 CHAPTER XXV. An Avonlea Scandal. One Blythe June morning, a fortnight after Uncle Abe's storm, Anne came slowly through the green gable's 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 coiffed 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 am 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 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 Layne Gate, where she stood for a while 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 to day,' Anne told a bluebird, who was singing and swinging on a willow-bow. But a school-man who was 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-whacken was jolting up the Layne 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 band-box. "'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. Those 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 am sure I couldn't have imagined such a bonnet. She says she is Mr. Harrison's wife, Marilla.' Marilla steered in her turn. "'His wife?' "'Anne, surely, 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 am 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 Cromedy 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 Boater 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 to-night. Anne, I'm awful hungry. We had tea at Melty's at four, and I think Mrs. Bolcher is real mean. She didn't give us any preserves or cake, and even the bread was skirse. Davy, when you go visiting, you must never criticise 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 you 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 Bolcher's is up to be.' Davy took a slice of bread and jam with a sigh. "'It's a kind of disappointing world, after all,' he remarked. "'Melty has a cat that takes fits. She's took a fit regular every day for three weeks. Melty says it's awful fun to watch her. I went down to-day on purpose to see her have one, but the mean old thing wouldn't take a fit, and just kept healthy as healthy, though Melty 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 some time 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's awful nice." Davy had no sorrows that the plum jam could not cure. Sunday proved so rainy that there was no staring 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 exactly new, but they've stopped being married for quite a spell, Melty says. I always supposed people had to keep on being married once they'd begun, but Melty says no. There's ways of stopping if you can't agree. Melty says one way is just to start off and leave your wife, and that's what Mr. Harrison did. Melty says Mr. Harrison left his wife because she throwed things at him. Hard things. And Artie Sloan says it was because she wouldn't let him smoke, and Ned Clay says it was because 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, because I'm a man. That'll settle her pretty quick, I guess. But Ned 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 and see what she's like. Davy soon returned, somewhat cast down. Mrs. Harrison was away. She's gone to Carmody with Mrs. Rachel Lynn to get new paper for the parlor, and Mr. Harrison said to tell Anne to go over and see him, because 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 and 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 Lynn. She's struck up a lifelong friendship already with Rachel Lynn. Beats all how contrarious 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 aren't glad your wife has 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 neighbour without being accused of wanting to marry that neighbour'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 had 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 Lind 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 a while, 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's scot because Emily had money of her own, and was a patterned housekeeper. I said, says I, Emily Scott wouldn't look at me. You ask her and cease, 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'd give you my word, Anne, that in half an hour that woman was at work house-cleaning. 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 Bachelors Hall, I admit. But I'd got a woman to come in and clean it 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 as 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 darsened smoke a pipe for my life unless I went to the barn. And I didn't use good enough grammar. Emily'd been a school teacher 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 suppose, 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. But 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 in profanity than 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 that she had in trying to make me stop saying I seen and them things. Things as if the more she tried, the worse ginger got, same as me. Well, things went on like this, both of us getting raspier till the climax came. Emily invited our minister and his wife to tea, and another minister and his wife that was visiting them. I'd promised to put ginger away in some safe place where nobody would hear him. Emily wouldn't touch his cage with a ten-foot pole. And I meant to do it, for I didn't want the ministers to hear anything unpleasant in my house. But it slipped my mind. Emily was worrying me so much about clean collars and grammar that it wasn't any wonder. And I never thought of that poor parrot till we sat down to tea. Just as minister number one was in the very middle of saying grace, ginger, who was on the veranda outside the dining-room window, lifted up his voice. The gobbler had come into view in the yard, and the sight of a gobbler always had an unwholesome effect on ginger. He surpassed himself that time. You can smile, Anne, and I don't deny I've chuckled some over it since myself, but at the time I felt almost as much mortified as Emily. I went out and carried ginger to the barn. I can't say I enjoyed the meal. I knew by the look of Emily that there was trouble brewing for ginger and James A. When the folks went away I started for the cow-pasture, and on the way I did some thinking. I felt sorry for Emily, and kind of fancied I hadn't been so thoughtful of her as I might. And besides, I wondered if the ministers would think that ginger had learned his vocabulary from me. The long and short of it was, I decided that ginger would have to be mercifully disposed of. And when I'd drove 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 storybooks, 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 backfield Saturday, and found her scrubbing the floor, but with the first decent dinner I'd had since she left me already on the table. She told me to eat 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 some bigger than she thought. There's Mrs. Lynde in 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 red-haired 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 neighbours 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. And I didn'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 saying 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. While I must get back, Thomas will be wearying for me. I get out a little since Eliza came, and he 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 Davey, nodding off on the sofa, and nothing was to be read in her face. She carried Davey away, her oval, girