour of triumph and he

enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say

that he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was

very glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe

forgot that he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling

discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing.

Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and

Anne busily engaged in nailing strips of oilcloth over the broken

windows.

“Goodness only knows when we’ll get glass for them,” said Marilla. “Mr.

Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon but not a pane could he get

for love or money. Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmody

people by ten o’clock. Was the storm bad at White Sands, Gilbert?”

“I should say so. I was caught in the school with all the children and

I thought some of them would go mad with fright. Three of them fainted,

and two girls took hysterics, and Tommy Blewett did nothing but shriek

at the top of his voice the whole time.”

“I only squealed once,” said Davy proudly. “My garden was all smashed

flat,” he continued mournfully, “but so was Dora’s,” he added in a tone

which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.

Anne came running down from the west gable.

“Oh, Gilbert, have you heard the news? Mr. Levi Boulter’s old house was

struck and burned to the ground. It seems to me that I’m dreadfully

wicked to feel glad over _that_, when so much damage has been done. Mr.

Boulter says he believes the A.V.I.S. magicked up that storm on

purpose.”

“Well, one thing is certain,” said Gilbert, laughing, “‘Observer’ has

made Uncle Abe’s reputation as a weather prophet. ‘Uncle Abe’s storm’

will go down in local history. It is a most extraordinary coincidence

that it should have come on the very day we selected. I actually have a

half guilty feeling, as if I really had ‘magicked’ it up. We may as

well rejoice over the old house being removed, for there’s not much to

rejoice over where our young trees are concerned. Not ten of them have

escaped.”

“Ah, well, we’ll just have to plant them over again next spring,” said

Anne philosophically. “That is one good thing about this world . . .

there are always sure to be more springs.”

XXV

An Avonlea Scandal

One blithe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe’s storm, Anne came

slowly through the Green Gables yard from the garden, carrying in her

hands two blighted stalks of white narcissus.

“Look, Marilla,” she said sorrowfully, holding up the flowers before

the eyes of a grim lady, with her hair coifed in a green gingham apron,

who was going into the house with a plucked chicken, “these are the

only buds the storm spared . . . and even they are imperfect. I’m so

sorry . . . I wanted some for Matthew’s grave. He was always so fond of

June lilies.”

“I kind of miss them myself,” admitted Marilla, “though it doesn’t seem

right to lament over them when so many worse things have happened. . .

all the crops destroyed as well as the fruit.”

“But people have sown their oats over again,” said Anne comfortingly,

“and Mr. Harrison says he thinks if we have a good summer they will

come out all right though late. And my annuals are all coming up again

. . . but oh, nothing can replace the June lilies. Poor little Hester

Gray will have none either. I went all the way back to her garden last

night but there wasn’t one. I’m sure she’ll miss them.”

“I don’t think it’s right for you to say such things, Anne, I really

don’t,” said Marilla severely. “Hester Gray has been dead for thirty

years and her spirit is in heaven . . . I hope.”

“Yes, but I believe she loves and remembers her garden here still,”

said Anne. “I’m sure no matter how long I’d lived in heaven I’d like to

look down and see somebody putting flowers on my grave. If I had had a

garden here like Hester Gray’s it would take me more than thirty years,

even in heaven, to forget being homesick for it by spells.”

“Well, don’t let the twins hear you talking like that,” was Marilla’s

feeble protest, as she carried her chicken into the house.

Anne pinned her narcissi on her hair and went to the lane gate, where

she stood for awhile sunning herself in the June brightness before

going in to attend to her Saturday morning duties. The world was

growing lovely again; old Mother Nature was doing her best to remove

the traces of the storm, and, though she was not to succeed fully for

many a moon, she was really accomplishing wonders.

“I wish I could just be idle all day today,” Anne told a bluebird, who

was singing and swinging on a willow bough, “but a schoolma’am, who is

also helping to bring up twins, can’t indulge in laziness, birdie. How

sweet you are singing, little bird. You are just putting the feelings

of my heart into song ever so much better than I could myself. Why, who

is coming?”

An express wagon was jolting up the lane, with two people on the front

seat and a big trunk behind. When it drew near Anne recognized the

driver as the son of the station agent at Bright River; but his

companion was a stranger . . . a scrap of a woman who sprang nimbly

down at the gate almost before the horse came to a standstill. She was

a very pretty little person, evidently nearer fifty than forty, but

with rosy cheeks, sparkling black eyes, and shining black hair,

surmounted by a wonderful beflowered and beplumed bonnet. In spite of

having driven eight miles over a dusty road she was as neat as if she

had just stepped out of the proverbial bandbox.

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

“No, Mr. Harrison lives over there,” said Anne, quite lost in

astonishment.

“Well, I _did_ think this place seemed too tidy . . . _much_ too tidy

for James A. to be living here, unless he has greatly changed since I

knew him,” chirped the little lady. “Is it true that James A. is going

to be married to some woman living in this settlement?”

“No, oh no,” cried Anne, flushing so guiltily that the stranger looked

curiously at her, as if she half suspected her of matrimonial designs

on Mr. Harrison.

“But I saw it in an Island paper,” persisted the Fair Unknown. “A

friend sent a marked copy to me . . . friends are always so ready to do

such things. James A.‘s name was written in over ‘new citizen.’”

“Oh, that note was only meant as a joke,” gasped Anne. “Mr. Harrison

has no intention of marrying _anybody_. I assure you he hasn’t.”

“I’m very glad to hear it,” said the rosy lady, climbing nimbly back to

her seat in the wagon, “because he happens to be married already. _I_

am his wife. Oh, you may well look surprised. I suppose he has been

masquerading as a bachelor and breaking hearts right and left. Well,

well, James A.,” nodding vigorously over the fields at the long white

house, “your fun is over. I am here . . . though I wouldn’t have

bothered coming if I hadn’t thought you were up to some mischief. I

suppose,” turning to Anne, “that parrot of his is as profane as ever?”

“His parrot . . . is dead . . . I _think_,” gasped poor Anne, who

couldn’t have felt sure of her own name at that precise moment.

“Dead! Everything will be all right then,” cried the rosy lady

jubilantly. “I can manage James A. if that bird is out of the way.”

With which cryptic utterance she went joyfully on her way and Anne flew

to the kitchen door to meet Marilla.

“Anne, who was that woman?”

“Marilla,” said Anne solemnly, but with dancing eyes, “do I look as if

I were crazy?”

“Not more so than usual,” said Marilla, with no thought of being

sarcastic.

“Well then, do you think I am awake?”

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

“Marilla, if I’m not crazy and not asleep she can’t be such stuff as

dreams are made of . . . she must be real. Anyway, I’m sure I couldn’t

have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison’s wife,

Marilla.”

Marilla stared in her turn.

“His wife! Anne Shirley! Then what has he been passing himself off as

an unmarried man for?”

“I don’t suppose he did, really,” said Anne, trying to be just. “He

never said he wasn’t married. People simply took it for granted. Oh

Marilla, what will Mrs. Lynde say to this?”

They found out what Mrs. Lynde had to say when she came up that

evening. Mrs. Lynde wasn’t surprised! Mrs. Lynde had always expected

something of the sort! Mrs. Lynde had always known there was

_something_ about Mr. Harrison!

“To think of his deserting his wife!” she said indignantly. “It’s like

something you’d read of in the States, but who would expect such a

thing to happen right here in Avonlea?”

“But we don’t know that he deserted her,” protested Anne, determined to

believe her friend innocent till he was proved guilty. “We don’t know

the rights of it at all.”

“Well, we soon will. I’m going straight over there,” said Mrs. Lynde,

who had never learned that there was such a word as delicacy in the

dictionary. “I’m not supposed to know anything about her arrival, and

Mr. Harrison was to bring some medicine for Thomas from Carmody today,

so that will be a good excuse. I’ll find out the whole story and come

in and tell you on the way back.”

Mrs. Lynde rushed in where Anne had feared to tread. Nothing would have

induced the latter to go over to the Harrison place; but she had her

natural and proper share of curiosity and she felt secretly glad that

Mrs. Lynde was going to solve the mystery. She and Marilla waited

expectantly for that good lady’s return, but waited in vain. Mrs. Lynde

did not revisit Green Gables that night. Davy, arriving home at nine

o’clock from the Boulter place, explained why.

“I met Mrs. Lynde and some strange woman in the Hollow,” he said, “and

gracious, how they were talking both at once! Mrs. Lynde said to tell

you she was sorry it was too late to call tonight. Anne, I’m awful

hungry. We had tea at Milty’s at four and I think Mrs. Boulter is real

mean. She didn’t give us any preserves or cake . . . and even the bread

was skurce.”

“Davy, when you go visiting you must never criticize anything you are

given to eat,” said Anne solemnly. “It is very bad manners.”

“All right . . . I’ll only think it,” said Davy cheerfully. “Do give a

fellow some supper, Anne.”

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

door cautiously.

“You can give him some jam on his bread, I know what tea at Levi

Boulter’s is apt to be.”

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

“It’s a kind of disappointing world after all,” he remarked. “Milty has

a cat that takes fits . . . she’s took a fit regular every day for

three weeks. Milty says it’s awful fun to watch her. I went down today

on purpose to see her have one but the mean old thing wouldn’t take a

fit and just kept healthy as healthy, though Milty and me hung round

all the afternoon and waited. But never mind” . . . Davy brightened up

as the insidious comfort of the plum jam stole into his soul . . .

“maybe I’ll see her in one sometime yet. It doesn’t seem likely she’d

stop having them all at once when she’s been so in the habit of it,

does it? This jam is awful nice.”

Davy had no sorrows that plum jam could not cure.

Sunday proved so rainy that there was no stirring abroad; but by Monday

everybody had heard some version of the Harrison story. The school

buzzed with it and Davy came home, full of information.

“Marilla, Mr. Harrison has a new wife . . . well, not ezackly new, but

they’ve stopped being married for quite a spell, Milty says. I always

s’posed people had to keep on being married once they’d begun, but

Milty says no, there’s ways of stopping if you can’t agree. Milty says

one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that’s what Mr.

Harrison did. Milty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because she throwed

things at him . . . _hard_ things . . . and Arty Sloane says it was

because she wouldn’t let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it was ’cause she

never let up scolding him. I wouldn’t leave MY wife for anything like

that. I’d just put my foot down and say, ‘Mrs. Davy, you’ve just got to

do what’ll please _me_ ’cause I’m a _man_.’ _That’d_ settle her pretty

quick I guess. But Annetta Clay says _she_ left _him_ because he

wouldn’t scrape his boots at the door and she doesn’t blame her. I’m

going right over to Mr. Harrison’s this minute to see what she’s like.”

Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down.

“Mrs. Harrison was away . . . she’s gone to Carmody with Mrs. Rachel

Lynde to get new paper for the parlor. And Mr. Harrison said to tell

Anne to go over and see him ’cause he wants to have a talk with her.

And say, the floor is scrubbed, and Mr. Harrison is shaved, though

there wasn’t any preaching yesterday.”

The Harrison kitchen wore a very unfamiliar look to Anne. The floor was

indeed scrubbed to a wonderful pitch of purity and so was every article

of furniture in the room; the stove was polished until she could see

her face in it; the walls were whitewashed and the window panes

sparkled in the sunlight. By the table sat Mr. Harrison in his working

clothes, which on Friday had been noted for sundry rents and tatters

but which were now neatly patched and brushed. He was sprucely shaved

and what little hair he had was carefully trimmed.

“Sit down, Anne, sit down,” said Mr. Harrison in a tone but two degrees

removed from that which Avonlea people used at funerals. “Emily’s gone

over to Carmody with Rachel Lynde . . . she’s struck up a lifelong

friendship already with Rachel Lynde. Beats all how contrary women are.

Well, Anne, my easy times are over . . . all over. It’s neatness and

tidiness for me for the rest of my natural life, I suppose.”

Mr. Harrison did his best to speak dolefully, but an irrepressible

twinkle in his eye betrayed him.

“Mr. Harrison, you are glad your wife is come back,” cried Anne,

shaking her finger at him. “You needn’t pretend you’re not, because I

can see it plainly.”

Mr. Harrison relaxed into a sheepish smile.

“Well . . . well . . . I’m getting used to it,” he conceded. “I can’t

say I was sorry to see Emily. A man really needs some protection in a

community like this, where he can’t play a game of checkers with a

neighbor without being accused of wanting to marry that neighbor’s

sister and having it put in the paper.”

“Nobody would have supposed you went to see Isabella Andrews if you

hadn’t pretended to be unmarried,” said Anne severely.

“I didn’t pretend I was. If anybody’d have asked me if I was married

I’d have said I was. But they just took it for granted. I wasn’t

anxious to talk about the matter . . . I was feeling too sore over it.

It would have been nuts for Mrs. Rachel Lynde if she had known my wife

had left me, wouldn’t it now?”

“But some people say that you left her.”

“She started it, Anne, she started it. I’m going to tell you the whole

story, for I don’t want you to think worse of me than I deserve . . .

nor of Emily neither. But let’s go out on the veranda. Everything is so

fearful neat in here that it kind of makes me homesick. I suppose I’ll

get used to it after awhile but it eases me up to look at the yard.

Emily hasn’t had time to tidy _it_ up yet.”

As soon as they were comfortably seated on the veranda Mr. Harrison

began his tale of woe.

“I lived in Scottsford, New Brunswick, before I came here, Anne. My

sister kept house for me and she suited me fine; she was just

reasonably tidy and she let me alone and spoiled me . . . so Emily

says. But three years ago she died. Before she died she worried a lot

about what was to become of me and finally she got me to promise I’d

get married. She advised me to take Emily Scott because Emily had money

of her own and was a pattern housekeeper. I said, says I, ‘Emily Scott

wouldn’t look at me.’ ‘You ask her and see,’ says my sister; and just

to ease her mind I promised her I would . . . and I did. And Emily said

she’d have me. Never was so surprised in my life, Anne . . . a smart

pretty little woman like her and an old fellow like me. I tell you I

thought at first I was in luck. Well, we were married and took a little

wedding trip to St. John for a fortnight and then we went home. We got

home at ten o’clock at night, and I give you my word, Anne, that in

half an hour that woman was at work housecleaning. Oh, I know you’re

thinking my house needed it . . . you’ve got a very expressive face,

Anne; your thoughts just come out on it like print . . . but it didn’t,

not that bad. It had got pretty mixed up while I was keeping bachelor’s

hall, I admit, but I’d got a woman to come in and clean it up before I

was married and there’d been considerable painting and fixing done. I

tell you if you took Emily into a brand new white marble palace she’d

be into the scrubbing as soon as she could get an old dress on. Well,

she cleaned house till one o’clock that night and at four she was up

and at it again. And she kept on that way . . . far’s I could see she

never stopped. It was scour and sweep and dust everlasting, except on

Sundays, and then she was just longing for Monday to begin again. But

it was her way of amusing herself and I could have reconciled myself to

it if she’d left me alone. But that she wouldn’t do. She’d set out to

make me over but she hadn’t caught me young enough. I wasn’t allowed to

come into the house unless I changed my boots for slippers at the door.

I darsn’t smoke a pipe for my life unless I went to the barn. And I

didn’t use good enough grammar. Emily’d been a schoolteacher in her

early life and she’d never got over it. Then she hated to see me eating

with my knife. Well, there it was, pick and nag everlasting. But I

s’pose, Anne, to be fair, _I_ was cantankerous too. I didn’t try to

improve as I might have done . . . I just got cranky and disagreeable

when she found fault. I told her one day she hadn’t complained of my

grammar when I proposed to her. It wasn’t an overly tactful thing to

say. A woman would forgive a man for beating her sooner than for

hinting she was too much pleased to get him. Well, we bickered along

like that and it wasn’t exactly pleasant, but we might have got used to

each other after a spell if it hadn’t been for Ginger. Ginger was the

rock we split on at last. Emily didn’t like parrots and she couldn’t

stand Ginger’s profane habits of speech. I was attached to the bird for

my brother the sailor’s sake. My brother the sailor was a pet of mine

when we were little tads and he’d sent Ginger to me when he was dying.

I didn’t see any sense in getting worked up over his swearing. There’s

nothing I hate worse’n profanity in a human being, but in a parrot,

that’s just repeating what it’s heard with no more understanding of it

than I’d have of Chinese, allowances might be made. But Emily couldn’t

see it that way. Women ain’t logical. She tried to break Ginger of

swearing but she hadn’t any better success than she had in trying to

make me stop saying ‘I seen’ and ‘them things.’ Seemed as if the more

she tried the worse Ginger got, same as me.

“Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier, till the

cli_max_ came. Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea, and

another minister and _his_ wife that was visiting them. I’d promised to

put Ginger away in some safe place where nobody would hear him . . .

Emily wouldn’t touch his cage with a ten-foot pole . . . and I meant to

do it, for I didn’t want the ministers to hear anything unpleasant in

my house. But it slipped my mind . . . Emily was worrying me so much

about clean collars and grammar that it wasn’t any wonder . . . and I

never thought of that poor parrot till we sat down to tea. Just as

minister number one was in the very middle of saying grace, Ginger, who

was on the veranda outside the dining room window, lifted up _his_

voice. The gobbler had come into view in the yard and the sight of a

gobbler always had an unwholesome effect on Ginger. He surpassed

himself that time. You can smile, Anne, and I don’t deny I’ve chuckled

some over it since myself, but at the time I felt almost as much

mortified as Emily. I went out and carried Ginger to the barn. I can’t

say I enjoyed the meal. I knew by the look of Emily that there was

trouble brewing for Ginger and James A. When the folks went away I

started for the cow pasture and on the way I did some thinking. I felt

sorry for Emily and kind of fancied I hadn’t been so thoughtful of her

as I might; and besides, I wondered if the ministers would think that

Ginger had learned his vocabulary from _me_. The long and short of it

was, I decided that Ginger would have to be mercifully disposed of and

when I’d druv the cows home I went in to tell Emily so. But there was

no Emily and there _was_ a letter on the table . . . just according to

the rule in story books. Emily writ that I’d have to choose between her

and Ginger; she’d gone back to her own house and there she would stay

till I went and told her I’d got rid of that parrot.

“I was all riled up, Anne, and I said she might stay till doomsday if

she waited for that; and I stuck to it. I packed up her belongings and

sent them after her. It made an awful lot of talk . . . Scottsford was

pretty near as bad as Avonlea for gossip . . . and everybody

sympathized with Emily. It kept me all cross and cantankerous and I saw

I’d have to get out or I’d never have any peace. I concluded I’d come

to the Island. I’d been here when I was a boy and I liked it; but Emily

had always said she wouldn’t live in a place where folks were scared to

walk out after dark for fear they’d fall off the edge. So, just to be

contrary, I moved over here. And that’s all there is to it. I hadn’t

ever heard a word from or about Emily till I come home from the back

field Saturday and found her scrubbing the floor but with the first

decent dinner I’d had since she left me all ready on the table. She

told me to eat it first and then we’d talk . . . by which I concluded

that Emily had learned some lessons about getting along with a man. So

she’s here and she’s going to stay . . . seeing that Ginger’s dead and

the Island’s some bigger than she thought. There’s Mrs. Lynde and her

now. No, don’t go, Anne. Stay and get acquainted with Emily. She took

quite a notion to you Saturday . . . wanted to know who that handsome

redhaired girl was at the next house.”

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

tea.

“James A. has been telling me all about you and how kind you’ve been,

making cakes and things for him,” she said. “I want to get acquainted

with all my new neighbors just as soon as possible. Mrs. Lynde is a

lovely woman, isn’t she? So friendly.”

When Anne went home in the sweet June dusk, Mrs. Harrison went with her

across the fields where the fireflies were lighting their starry lamps.

“I suppose,” said Mrs. Harrison confidentially, “that James A. has told

you our story?”

“Yes.”

“Then I needn’t tell it, for James A. is a just man and he would tell

the truth. The blame was far from being all on his side. I can see that

now. I wasn’t back in my own house an hour before I wished I hadn’t

been so hasty but I wouldn’t give in. I see now that I expected too

much of a man. And I was real foolish to mind his bad grammar. It

doesn’t matter if a man does use bad grammar so long as he is a good

provider and doesn’t go poking round the pantry to see how much sugar

you’ve used in a week. I feel that James A. and I are going to be real

happy now. I wish I knew who ‘Observer’ is, so that I could thank him.

I owe him a real debt of gratitude.”

Anne kept her own counsel and Mrs. Harrison never knew that her

gratitude found its way to its object. Anne felt rather bewildered over

the far-reaching consequences of those foolish “notes.” They had

reconciled a man to his wife and made the reputation of a prophet.

Mrs. Lynde was in the Green Gables kitchen. She had been telling the

whole story to Marilla.

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

“Very much. I think she’s a real nice little woman.”

“That’s exactly what she is,” said Mrs. Rachel with emphasis, “and as

I’ve just been sayin’ to Marilla, I think we ought all to overlook Mr.

Harrison’s peculiarities for her sake and try to make her feel at home

here, that’s what. Well, I must get back. Thomas’ll be wearying for me.

I get out a little since Eliza came and he’s seemed a lot better these

past few days, but I never like to be long away from him. I hear

Gilbert Blythe has resigned from White Sands. He’ll be off to college

in the fall, I suppose.”

Mrs. Rachel looked sharply at Anne, but Anne was bending over a sleepy

Davy nodding on the sofa and nothing was to be read in her face. She

carried Davy away, her oval girlish cheek pressed against his curly

yellow head. As they went up the stairs Davy flung a tired arm about

Anne’s neck and gave her a warm hug and a sticky kiss.

“You’re awful nice, Anne. Milty Boulter wrote on his slate today and

showed it to Jennie Sloane,

“‘Roses red and vi’lets blue,

Sugar’s sweet, and so are you”

and that ’spresses my feelings for you ezackly, Anne.”

XXVI

Around the Bend

Thomas Lynde faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he had

lived it. His wife was a tender, patient, unwearied nurse. Sometimes

Rachel had been a little hard on her Thomas in health, when his

slowness or meekness had provoked her; but when he became ill no voice

could be lower, no hand more gently skillful, no vigil more

uncomplaining.

“You’ve been a good wife to me, Rachel,” he once said simply, when she

was sitting by him in the dusk, holding his thin, blanched old hand in

her work-hardened one. “A good wife. I’m sorry I ain’t leaving you

better off; but the children will look after you. They’re all smart,

capable children, just like their mother. A good mother . . . a good

woman . . . .”

He had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white dawn

was creeping up over the pointed firs in the hollow, Marilla went

softly into the east gable and wakened Anne.

“Anne, Thomas Lynde is gone . . . their hired boy just brought the

word. I’m going right down to Rachel.”

On the day after Thomas Lynde’s funeral Marilla went about Green Gables

with a strangely preoccupied air. Occasionally she looked at Anne,

seemed on the point of saying something, then shook her head and

buttoned up her mouth. After tea she went down to see Mrs. Rachel; and

when she returned she went to the east gable, where Anne was correcting

school exercises.

“How is Mrs. Lynde tonight?” asked the latter.

“She’s feeling calmer and more composed,” answered Marilla, sitting

down on Anne’s bed . . . a proceeding which betokened some unusual

mental excitement, for in Marilla’s code of household ethics to sit on

a bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offense. “But she’s very

lonely. Eliza had to go home today . . . her son isn’t well and she

felt she couldn’t stay any longer.”

“When I’ve finished these exercises I’ll run down and chat awhile with

Mrs. Lynde,” said Anne. “I had intended to study some Latin composition

tonight but it can wait.”

“I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall,” said

Marilla jerkily. “How would you like to go too, Anne?”

Anne looked up in astonishment.

“I would like it, of course, Marilla. But it isn’t possible.”

“I guess it can be made possible. I’ve always felt that you should go.

I’ve never felt easy to think you were giving it all up on my account.”

“But Marilla, I’ve never been sorry for a moment that I stayed home.

I’ve been so happy . . . Oh, these past two years have just been

delightful.”

“Oh, yes, I know you’ve been contented enough. But that isn’t the

question exactly. You ought to go on with your education. You’ve saved

enough to put you through one year at Redmond and the money the stock

brought in will do for another year . . . and there’s scholarships and

things you might win.”

“Yes, but I can’t go, Marilla. Your eyes are better, of course; but I

can’t leave you alone with the twins. They need so much looking after.”

“I won’t be alone with them. That’s what I meant to discuss with you. I

had a long talk with Rachel tonight. Anne, she’s feeling dreadful bad

over a good many things. She’s not left very well off. It seems they

mortgaged the farm eight years ago to give the youngest boy a start

when he went west; and they’ve never been able to pay much more than

the interest since. And then of course Thomas’ illness has cost a good

deal, one way or another. The farm will have to be sold and Rachel

thinks there’ll be hardly anything left after the bills are settled.

She says she’ll have to go and live with Eliza and it’s breaking her

heart to think of leaving Avonlea. A woman of her age doesn’t make new

friends and interests easy. And, Anne, as she talked about it the

thought came to me that I would ask her to come and live with me, but I

thought I ought to talk it over with you first before I said anything

to her. If I had Rachel living with me you could go to college. How do

you feel about it?”

“I feel . . . as if . . . somebody . . . had handed me . . . the moon .

. . and I didn’t know . . . exactly . . . what to do . . . with it,”

said Anne dazedly. “But as for asking Mrs. Lynde to come here, that is

for you to decide, Marilla. Do you think . . . are you sure . . . you

would like it? Mrs. Lynde is a good woman and a kind neighbor, but . .

. but . . .”

“But she’s got her faults, you mean to say? Well, she has, of course;

but I think I’d rather put up with far worse faults than see Rachel go

away from Avonlea. I’d miss her terrible. She’s the only close friend

I’ve got here and I’d be lost without her. We’ve been neighbors for

forty-five years and we’ve never had a quarrel . . . though we came

rather near it that time you flew at Mrs. Rachel for calling you homely

and redhaired. Do you remember, Anne?”

“I should think I do,” said Anne ruefully. “People don’t forget things

like that. How I hated poor Mrs. Rachel at that moment!”

“And then that ‘apology’ you made her. Well, you were a handful, in all

conscience, Anne. I did feel so puzzled and bewildered how to manage

you. Matthew understood you better.”

“Matthew understood everything,” said Anne softly, as she always spoke

of him.

“Well, I think it could be managed so that Rachel and I wouldn’t clash

at all. It always seemed to me that the reason two women can’t get

along in one house is that they try to share the same kitchen and get

in each other’s way. Now, if Rachel came here, she could have the north

gable for her bedroom and the spare room for a kitchen as well as not,

for we don’t really need a spare room at all. She could put her stove

there and what furniture she wanted to keep, and be real comfortable

and independent. She’ll have enough to live on of course...her

children’ll see to that...so all I’d be giving her would be house room.

Yes, Anne, far as I’m concerned I’d like it.”

“Then ask her,” said Anne promptly. “I’d be very sorry myself to see

Mrs. Rachel go away.”

“And if she comes,” continued Marilla, “You can go to college as well

as not. She’ll be company for me and she’ll do for the twins what I

can’t do, so there’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t go.”

Anne had a long meditation at her window that night. Joy and regret

struggled together in her heart. She had come at last . . . suddenly

and unexpectedly . . . to the bend in the road; and college _was_

around it, with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized

as well that when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet

things behind. . . all the little simple duties and interests which had

grown so dear to her in the last two years and which she had glorified

into beauty and delight by the enthusiasm she had put into them. She

must give up her school . . . and she loved every one of her pupils,

even the stupid and naughty ones. The mere thought of Paul Irving made

her wonder if Redmond were such a name to conjure with after all.

“I’ve put out a lot of little roots these two years,” Anne told the

moon, “and when I’m pulled up they’re going to hurt a great deal. But

it’s best to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there’s no good reason

why I shouldn’t. I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.”

Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after a

heart to heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer of a

home at Green Gables. She elected to remain in her own house for the

summer, however; the farm was not to be sold until the fall and there

were many arrangements to be made.

“I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green

Gables,” sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself. “But really, Green Gables

doesn’t seem as out of the world as it used to do . . . Anne has lots

of company and the twins make it real lively. And anyhow, I’d rather

live at the bottom of a well than leave Avonlea.”

These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival of

Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip. Sage heads were shaken over Marilla

Cuthbert’s rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her. People

opined that they wouldn’t get on together. They were both “too fond of

their own way,” and many doleful predictions were made, none of which

disturbed the parties in question at all. They had come to a clear and

distinct understanding of the respective duties and rights of their new

arrangements and meant to abide by them.

“I won’t meddle with you nor you with me,” Mrs. Rachel had said

decidedly, “and as for the twins, I’ll be glad to do all I can for

them; but I won’t undertake to answer Davy’s questions, that’s what.

I’m not an encyclopedia, neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer. You’ll

miss Anne for that.”

“Sometimes Anne’s answers were about as queer as Davy’s questions,”

said Marilla drily. “The twins will miss her and no mistake; but her

future can’t be sacrificed to Davy’s thirst for information. When he

asks questions I can’t answer I’ll just tell him children should be

seen and not heard. That was how _I_ was brought up, and I don’t know

but what it was just as good a way as all these new-fangled notions for

training children.”

“Well, Anne’s methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,” said

Mrs. Lynde smilingly. “He is a reformed character, that’s what.”

“He isn’t a bad little soul,” conceded Marilla. “I never expected to

get as fond of those children as I have. Davy gets round you somehow .

. . and Dora is a lovely child, although she is . . . kind of . . .

well, kind of . . .”

“Monotonous? Exactly,” supplied Mrs. Rachel. “Like a book where every

page is the same, that’s what. Dora will make a good, reliable woman

but she’ll never set the pond on fire. Well, that sort of folks are

comfortable to have round, even if they’re not as interesting as the

other kind.”

Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of Anne’s

resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked upon it as a

sheer catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when she went home.

Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked battles with other boys

by way of relieving his feelings. Barbara Shaw cried all night. Paul

Irving defiantly told his grandmother that she needn’t expect him to

eat any porridge for a week.

“I can’t do it, Grandma,” he said. “I don’t really know if I can eat

_anything_. I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat. I’d

have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn’t been watching

me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn’t show on my eyes

tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief. But anyway, I can’t

eat porridge. I’m going to need all my strength of mind to bear up

against this, Grandma, and I won’t have any left to grapple with

porridge. Oh Grandma, I don’t know what I’ll do when my beautiful

teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the

school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know she won’t

understand things like Miss Shirley.”

Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.

“It will be horribly lonesome here next winter,” she mourned, one

twilight when the moonlight was raining “airy silver” through the

cherry boughs and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like

radiance in which the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker

by the window, Diana sitting Turkfashion on the bed. “You and Gilbert

will be gone . . . and the Allans too. They are going to call Mr. Allan

to Charlottetown and of course he’ll accept. It’s too mean. We’ll be

vacant all winter, I suppose, and have to listen to a long string of

candidates . . . and half of them won’t be any good.”

“I hope they won’t call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,”

said Anne decidedly. “He wants the call but he does preach such gloomy

sermons. Mr. Bell says he’s a minister of the old school, but Mrs.

Lynde says there’s nothing whatever the matter with him but

indigestion. His wife isn’t a very good cook, it seems, and Mrs. Lynde

says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks out of three his

theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere. Mrs. Allan feels very

badly about going away. She says everybody has been so kind to her

since she came here as a bride that she feels as if she were leaving

lifelong friends. And then, there’s the baby’s grave, you know. She

says she doesn’t see how she can go away and leave that . . . it was

such a little mite of a thing and only three months old, and she says

she is afraid it will miss its mother, although she knows better and

wouldn’t say so to Mr. Allan for anything. She says she has slipped

through the birch grove back of the manse nearly every night to the

graveyard and sung a little lullaby to it. She told me all about it

last evening when I was up putting some of those early wild roses on

Matthew’s grave. I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I

would put flowers on the baby’s grave and when I was away I felt sure

that . . .”

“That I would do it,” supplied Diana heartily. “Of course I will. And

I’ll put them on Matthew’s grave too, for your sake, Anne.”

“Oh, thank you. I meant to ask you to if you would. And on little

Hester Gray’s too? Please don’t forget hers. Do you know, I’ve thought

and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has become

strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her little garden

in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy that if I could

steal back there some spring evening, just at the magic time ’twixt

light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech hill that my

footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the garden just as it

used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early roses, with the tiny

house beyond it all hung with vines; and little Hester Gray would be

there, with her soft eyes, and the wind ruffling her dark hair,

wandering about, putting her fingertips under the chins of the lilies

and whispering secrets with the roses; and I would go forward, oh, so

softly, and hold out my hands and say to her, ‘Little Hester Gray,

won’t you let me be your playmate, for I love the roses too?’ And we

would sit down on the old bench and talk a little and dream a little,

or just be beautifully silent together. And then the moon would rise

and I would look around me . . . and there would be no Hester Gray and

no little vine-hung house, and no roses . . . only an old waste garden

starred with June lilies amid the grasses, and the wind sighing, oh, so

sorrowfully in the cherry trees. And I would not know whether it had

been real or if I had just imagined it all.” Diana crawled up and got

her back against the headboard of the bed. When your companion of

twilight hour said such spooky things it was just as well not to be

able to fancy there was anything behind you.

“I’m afraid the Improvement Society will go down when you and Gilbert

are both gone,” she remarked dolefully.

“Not a bit of fear of it,” said Anne briskly, coming back from

dreamland to the affairs of practical life. “It is too firmly

established for that, especially since the older people are becoming so

enthusiastic about it. Look what they are doing this summer for their

lawns and lanes. Besides, I’ll be watching for hints at Redmond and

I’ll write a paper for it next winter and send it over. Don’t take such

a gloomy view of things, Diana. And don’t grudge me my little hour of

gladness and jubilation now. Later on, when I have to go away, I’ll

feel anything but glad.”

“It’s all right for you to be glad . . . you’re going to college and

you’ll have a jolly time and make heaps of lovely new friends.”

“I hope I shall make new friends,” said Anne thoughtfully. “The

possibilities of making new friends help to make life very fascinating.

But no matter how many friends I make they’ll never be as dear to me as

the old ones . . . especially a certain girl with black eyes and

dimples. Can you guess who she is, Diana?”

“But there’ll be so many clever girls at Redmond,” sighed Diana, “and

I’m only a stupid little country girl who says ‘I seen’ sometimes. . .

though I really know better when I stop to think. Well, of course these

past two years have really been too pleasant to last. I know _somebody_

who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow. Anne, I’m going to ask you

a question . . . a serious question. Don’t be vexed and do answer

seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?”

“Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean,” said Anne

calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.

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

“Don’t you mean _ever_ to be married, Anne?”

“Perhaps . . . some day . . . when I meet the right one,” said Anne,

smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.

“But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?” persisted

Diana.

“Oh, I should know him . . . _something_ would tell me. You know what

my ideal is, Diana.”

“But people’s ideals change sometimes.”

“Mine won’t. And I _couldn’t_ care for any man who didn’t fulfill it.”

“What if you never meet him?”

“Then I shall die an old maid,” was the cheerful response. “I daresay

it isn’t the hardest death by any means.”

“Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it’s the living an old

maid I shouldn’t like,” said Diana, with no intention of being

humorous. “Although I wouldn’t mind being an old maid _very_ much if I

could be one like Miss Lavendar. But I never could be. When I’m

forty-five I’ll be horribly fat. And while there might be some romance

about a thin old maid there couldn’t possibly be any about a fat one.

Oh, mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis three weeks ago.

Ruby told me all about it. She says she never had any intention of

taking him, because any one who married him will have to go in with the

old folks; but Ruby says that he made such a perfectly beautiful and

romantic proposal that it simply swept her off her feet. But she didn’t

want to do anything rash so she asked for a week to consider; and two

days later she was at a meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother’s

and there was a book called ‘The Complete Guide to Etiquette,’ lying on

the parlor table. Ruby said she simply couldn’t describe her feelings

when in a section of it headed, ‘The Deportment of Courtship and

Marriage,’ she found the very proposal Nelson had made, word for word.

She went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal; and she says

his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for fear

he’ll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they needn’t be afraid;

for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told how a rejected

lover should behave and there’s nothing about drowning in _that_. And

she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining away for her but she’s

perfectly helpless in the matter.”

Anne made an impatient movement.

“I hate to say it . . . it seems so disloyal . . . but, well, I don’t

like Ruby Gillis now. I liked her when we went to school and Queen’s

together . . . though not so well as you and Jane of course. But this

last year at Carmody she seems so different . . . so . . . so . . .”

“I know,” nodded Diana. “It’s the Gillis coming out in her . . . she

can’t help it. Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl thought about

anything but the boys she never showed it in her walk and conversation.

She talks about nothing but boys and what compliments they pay her, and

how crazy they all are about her at Carmody. And the strange thing is,

they _are_, too . . .” Diana admitted this somewhat resentfully. “Last

night when I saw her in Mr. Blair’s store she whispered to me that

she’d just made a new ‘mash.’ I wouldn’t ask her who it was, because I

knew she was dying to _be_ asked. Well, it’s what Ruby always wanted, I

suppose. You remember even when she was little she always said she

meant to have dozens of beaus when she grew up and have the very gayest

time she could before she settled down. She’s so different from Jane,

isn’t she? Jane is such a nice, sensible, lady-like girl.”

“Dear old Jane is a jewel,” agreed Anne, “but,” she added, leaning

forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimpled little hand

hanging over her pillow, “there’s nobody like my own Diana after all.

Do you remember that evening we first met, Diana, and ‘swore’ eternal

friendship in your garden? We’ve kept that ‘oath,’ I think . . . we’ve

never had a quarrel nor even a coolness. I shall never forget the

thrill that went over me the day you told me you loved me. I had had

such a lonely, starved heart all through my childhood. I’m just

beginning to realize how starved and lonely it really was. Nobody cared

anything for me or wanted to be bothered with me. I should have been

miserable if it hadn’t been for that strange little dream-life of mine,

wherein I imagined all the friends and love I craved. But when I came

to Green Gables everything was changed. And then I met you. You don’t

know what your friendship meant to me. I want to thank you here and

now, dear, for the warm and true affection you’ve always given me.”

“And always, always will,” sobbed Diana. “I shall _never_ love anybody

. . . any _girl_ . . . half as well as I love you. And if I ever do

marry and have a little girl of my own I’m going to name her _Anne_.”

XXVII

An Afternoon at the Stone House

“Where are you going, all dressed up, Anne?” Davy wanted to know. “You

look bully in that dress.”

Anne had come down to dinner in a new dress of pale green muslin . . .

the first color she had worn since Matthew’s death. It became her

perfectly, bringing out all the delicate, flower-like tints of her face

and the gloss and burnish of her hair.

“Davy, how many times have I told you that you mustn’t use that word,”

she rebuked. “I’m going to Echo Lodge.”

“Take me with you,” entreated Davy.

“I would if I were driving. But I’m going to walk and it’s too far for

your eight-year-old legs. Besides, Paul is going with me and I fear you

don’t enjoy yourself in his company.”

“Oh, I like Paul lots better’n I did,” said Davy, beginning to make

fearful inroads into his pudding. “Since I’ve got pretty good myself I

don’t mind his being gooder so much. If I can keep on I’ll catch up

with him some day, both in legs and goodness. ‘Sides, Paul’s real nice

to us second primer boys in school. He won’t let the other big boys

meddle with us and he shows us lots of games.”

“How came Paul to fall into the brook at noon hour yesterday?” asked

Anne. “I met him on the playground, such a dripping figure that I sent

him promptly home for clothes without waiting to find out what had

happened.”

“Well, it was partly a zacksident,” explained Davy. “He stuck his head

in on purpose but the rest of him fell in zacksidentally. We was all

down at the brook and Prillie Rogerson got mad at Paul about something

. . . she’s awful mean and horrid anyway, if she IS pretty . . . and

said that his grandmother put his hair up in curl rags every night.

Paul wouldn’t have minded what she said, I guess, but Gracie Andrews

laughed, and Paul got awful red, ’cause Gracie’s his girl, you know.

He’s _clean gone_ on her . . . brings her flowers and carries her books

as far as the shore road. He got as red as a beet and said his

grandmother didn’t do any such thing and his hair was born curly. And

then he laid down on the bank and stuck his head right into the spring

to show them. Oh, it wasn’t the spring we drink out of . . .” seeing a

horrified look on Marilla’s face . . . “it was the little one lower

down. But the bank’s awful slippy and Paul went right in. I tell you he

made a bully splash. Oh, Anne, Anne, I didn’t mean to say that . . . it

just slipped out before I thought. He made a _splendid_ splash. But he

looked so funny when he crawled out, all wet and muddy. The girls

laughed more’n ever, but Gracie didn’t laugh. She looked sorry.

Gracie’s a nice girl but she’s got a snub nose. When I get big enough

to have a girl I won’t have one with a snub nose . . . I’ll pick one

with a pretty nose like yours, Anne.”

“A boy who makes such a mess of syrup all over his face when he is

eating his pudding will never get a girl to look at him,” said Marilla

severely.

“But I’ll wash my face before I go courting,” protested Davy, trying to

improve matters by rubbing the back of his hand over the smears. “And

I’ll wash behind my ears too, without being told. I remembered to this

morning, Marilla. I don’t forget half as often as I did. But . . .” and

Davy sighed . . . “there’s so many corners about a fellow that it’s

awful hard to remember them all. Well, if I can’t go to Miss Lavendar’s

I’ll go over and see Mrs. Harrison. Mrs. Harrison’s an awful nice

woman, I tell you. She keeps a jar of cookies in her pantry a-purpose

for little boys, and she always gives me the scrapings out of a pan

she’s mixed up a plum cake in. A good many plums stick to the sides,

you see. Mr. Harrison was always a nice man, but he’s twice as nice

since he got married over again. I guess getting married makes folks

nicer. Why don’t _you_ get married, Marilla? I want to know.”

Marilla’s state of single blessedness had never been a sore point with

her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks

with Anne, that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.

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

“Oh, Davy,” said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being

spoken to, “it’s the _men_ that have to do the asking.”

“I don’t know why they have to do it _always_,” grumbled Davy. “Seems

to me everything’s put on the men in this world. Can I have some more

pudding, Marilla?”

“You’ve had as much as was good for you,” said Marilla; but she gave

him a moderate second helping.

“I wish people could live on pudding. Why can’t they, Marilla? I want

to know.”

“Because they’d soon get tired of it.”

“I’d like to try that for myself,” said skeptical Davy. “But I guess

it’s better to have pudding only on fish and company days than none at

all. They never have any at Milty Boulter’s. Milty says when company

comes his mother gives them cheese and cuts it herself . . . one little

bit apiece and one over for manners.”

“If Milty Boulter talks like that about his mother at least you needn’t

repeat it,” said Marilla severely.

“Bless my soul,” . . . Davy had picked this expression up from Mr.

Harrison and used it with great gusto . . . “Milty meant it as a

compelment. He’s awful proud of his mother, cause folks say she could

scratch a living on a rock.”

“I . . . I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy bed again,” said

Marilla, rising and going out hurriedly.

The slandered hens were nowhere near the pansy bed and Marilla did not

even glance at it. Instead, she sat down on the cellar hatch and

laughed until she was ashamed of herself.

When Anne and Paul reached the stone house that afternoon they found

Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth in the garden, weeding, raking,

clipping, and trimming as if for dear life. Miss Lavendar herself, all

gay and sweet in the frills and laces she loved, dropped her shears and

ran joyously to meet her guests, while Charlotta the Fourth grinned

cheerfully.

“Welcome, Anne. I thought you’d come today. You belong to the afternoon

so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come

together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they

only knew it. But they don’t . . . and so they waste beautiful energy

moving heaven and earth to bring things together that _don’t_ belong.

And you, Paul . . . why, you’ve grown! You’re half a head taller than

when you were here before.”

“Yes, I’ve begun to grow like pigweed in the night, as Mrs. Lynde

says,” said Paul, in frank delight over the fact. “Grandma says it’s

the porridge taking effect at last. Perhaps it is. Goodness knows . .

.” Paul sighed deeply . . . “I’ve eaten enough to make anyone grow. I

do hope, now that I’ve begun, I’ll keep on till I’m as tall as father.

He is six feet, you know, Miss Lavendar.”

Yes, Miss Lavendar did know; the flush on her pretty cheeks deepened a

little; she took Paul’s hand on one side and Anne’s on the other and

walked to the house in silence.

“Is it a good day for the echoes, Miss Lavendar?” queried Paul

anxiously. The day of his first visit had been too windy for echoes and

Paul had been much disappointed.

“Yes, just the best kind of a day,” answered Miss Lavendar, rousing

herself from her reverie. “But first we are all going to have something

to eat. I know you two folks didn’t walk all the way back here through

those beechwoods without getting hungry, and Charlotta the Fourth and I

can eat any hour of the day . . . we have such obliging appetites. So

we’ll just make a raid on the pantry. Fortunately it’s lovely and full.

I had a presentiment that I was going to have company today and

Charlotta the Fourth and I prepared.”

“I think you are one of the people who always have nice things in their

pantry,” declared Paul. “Grandma’s like that too. But she doesn’t

approve of snacks between meals. I wonder,” he added meditatively, “if

I _ought_ to eat them away from home when I know she doesn’t approve.”

“Oh, I don’t think she would disapprove after you have had a long walk.

That makes a difference,” said Miss Lavendar, exchanging amused glances

with Anne over Paul’s brown curls. “I suppose that snacks _are_

extremely unwholesome. That is why we have them so often at Echo Lodge.

We. . . Charlotta the Fourth and I . . . live in defiance of every

known law of diet. We eat all sorts of indigestible things whenever we

happen to think of it, by day or night; and we flourish like green bay

trees. We are always intending to reform. When we read any article in a

paper warning us against something we like we cut it out and pin it up

on the kitchen wall so that we’ll remember it. But we never can somehow

. . . until after we’ve gone and eaten that very thing. Nothing has

ever killed us yet; but Charlotta the Fourth has been known to have bad

dreams after we had eaten doughnuts and mince pie and fruit cake before

we went to bed.”

“Grandma lets me have a glass of milk and a slice of bread and butter

before I go to bed; and on Sunday nights she puts jam on the bread,”

said Paul. “So I’m always glad when it’s Sunday night . . . for more

reasons than one. Sunday is a very long day on the shore road. Grandma

says it’s all too short for her and that father never found Sundays

tiresome when he was a little boy. It wouldn’t seem so long if I could

talk to my rock people but I never do that because Grandma doesn’t

approve of it on Sundays. I think a good deal; but I’m afraid my

thoughts are worldly. Grandma says we should never think anything but

religious thoughts on Sundays. But teacher here said once that every

really beautiful thought was religious, no matter what it was about, or

what day we thought it on. But I feel sure Grandma thinks that sermons

and Sunday School lessons are the only things you can think truly

religious thoughts about. And when it comes to a difference of opinion

between Grandma and teacher I don’t know what to do. In my heart” . . .

Paul laid his hand on his breast and raised very serious blue eyes to

Miss Lavendar’s immediately sympathetic face . . . “I agree with

teacher. But then, you see, Grandma has brought father up _her_ way and

made a brilliant success of him; and teacher has never brought anybody

up yet, though she’s helping with Davy and Dora. But you can’t tell how

they’ll turn out till they _are_ grown up. So sometimes I feel as if it

might be safer to go by Grandma’s opinions.”

“I think it would,” agreed Anne solemnly. “Anyway, I daresay that if

your Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean, under our

different ways of expressing it, we’d find out we both meant much the

same thing. You’d better go by her way of expressing it, since it’s

been the result of experience. We’ll have to wait until we see how the

twins do turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good.”

After lunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the

acquaintance of the echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and

Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench under the poplar and talked.

“So you are going away in the fall?” said Miss Lavendar wistfully. “I

ought to be glad for your sake, Anne . . . but I’m horribly, selfishly

sorry. I shall miss you so much. Oh, sometimes, I think it is of no use

to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a

hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”

“That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say but never Miss

Lavendar,” said Anne. “_Nothing_ is worse than emptiness . . . and I’m

not going out of your life. There are such things as letters and

vacations. Dearest, I’m afraid you’re looking a little pale and tired.”

“Oh . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo,” went Paul on the dyke, where he had

been making noises diligently . . . not all of them melodious in the

making, but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver of

sound by the fairy alchemists over the river. Miss Lavendar made an

impatient movement with her pretty hands.

“I’m just tired of everything . . . even of the echoes. There is

nothing in my life but echoes . . . echoes of lost hopes and dreams and

joys. They’re beautiful and mocking. Oh Anne, it’s horrid of me to talk

like this when I have company. It’s just that I’m getting old and it

doesn’t agree with me. I know I’ll be fearfully cranky by the time I’m

sixty. But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills.” At this

moment Charlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch, returned,

and announced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball’s pasture

was red with early strawberries, and wouldn’t Miss Shirley like to go

and pick some.

“Early strawberries for tea!” exclaimed Miss Lavendar. “Oh, I’m not so

old as I thought . . . and I don’t need a single blue pill! Girls, when

you come back with your strawberries we’ll have tea out here under the

silver poplar. I’ll have it all ready for you with home-grown cream.”

Anne and Charlotta the Fourth accordingly betook themselves back to Mr.

Kimball’s pasture, a green remote place where the air was as soft as

velvet and fragrant as a bed of violets and golden as amber.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet and fresh back here?” breathed Anne. “I just feel

as if I were drinking in the sunshine.”

“Yes, ma’am, so do I. That’s just exactly how I feel too, ma’am,”

agreed Charlotta the Fourth, who would have said precisely the same

thing if Anne had remarked that she felt like a pelican of the

wilderness. Always after Anne had visited Echo Lodge Charlotta the

Fourth mounted to her little room over the kitchen and tried before her

looking glass to speak and look and move like Anne. Charlotta could

never flatter herself that she quite succeeded; but practice makes

perfect, as Charlotta had learned at school, and she fondly hoped that

in time she might catch the trick of that dainty uplift of chin, that

quick, starry outflashing of eyes, that fashion of walking as if you

were a bough swaying in the wind. It seemed so easy when you watched

Anne. Charlotta the Fourth admired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that

she thought her so very handsome. Diana Barry’s beauty of crimson cheek

and black curls was much more to Charlotta the Fourth’s taste than

Anne’s moonshine charm of luminous gray eyes and the pale, everchanging

roses of her cheeks.

“But I’d rather look like you than be pretty,” she told Anne sincerely.

Anne laughed, sipped the honey from the tribute, and cast away the

sting. She was used to taking her compliments mixed. Public opinion

never agreed on Anne’s looks. People who had heard her called handsome

met her and were disappointed. People who had heard her called plain

saw her and wondered where other people’s eyes were. Anne herself would

never believe that she had any claim to beauty. When she looked in the

glass all she saw was a little pale face with seven freckles on the

nose thereof. Her mirror never revealed to her the elusive,

ever-varying play of feeling that came and went over her features like

a rosy illuminating flame, or the charm of dream and laughter

alternating in her big eyes.

While Anne was not beautiful in any strictly defined sense of the word

she possessed a certain evasive charm and distinction of appearance

that left beholders with a pleasurable sense of satisfaction in that

softly rounded girlhood of hers, with all its strongly felt

potentialities. Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that

they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility

surrounding her. . . the power of future development that was in her.

She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen.

As they picked, Charlotta the Fourth confided to Anne her fears

regarding Miss Lavendar. The warm-hearted little handmaiden was

honestly worried over her adored mistress’ condition.

“Miss Lavendar isn’t well, Miss Shirley, ma’am. I’m sure she isn’t,

though she never complains. She hasn’t seemed like herself this long

while, ma’am . . . not since that day you and Paul were here together

before. I feel sure she caught cold that night, ma’am. After you and

him had gone she went out and walked in the garden for long after dark

with nothing but a little shawl on her. There was a lot of snow on the

walks and I feel sure she got a chill, ma’am. Ever since then I’ve

noticed her acting tired and lonesome like. She don’t seem to take an

interest in anything, ma’am. She never pretends company’s coming, nor

fixes up for it, nor nothing, ma’am. It’s only when you come she seems

to chirk up a bit. And the worst sign of all, Miss Shirley, ma’am . .

.” Charlotta the Fourth lowered her voice as if she were about to tell

some exceedingly weird and awful symptom indeed . . . “is that she

never gets cross now when I breaks things. Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am,

yesterday I bruk her green and yaller bowl that’s always stood on the

bookcase. Her grandmother brought it out from England and Miss Lavendar

was awful choice of it. I was dusting it just as careful, Miss Shirley,

ma’am, and it slipped out, so fashion, afore I could grab holt of it,

and bruk into about forty millyun pieces. I tell you I was sorry and

scared. I thought Miss Lavendar would scold me awful, ma’am; and I’d

ruther she had than take it the way she did. She just come in and

hardly looked at it and said, ‘It’s no matter, Charlotta. Take up the

pieces and throw them away.’ Just like that, Miss Shirley, ma’am . . .

‘take up the pieces and throw them away,’ as if it wasn’t her

grandmother’s bowl from England. Oh, she isn’t well and I feel awful

bad about it. She’s got nobody to look after her but me.”

Charlotta the Fourth’s eyes brimmed up with tears. Anne patted the

little brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically.

“I think Miss Lavendar needs a change, Charlotta. She stays here alone

too much. Can’t we induce her to go away for a little trip?”

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

“I don’t think so, Miss Shirley, ma’am. Miss Lavendar hates visiting.

She’s only got three relations she ever visits and she says she just

goes to see them as a family duty. Last time when she come home she

said she wasn’t going to visit for family duty no more. ‘I’ve come home

in love with loneliness, Charlotta,’ she says to me, ‘and I never want

to stray from my own vine and fig tree again. My relations try so hard

to make an old lady of me and it has a bad effect on me.’ Just like

that, Miss Shirley, ma’am. ‘It has a very bad effect on me.’ So I don’t

think it would do any good to coax her to go visiting.”

“We must see what can be done,” said Anne decidedly, as she put the

last possible berry in her pink cup. “Just as soon as I have my

vacation I’ll come through and spend a whole week with you. We’ll have

a picnic every day and pretend all sorts of interesting things, and see

if we can’t cheer Miss Lavendar up.”

“That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” exclaimed Charlotta

the Fourth in rapture. She was glad for Miss Lavendar’s sake and for

her own too. With a whole week in which to study Anne constantly she

would surely be able to learn how to move and behave like her.

When the girls got back to Echo Lodge they found that Miss Lavendar and

Paul had carried the little square table out of the kitchen to the

garden and had everything ready for tea. Nothing ever tasted so

delicious as those strawberries and cream, eaten under a great blue sky

all curdled over with fluffy little white clouds, and in the long

shadows of the wood with its lispings and its murmurings. After tea

Anne helped Charlotta wash the dishes in the kitchen, while Miss

Lavendar sat on the stone bench with Paul and heard all about his rock

people. She was a good listener, this sweet Miss Lavendar, but just at

the last it struck Paul that she had suddenly lost interest in the Twin

Sailors.

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

“How do I look, Paul?”

“Just as if you were looking through me at somebody I put you in mind

of,” said Paul, who had such occasional flashes of uncanny insight that

it wasn’t quite safe to have secrets when he was about.

“You do put me in mind of somebody I knew long ago,” said Miss Lavendar

dreamily.

“When you were young?”

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

“Do you know, I can’t make up my mind about that,” said Paul

confidentially. “Your hair looks old . . . I never knew a young person

with white hair. But your eyes are as young as my beautiful teacher’s

when you laugh. I tell you what, Miss Lavendar” . . . Paul’s voice and

face were as solemn as a judge’s . . . “I think you would make a

splendid mother. You have just the right look in your eyes . . . the

look my little mother always had. I think it’s a pity you haven’t any

boys of your own.”

“I have a little dream boy, Paul.”

“Oh, have you really? How old is he?”

“About your age I think. He ought to be older because I dreamed him

long before you were born. But I’ll never let him get any older than

eleven or twelve; because if I did some day he might grow up altogether

and then I’d lose him.”

“I know,” nodded Paul. “That’s the beauty of dream-people . . . they

stay any age you want them. You and my beautiful teacher and me myself

are the only folks in the world that I know of that have dream-people.

Isn’t it funny and nice we should all know each other? But I guess that

kind of people always find each other out. Grandma never has

dream-people and Mary Joe thinks I’m wrong in the upper story because I

have them. But I think it’s splendid to have them. _You_ know, Miss

Lavendar. Tell me all about your little dream-boy.”

“He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals in and wakens me with a

kiss every morning. Then all day he plays here in the garden . . . and

I play with him. Such games as we have. We run races and talk with the

echoes; and I tell him stories. And when twilight comes . . .”

“_I_ know,” interrupted Paul eagerly. “He comes and sits beside you . .

. _so_ . . . because of course at twelve he’d be too big to climb into

your lap . . . and lays his head on your shoulder . . . _so_ . . . and

you put your arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your

cheek on his head . . . yes, that’s the very way. Oh, you _do_ know,

Miss Lavendar.”

Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house,

and something in Miss Lavendar’s face made her hate to disturb them.

“I’m afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark. Miss

Lavendar, I’m going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole week

pretty soon.”

“If you come for a week I’ll keep you for two,” threatened Miss

Lavendar.

XXVIII

The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace

The last day of school came and went. A triumphant “semi-annual

examination” was held and Anne’s pupils acquitted themselves

splendidly. At the close they gave her an address and a writing desk.

All the girls and ladies present cried, and some of the boys had it

cast up to them later on that they cried too, although they always

denied it.

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell walked

home together and talked things over.

“I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem so

much attached to her,” sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit of

sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way. “To

be sure,” she added hastily, “we all know we’ll have a good teacher

next year too.”

“Jane will do her duty, I’ve no doubt,” said Mrs. Andrews rather

stiffly. “I don’t suppose she’ll tell the children quite so many fairy

tales or spend so much time roaming about the woods with them. But she

has her name on the Inspector’s Roll of Honor and the Newbridge people

are in a terrible state over her leaving.”

“I’m real glad Anne is going to college,” said Mrs. Bell. “She has

always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Andrews was determined not to agree fully

with anybody that day. “I don’t see that Anne needs any more education.

She’ll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his infatuation for her

lasts till he gets through college, and what good will Latin and Greek

do her then? If they taught you at college how to manage a man there

might be some sense in her going.”

Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never learned how

to manage her “man,” and as a result the Andrews household was not

exactly a model of domestic happiness.

“I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the

Presbytery,” said Mrs. Bell. “That means we’ll be losing him soon, I

suppose.”

“They’re not going before September,” said Mrs. Sloane. “It will be a

great loss to the community . . . though I always did think that Mrs.

Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister’s wife. But we are none of

us perfect. Did you notice how neat and snug Mr. Harrison looked today?

I never saw such a changed man. He goes to church every Sunday and has

subscribed to the salary.”

“Hasn’t that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?” said Mrs. Andrews. “He

was such a mite for his age when he came here. I declare I hardly knew

him today. He’s getting to look a lot like his father.”

“He’s a smart boy,” said Mrs. Bell.

“He’s smart enough, but” . . . Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice . . . “I

believe he tells queer stories. Gracie came home from school one day

last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about people who

lived down at the shore . . . stories there couldn’t be a word of truth

in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them, and she said Paul

didn’t intend her to. But if he didn’t what did he tell them to her

for?”

“Anne says Paul is a genius,” said Mrs. Sloane.

“He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans,” said Mrs.

Andrews. Mrs. Andrews’ only acquaintance with the word “genius” was

derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual

“a queer genius.” She probably thought, with Mary Joe, that it meant a

person with something wrong in his upper story.

Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had

sat on the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on

her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake

of Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her

pupils that for a moment college had lost all its charm. She still felt

the clasp of Annetta Bell’s arms about her neck and heard the childish

wail, “I’ll _never_ love any teacher as much as you, Miss Shirley,

never, never.”

For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many

mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught

her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much more

. . . lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of

childish hearts. Perhaps she had not succeeded in “inspiring” any

wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had taught them, more by her

own sweet personality than by all her careful precepts, that it was

good and necessary in the years that were before them to live their

lives finely and graciously, holding fast to truth and courtesy and

kindness, keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and meanness

and vulgarity. They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned

such lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they

had forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of

the Roses.

“Another chapter in my life is closed,” said Anne aloud, as she locked

her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance in the idea

of that “closed chapter” did comfort her a little.

Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and

everybody concerned had a good time.

She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded

her to buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting and

making it together, while the happy Charlotta the Fourth basted and

swept up clippings. Miss Lavendar had complained that she could not

feel much interest in anything, but the sparkle came back to her eyes

over her pretty dress.

“What a foolish, frivolous person I must be,” she sighed. “I’m

wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress . . . even it is a

forget-me-not organdy . . . should exhilarate me so, when a good

conscience and an extra contribution to Foreign Missions couldn’t do

it.”

Midway in her visit Anne went home to Green Gables for a day to mend

the twins’ stockings and settle up Davy’s accumulated store of

questions. In the evening she went down to the shore road to see Paul

Irving. As she passed by the low, square window of the Irving sitting

room she caught a glimpse of Paul on somebody’s lap; but the next

moment he came flying through the hall.

“Oh, Miss Shirley,” he cried excitedly, “you can’t think what has

happened! Something so splendid. Father is here . . . just think of

that! Father is here! Come right in. Father, this is my beautiful

teacher. _You_ know, father.”

Stephen Irving came forward to meet Anne with a smile. He was a tall,

handsome man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set, dark blue

eyes, and a strong, sad face, splendidly modeled about chin and brow.

Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought with a thrill of

intense satisfaction. It was so disappointing to meet someone who ought

to be a hero and find him bald or stooped, or otherwise lacking in

manly beauty. Anne would have thought it dreadful if the object of Miss

Lavendar’s romance had not looked the part.

“So this is my little son’s ‘beautiful teacher,’ of whom I have heard

so much,” said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake. “Paul’s letters have

been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel as if I were pretty well

acquainted with you already. I want to thank you for what you have done

for Paul. I think that your influence has been just what he needed.

Mother is one of the best and dearest of women; but her robust,

matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not always understand a

temperament like my laddie’s. What was lacking in her you have

supplied. Between you, I think Paul’s training in these two past years

has been as nearly ideal as a motherless boy’s could be.”

Everybody likes to be appreciated. Under Mr. Irving’s praise Anne’s

face “burst flower like into rosy bloom,” and the busy, weary man of

the world, looking at her, thought he had never seen a fairer, sweeter

slip of girlhood than this little “down east” schoolteacher with her

red hair and wonderful eyes.

Paul sat between them blissfully happy.

“I never dreamed father was coming,” he said radiantly. “Even Grandma

didn’t know it. It was a great surprise. As a general thing . . .” Paul

shook his brown curls gravely . . . “I don’t like to be surprised. You

lose all the fun of expecting things when you’re surprised. But in a

case like this it is all right. Father came last night after I had gone

to bed. And after Grandma and Mary Joe had stopped being surprised he

and Grandma came upstairs to look at me, not meaning to wake me up till

morning. But I woke right up and saw father. I tell you I just sprang

at him.”

“With a hug like a bear’s,” said Mr. Irving, putting his arms around

Paul’s shoulder smilingly. “I hardly knew my boy, he had grown so big

and brown and sturdy.”

“I don’t know which was the most pleased to see father, Grandma or I,”

continued Paul. “Grandma’s been in kitchen all day making the things

father likes to eat. She wouldn’t trust them to Mary Joe, she says.

That’s _her_ way of showing gladness. _I_ like best just to sit and

talk to father. But I’m going to leave you for a little while now if

you’ll excuse me. I must get the cows for Mary Joe. That is one of my

daily duties.”

When Paul had scampered away to do his “daily duty” Mr. Irving talked

to Anne of various matters. But Anne felt that he was thinking of

something else underneath all the time. Presently it came to the

surface.

“In Paul’s last letter he spoke of going with you to visit an old . . .

friend of mine . . . Miss Lewis at the stone house in Grafton. Do you

know her well?”

“Yes, indeed, she is a _very_ dear friend of mine,” was Anne’s demure

reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled over her

from head to foot at Mr. Irving’s question. Anne “felt instinctively”

that romance was peeping at her around a corner.

Mr. Irving rose and went to the window, looking out on a great, golden,

billowing sea where a wild wind was harping. For a few moments there

was silence in the little dark-walled room. Then he turned and looked

down into Anne’s sympathetic face with a smile, half-whimsical,

half-tender.

“I wonder how much you know,” he said.

“I know all about it,” replied Anne promptly. “You see,” she explained

hastily, “Miss Lavendar and I are very intimate. She wouldn’t tell

things of such a sacred nature to everybody. We are kindred spirits.”

“Yes, I believe you are. Well, I am going to ask a favor of you. I

would like to go and see Miss Lavendar if she will let me. Will you ask

her if I may come?”

Would she not? Oh, indeed she would! Yes, this was romance, the very,

the real thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream. It was

a little belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October which should

have bloomed in June; but none the less a rose, all sweetness and

fragrance, with the gleam of gold in its heart. Never did Anne’s feet

bear her on a more willing errand than on that walk through the

beechwoods to Grafton the next morning. She found Miss Lavendar in the

garden. Anne was fearfully excited. Her hands grew cold and her voice

trembled.

“Miss Lavendar, I have something to tell you . . . something very

important. Can you guess what it is?”

Anne never supposed that Miss Lavendar _could_ guess; but Miss

Lavendar’s face grew very pale and Miss Lavendar said in a quiet, still

voice, from which all the color and sparkle that Miss Lavendar’s voice

usually suggested had faded.

“Stephen Irving is home?”

“How did you know? Who told you?” cried Anne disappointedly, vexed that

her great revelation had been anticipated.

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

“He wants to come and see you,” said Anne. “May I send him word that he

may?”

“Yes, of course,” fluttered Miss Lavendar. “There is no reason why he

shouldn’t. He is only coming as any old friend might.”

Anne had her own opinion about that as she hastened into the house to

write a note at Miss Lavendar’s desk.

“Oh, it’s delightful to be living in a storybook,” she thought gaily.

“It will come out all right of course . . . it must . . . and Paul will

have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy. But Mr.

Irving will take Miss Lavendar away . . . and dear knows what will

happen to the little stone house . . . and so there are two sides to

it, as there seems to be to everything in this world.” The important

note was written and Anne herself carried it to the Grafton post

office, where she waylaid the mail carrier and asked him to leave it at

the Avonlea office.

“It’s so very important,” Anne assured him anxiously. The mail carrier

was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look the part of a

messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain that his memory was

to be trusted. But he said he would do his best to remember and she had

to be contented with that.

Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone house

that afternoon . . . a mystery from which she was excluded. Miss

Lavendar roamed about the garden in a distracted fashion. Anne, too,

seemed possessed by a demon of unrest, and walked to and fro and went

up and down. Charlotta the Fourth endured it till patience ceased to be

a virtue; then she confronted Anne on the occasion of that romantic

young person’s third aimless peregrination through the kitchen.

“Please, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” said Charlotta the Fourth, with an

indignant toss of her very blue bows, “it’s plain to be seen you and

Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your pardon if I’m

too forward, Miss Shirley, ma’am, that it’s real mean not to tell me

when we’ve all been such chums.”

“Oh, Charlotta dear, I’d have told you all about it if it were my

secret . . . but it’s Miss Lavendar’s, you see. However, I’ll tell you

this much . . . and if nothing comes of it you must never breathe a

word about it to a living soul. You see, Prince Charming is coming

tonight. He came long ago, but in a foolish moment went away and

wandered afar and forgot the secret of the magic pathway to the

enchanted castle, where the princess was weeping her faithful heart out

for him. But at last he remembered it again and the princess is waiting

still. . . because nobody but her own dear prince could carry her off.”

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, what is that in prose?” gasped the mystified

Charlotta.

Anne laughed.

“In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavendar’s is coming to see her

tonight.”

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

“That is probably what I do mean . . . in prose,” answered Anne

gravely. “It is Paul’s father . . . Stephen Irving. And goodness knows

what will come of it, but let us hope for the best, Charlotta.”

“I hope that he’ll marry Miss Lavendar,” was Charlotta’s unequivocal

response. “Some women’s intended from the start to be old maids, and

I’m afraid I’m one of them, Miss Shirley, ma’am, because I’ve awful

little patience with the men. But Miss Lavendar never was. And I’ve

been awful worried, thinking what on earth she’d do when I got so big

I’d _have_ to go to Boston. There ain’t any more girls in our family

and dear knows what she’d do if she got some stranger that might laugh

at her pretendings and leave things lying round out of their place and

not be willing to be called Charlotta the Fifth. She might get someone

who wouldn’t be as unlucky as me in breaking dishes but she’d never get

anyone who’d love her better.”

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

sniff.

They went through the form of having tea as usual that night at Echo

Lodge; but nobody really ate anything. After tea Miss Lavendar went to

her room and put on her new forget-me-not organdy, while Anne did her

hair for her. Both were dreadfully excited; but Miss Lavendar pretended

to be very calm and indifferent.

“I must really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow,” she said

anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any importance

just then. “Those curtains have not worn as well as they should,

considering the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta has forgotten to dust

the stair railing _again_. I really _must_ speak to her about it.”

Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down the

lane and across the garden.

“This is the one place where time stands still,” he said, looking

around him with delighted eyes. “There is nothing changed about this

house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago. It makes me

feel young again.”

“You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace,” said

Anne seriously. “It is only when the prince comes that things begin to

happen.”

Mr. Irving smiled a little sadly into her uplifted face, all astar with

its youth and promise.

“Sometimes the prince comes too late,” he said. He did not ask Anne to

translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he

“understood.”

“Oh, no, not if he is the real prince coming to the true princess,”

said Anne, shaking her red head decidedly, as she opened the parlor

door. When he had gone in she shut it tightly behind him and turned to

confront Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all “nods and becks

and wreathed smiles.”

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” she breathed, “I peeked from the kitchen

window . . . and he’s awful handsome . . . and just the right age for

Miss Lavendar. And oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, do you think it would be

much harm to listen at the door?”

“It would be dreadful, Charlotta,” said Anne firmly, “so just you come

away with me out of the reach of temptation.”

“I can’t do anything, and it’s awful to hang round just waiting,”

sighed Charlotta. “What if he don’t propose after all, Miss Shirley,

ma’am? You can never be sure of them men. My older sister, Charlotta

the First, thought she was engaged to one once. But it turned out _he_

had a different opinion and she says she’ll never trust one of them

again. And I heard of another case where a man thought he wanted one

girl awful bad when it was really her sister he wanted all the time.

When a man don’t know his own mind, Miss Shirley, ma’am, how’s a poor

woman going to be sure of it?”

“We’ll go to the kitchen and clean the silver spoons,” said Anne.

“That’s a task which won’t require much thinking fortunately . . . for

I _couldn’t_ think tonight. And it will pass the time.”

It passed an hour. Then, just as Anne laid down the last shining spoon,

they heard the front door shut. Both sought comfort fearfully in each

other’s eyes.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” gasped Charlotta, “if he’s going away this

early there’s nothing into it and never will be.” They flew to the

window. Mr. Irving had no intention of going away. He and Miss Lavendar

were strolling slowly down the middle path to the stone bench.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, he’s got his arm around her waist,” whispered

Charlotta the Fourth delightedly. “He _must_ have proposed to her or

she’d never allow it.”

Anne caught Charlotta the Fourth by her own plump waist and danced her

around the kitchen until they were both out of breath.

“Oh, Charlotta,” she cried gaily, “I’m neither a prophetess nor the

daughter of a prophetess but I’m going to make a prediction. There’ll

be a wedding in this old stone house before the maple leaves are red.

Do you want that translated into prose, Charlotta?”

“No, I can understand that,” said Charlotta. “A wedding ain’t poetry.

Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am, you’re crying! What for?”

“Oh, because it’s all so beautiful . . . and story bookish . . . and

romantic . . . and sad,” said Anne, winking the tears out of her eyes.

“It’s all perfectly lovely . . . but there’s a little sadness mixed up

in it too, somehow.”

“Oh, of course there’s a resk in marrying anybody,” conceded Charlotta

the Fourth, “but, when all’s said and done, Miss Shirley, ma’am,

there’s many a worse thing than a husband.”

XXIX

Poetry and Prose

For the next month Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called a

whirl of excitement. The preparation of her own modest outfit for

Redmond was of secondary importance. Miss Lavendar was getting ready to

be married and the stone house was the scene of endless consultations

and plannings and discussions, with Charlotta the Fourth hovering on

the outskirts of things in agitated delight and wonder. Then the

dressmaker came, and there was the rapture and wretchedness of choosing

fashions and being fitted. Anne and Diana spent half their time at Echo

Lodge and there were nights when Anne could not sleep for wondering

whether she had done right in advising Miss Lavendar to select brown

rather than navy blue for her traveling dress, and to have her gray

silk made princess.

Everybody concerned in Miss Lavendar’s story was very happy. Paul

Irving rushed to Green Gables to talk the news over with Anne as soon

as his father had told him.

“I knew I could trust father to pick me out a nice little second

mother,” he said proudly. “It’s a fine thing to have a father you can

depend on, teacher. I just love Miss Lavendar. Grandma is pleased, too.

She says she’s real glad father didn’t pick out an American for his

second wife, because, although it turned out all right the first time,

such a thing wouldn’t be likely to happen twice. Mrs. Lynde says she

thoroughly approves of the match and thinks its likely Miss Lavendar

will give up her queer notions and be like other people, now that she’s

going to be married. But I hope she won’t give her queer notions up,

teacher, because I like them. And I don’t want her to be like other

people. There are too many other people around as it is. _You_ know,

teacher.”

Charlotta the Fourth was another radiant person.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, it has all turned out so beautiful. When Mr.

Irving and Miss Lavendar come back from their tower I’m to go up to

Boston and live with them . . . and me only fifteen, and the other

girls never went till they were sixteen. Ain’t Mr. Irving splendid? He

just worships the ground she treads on and it makes me feel so queer

sometimes to see the look in his eyes when he’s watching her. It

beggars description, Miss Shirley, ma’am. I’m awful thankful they’re so

fond of each other. It’s the best way, when all’s said and done, though

some folks can get along without it. I’ve got an aunt who has been

married three times and says she married the first time for love and

the last two times for strictly business, and was happy with all three

except at the times of the funerals. But I think she took a resk, Miss

Shirley, ma’am.”

“Oh, it’s all so romantic,” breathed Anne to Marilla that night. “If I

hadn’t taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr. Kimball’s I’d never

have known Miss Lavendar; and if I hadn’t met her I’d never have taken

Paul there . . . and he’d never have written to his father about

visiting Miss Lavendar just as Mr. Irving was starting for San

Francisco. Mr. Irving says whenever he got that letter he made up his

mind to send his partner to San Francisco and come here instead. He

hadn’t heard anything of Miss Lavendar for fifteen years. Somebody had

told him then that she was to be married and he thought she was and

never asked anybody anything about her. And now everything has come

right. And I had a hand in bringing it about. Perhaps, as Mrs. Lynde

says, everything is foreordained and it was bound to happen anyway. But

even so, it’s nice to think one was an instrument used by

predestination. Yes indeed, it’s very romantic.”

“I can’t see that it’s so terribly romantic at all,” said Marilla

rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it and had

plenty to do with getting ready for college without “traipsing” to Echo

Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar. “In the first place

two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving goes to the

States and after a spell gets married up there and is perfectly happy

from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after a decent interval he

thinks he’ll come home and see if his first fancy’ll have him.

Meanwhile, she’s been living single, probably because nobody nice

enough came along to want her, and they meet and agree to be married

after all. Now, where is the romance in all that?”

“Oh, there isn’t any, when you put it that way,” gasped Anne, rather as

if somebody had thrown cold water over her. “I suppose that’s how it

looks in prose. But it’s very different if you look at it through

poetry . . . and _I_ think it’s nicer . . .” Anne recovered herself and

her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed . . . “to look at it through

poetry.”

Marilla glanced at the radiant young face and refrained from further

sarcastic comments. Perhaps some realization came to her that after all

it was better to have, like Anne, “the vision and the faculty divine” .

. . that gift which the world cannot bestow or take away, of looking at

life through some transfiguring . . . or revealing? . . . medium,

whereby everything seemed apparelled in celestial light, wearing a

glory and a freshness not visible to those who, like herself and

Charlotta the Fourth, looked at things only through prose.

“When’s the wedding to be?” she asked after a pause.

“The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the garden

under the honeysuckle trellis . . . the very spot where Mr. Irving

proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that _is_ romantic,

even in prose. There’s to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul

and Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar’s cousins. And they will

leave on the six o’clock train for a trip to the Pacific coast. When

they come back in the fall Paul and Charlotta the Fourth are to go up

to Boston to live with them. But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it

is. . . only of course they’ll sell the hens and cow, and board up the

windows . . . and every summer they’re coming down to live in it. I’m

so glad. It would have hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to

think of that dear stone house all stripped and deserted, with empty

rooms . . . or far worse still, with other people living in it. But I

can think of it now, just as I’ve always seen it, waiting happily for

the summer to bring life and laughter back to it again.”

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the

share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled

suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the

wood cut and came out into the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred

Wright were standing together under the big willow. Diana was leaning

against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks.

One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent toward her,

stammering something in low earnest tones. There were no other people

in the world except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither

of them saw Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned

and sped noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till

she gained her own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her

window and tried to collect her scattered wits.

“Diana and Fred are in love with each other,” she gasped. “Oh, it does

seem so . . . so . . . so _hopelessly_ grown up.”

Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was

proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But

as “things seen are mightier than things heard,” or suspected, the

realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the shock

of perfect surprise. This was succeeded by a queer, little lonely

feeling . . . as if, somehow, Diana had gone forward into a new world,

shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the outside.

“Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me,” Anne thought, a

little sadly. “And I’m afraid that this can’t help making some

difference between Diana and me. I’m sure I can’t tell her all my

secrets after this . . . she might tell Fred. And what _can_ she see in

Fred? He’s very nice and jolly . . . but he’s just Fred Wright.”

It is always a very puzzling question . . . what can somebody see in

somebody else? But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if

everybody saw alike . . . well, in that case, as the old Indian said,

“Everybody would want my squaw.” It was plain that Diana _did_ see

something in Fred Wright, however Anne’s eyes might be holden. Diana

came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and

told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the east gable.

Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.

“I’m so happy,” said Diana, “but it does seem ridiculous to think of me

being engaged.”

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

“Well, that all depends on who you’re engaged to,” answered Diana, with

that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are

engaged over those who are not. “It’s perfectly lovely to be engaged to

Fred . . . but I think it would be simply horrid to be engaged to

anyone else.”

“There’s not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that there

is only one Fred,” laughed Anne.

“Oh, Anne, you don’t understand,” said Diana in vexation. “I didn’t

mean _that_ . . . it’s so hard to explain. Never mind, you’ll

understand sometime, when your own turn comes.”

“Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now. What is an imagination

for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people’s eyes?”

“You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that . . .

wherever you may be when I’m married.”

“I’ll come from the ends of the earth if necessary,” promised Anne

solemnly.

“Of course, it won’t be for ever so long yet,” said Diana, blushing.

“Three years at the very least . . . for I’m only eighteen and mother

says no daughter of hers shall be married before she’s twenty-one.

Besides, Fred’s father is going to buy the Abraham Fletcher farm for

him and he says he’s got to have it two thirds paid for before he’ll

give it to him in his own name. But three years isn’t any too much time

to get ready for housekeeping, for I haven’t a speck of fancy work made

yet. But I’m going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow. Myra Gillis

had thirty-seven doilies when she was married and I’m determined I

shall have as many as she had.”

“I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only

thirty-six doilies,” conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing

eyes.

Diana looked hurt.

“I didn’t think you’d make fun of me, Anne,” she said reproachfully.

“Dearest, I wasn’t making fun of you,” cried Anne repentantly. “I was

only teasing you a bit. I think you’ll make the sweetest little

housekeeper in the world. And I think it’s perfectly lovely of you to

be planning already for your home o’dreams.”

Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, “home o’dreams,” than it

captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of

her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud,

and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging

about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and

accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero

evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish

Gilbert’s image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being

there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her

aerial architecture with such success that her “home o’dreams” was

built and furnished before Diana spoke again.

“I suppose, Anne, you must think it’s funny I should like Fred so well

when he’s so different from the kind of man I’ve always said I would

marry . . . the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn’t want Fred to

be tall and slender . . . because, don’t you see, he wouldn’t be Fred

then. Of course,” added Diana rather dolefully, “we will be a

dreadfully pudgy couple. But after all that’s better than one of us

being short and fat and the other tall and lean, like Morgan Sloane and

his wife. Mrs. Lynde says it always makes her think of the long and

short of it when she sees them together.”

“Well,” said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair before

her gilt framed mirror, “I am glad Diana is so happy and satisfied. But

when my turn comes . . . if it ever does . . . I do hope there’ll be

something a little more thrilling about it. But then Diana thought so

too, once. I’ve heard her say time and again she’d never get engaged

any poky commonplace way . . . he’d _have_ to do something splendid to

win her. But she has changed. Perhaps I’ll change too. But I won’t . .

. and I’m determined I won’t. Oh, I think these engagements are

dreadfully unsettling things when they happen to your intimate

friends.”

XXX

A Wedding at the Stone House

The last week in August came. Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.

Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College. In a

week’s time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and set up her

lares and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was already

prepared for her coming. She had sold all her superfluous household

plenishings by auction and was at present reveling in the congenial

occupation of helping the Allans pack up. Mr. Allan was to preach his

farewell sermon the next Sunday. The old order was changing rapidly to

give place to the new, as Anne felt with a little sadness threading all

her excitement and happiness.

“Changes ain’t totally pleasant but they’re excellent things,” said Mr.

Harrison philosophically. “Two years is about long enough for things to

stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow

mossy.”

Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda. His wife had

self-sacrificingly told that he might smoke in the house if he took

care to sit by an open window. Mr. Harrison rewarded this concession by

going outdoors altogether to smoke in fine weather, and so mutual

goodwill reigned.

Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for some of her yellow dahlias.

She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help

Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations

for the morrow’s bridal. Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias; she

did not like them and they would not have suited the fine retirement of

her old-fashioned garden. But flowers of any kind were rather scarce in

Avonlea and the neighboring districts that summer, thanks to Uncle

Abe’s storm; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain old

cream-colored stone jug, usually kept sacred to doughnuts, brimmed over

with yellow dahlias, would be just the thing to set in a dim angle of

the stone house stairs, against the dark background of red hall paper.

“I s’pose you’ll be starting off for college in a fortnight’s time?”

continued Mr. Harrison. “Well, we’re going to miss you an awful lot,

Emily and me. To be sure, Mrs. Lynde’ll be over there in your place.

There ain’t nobody but a substitute can be found for them.”

The irony of Mr. Harrison’s tone is quite untransferable to paper. In

spite of his wife’s intimacy with Mrs. Lynde, the best that could be

said of the relationship between her and Mr. Harrison even under the

new regime, was that they preserved an armed neutrality.

“Yes, I’m going,” said Anne. “I’m very glad with my head . . . and very

sorry with my heart.”

“I s’pose you’ll be scooping up all the honors that are lying round

loose at Redmond.”

“I may try for one or two of them,” confessed Anne, “but I don’t care

so much for things like that as I did two years ago. What I want to get

out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living

life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand

and help other people and myself.”

Mr. Harrison nodded.

“That’s the idea exactly. That’s what college ought to be for, instead

of for turning out a lot of B.A.‘s, so chock full of book-learning and

vanity that there ain’t room for anything else. You’re all right.

College won’t be able to do you much harm, I reckon.”

Diana and Anne drove over to Echo Lodge after tea, taking with them all

the flowery spoil that several predatory expeditions in their own and

their neighbors’ gardens had yielded. They found the stone house agog

with excitement. Charlotta the Fourth was flying around with such vim

and briskness that her blue bows seemed really to possess the power of

being everywhere at once. Like the helmet of Navarre, Charlotta’s blue

bows waved ever in the thickest of the fray.

“Praise be to goodness you’ve come,” she said devoutly, “for there’s

heaps of things to do . . . and the frosting on that cake _won’t_

harden . . . and there’s all the silver to be rubbed up yet . . . and

the horsehair trunk to be packed . . . and the roosters for the chicken

salad are running out there beyant the henhouse yet, _crowing_, Miss

Shirley, ma’am. And Miss Lavendar ain’t to be trusted to do a thing. I

was thankful when Mr. Irving came a few minutes ago and took her off

for a walk in the woods. Courting’s all right in its place, Miss

Shirley, ma’am, but if you try to mix it up with cooking and scouring

everything’s spoiled. That’s _my_ opinion, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”

Anne and Diana worked so heartily that by ten o’clock even Charlotta

the Fourth was satisfied. She braided her hair in innumerable plaits

and took her weary little bones off to bed.

“But I’m sure I shan’t sleep a blessed wink, Miss Shirley, ma’am, for

fear that something’ll go wrong at the last minute . . . the cream

won’t whip . . . or Mr. Irving’ll have a stroke and not be able to

come.”

“He isn’t in the habit of having strokes, is he?” asked Diana, the

dimpled corners of her mouth twitching. To Diana, Charlotta the Fourth

was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly a joy forever.

“They’re not things that go by habit,” said Charlotta the Fourth with

dignity. “They just _happen_ . . . and there you are. _Anybody_ can

have a stroke. You don’t have to learn how. Mr. Irving looks a lot like

an uncle of mine that had one once just as he was sitting down to

dinner one day. But maybe everything’ll go all right. In this world

you’ve just got to hope for the best and prepare for the worst and take

whatever God sends.”

“The only thing I’m worried about is that it won’t be fine tomorrow,”

said Diana. “Uncle Abe predicted rain for the middle of the week, and

ever since the big storm I can’t help believing there’s a good deal in

what Uncle Abe says.”

Anne, who knew better than Diana just how much Uncle Abe had to do with

the storm, was not much disturbed by this. She slept the sleep of the

just and weary, and was roused at an unearthly hour by Charlotta the

Fourth.

“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, it’s awful to call you so early,” came

wailing through the keyhole, “but there’s so much to do yet . . . and

oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, I’m skeered it’s going to rain and I wish

you’d get up and tell me you think it ain’t.” Anne flew to the window,

hoping against hope that Charlotta the Fourth was saying this merely by

way of rousing her effectually. But alas, the morning did look

unpropitious. Below the window Miss Lavendar’s garden, which should

have been a glory of pale virgin sunshine, lay dim and windless; and

the sky over the firs was dark with moody clouds.

“Isn’t it too mean!” said Diana.

“We must hope for the best,” said Anne determinedly. “If it only

doesn’t actually rain, a cool, pearly gray day like this would really

be nicer than hot sunshine.”

“But it will rain,” mourned Charlotta, creeping into the room, a figure

of fun, with her many braids wound about her head, the ends, tied up

with white thread, sticking out in all directions. “It’ll hold off till

the last minute and then pour cats and dogs. And all the folks will get

sopping . . . and track mud all over the house . . . and they won’t be

able to be married under the honeysuckle . . . and it’s awful unlucky

for no sun to shine on a bride, say what you will, Miss Shirley, ma’am.

I _knew_ things were going too well to last.”

Charlotta the Fourth seemed certainly to have borrowed a leaf out of

Miss Eliza Andrews’ book.

It did not rain, though it kept on looking as if it meant to. By noon

the rooms were decorated, the table beautifully laid; and upstairs was

waiting a bride, “adorned for her husband.”

“You do look sweet,” said Anne rapturously.

“Lovely,” echoed Diana.

“Everything’s ready, Miss Shirley, ma’am, and nothing dreadful has

happened _yet_,” was Charlotta’s cheerful statement as she betook

herself to her little back room to dress. Out came all the braids; the

resultant rampant crinkliness was plaited into two tails and tied, not

with two bows alone, but with four, of brand-new ribbon, brightly blue.

The two upper bows rather gave the impression of overgrown wings

sprouting from Charlotta’s neck, somewhat after the fashion of

Raphael’s cherubs. But Charlotta the Fourth thought them very

beautiful, and after she had rustled into a white dress, so stiffly

starched that it could stand alone, she surveyed herself in her glass

with great satisfaction . . . a satisfaction which lasted until she

went out in the hall and caught a glimpse through the spare room door

of a tall girl in some softly clinging gown, pinning white, star-like

flowers on the smooth ripples of her ruddy hair.

“Oh, I’ll _never_ be able to look like Miss Shirley,” thought poor

Charlotta despairingly. “You just have to be born so, I guess . . .

don’t seem’s if any amount of practice could give you that _air_.”

By one o’clock the guests had come, including Mr. and Mrs. Allan, for

Mr. Allan was to perform the ceremony in the absence of the Grafton

minister on his vacation. There was no formality about the marriage.

Miss Lavendar came down the stairs to meet her bridegroom at the foot,

and as he took her hand she lifted her big brown eyes to his with a

look that made Charlotta the Fourth, who intercepted it, feel queerer

than ever. They went out to the honeysuckle arbor, where Mr. Allan was

awaiting them. The guests grouped themselves as they pleased. Anne and

Diana stood by the old stone bench, with Charlotta the Fourth between

them, desperately clutching their hands in her cold, tremulous little

paws.

Mr. Allan opened his blue book and the ceremony proceeded. Just as Miss

Lavendar and Stephen Irving were pronounced man and wife a very

beautiful and symbolic thing happened. The sun suddenly burst through

the gray and poured a flood of radiance on the happy bride. Instantly

the garden was alive with dancing shadows and flickering lights.

“What a lovely omen,” thought Anne, as she ran to kiss the bride. Then

the three girls left the rest of the guests laughing around the bridal

pair while they flew into the house to see that all was in readiness

for the feast.

“Thanks be to goodness, it’s over, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” breathed

Charlotta the Fourth, “and they’re married safe and sound, no matter

what happens now. The bags of rice are in the pantry, ma’am, and the

old shoes are behind the door, and the cream for whipping is on the

sullar steps.”

At half past two Mr. and Mrs. Irving left, and everybody went to Bright

River to see them off on the afternoon train. As Miss Lavendar . . . I

beg her pardon, Mrs. Irving . . . stepped from the door of her old home

Gilbert and the girls threw the rice and Charlotta the Fourth hurled an

old shoe with such excellent aim that she struck Mr. Allan squarely on

the head. But it was reserved for Paul to give the prettiest send-off.

He popped out of the porch ringing furiously a huge old brass dinner

bell which had adorned the dining room mantel. Paul’s only motive was

to make a joyful noise; but as the clangor died away, from point and

curve and hill across the river came the chime of “fairy wedding

bells,” ringing clearly, sweetly, faintly and more faint, as if Miss

Lavendar’s beloved echoes were bidding her greeting and farewell. And

so, amid this benediction of sweet sounds, Miss Lavendar drove away

from the old life of dreams and make-believes to a fuller life of

realities in the busy world beyond.

Two hours later Anne and Charlotta the Fourth came down the lane again.

Gilbert had gone to West Grafton on an errand and Diana had to keep an

engagement at home. Anne and Charlotta had come back to put things in

order and lock up the little stone house. The garden was a pool of late

golden sunshine, with butterflies hovering and bees booming; but the

little house had already that indefinable air of desolation which

always follows a festivity.

“Oh dear me, don’t it look lonesome?” sniffed Charlotta the Fourth, who

had been crying all the way home from the station. “A wedding ain’t

much cheerfuller than a funeral after all, when it’s all over, Miss

Shirley, ma’am.”

A busy evening followed. The decorations had to be removed, the dishes

washed, the uneaten delicacies packed into a basket for the delectation

of Charlotta the Fourth’s young brothers at home. Anne would not rest

until everything was in apple-pie order; after Charlotta had gone home

with her plunder Anne went over the still rooms, feeling like one who

trod alone some banquet hall deserted, and closed the blinds. Then she

locked the door and sat down under the silver poplar to wait for

Gilbert, feeling very tired but still unweariedly thinking “long, long

thoughts.”

“What are you thinking of, Anne?” asked Gilbert, coming down the walk.

He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.

“Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving,” answered Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it

beautiful to think how everything has turned out . . . how they have

come together again after all the years of separation and

misunderstanding?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne’s

uplifted face, “but wouldn’t it have been more beautiful still, Anne,

if there had been NO separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had

come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind

them but those which belonged to each other?”

For a moment Anne’s heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her

eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze and a rosy flush stained the

paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her

inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of

unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not

come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding

down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet

ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden

shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and

the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a

beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green

sheath.

Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane

was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening

before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger,

and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and

mystery, its pain and gladness.

Gilbert wisely said nothing more; but in his silence he read the

history of the next four years in the light of Anne’s remembered blush.

Four years of earnest, happy work . . . and then the guerdon of a

useful knowledge gained and a sweet heart won.

Behind them in the garden the little stone house brooded among the

shadows. It was lonely but not forsaken. It had not yet done with

dreams and laughter and the joy of life; there were to be future

summers for the little stone house; meanwhile, it could wait. And over

the river in purple durance the echoes bided their time.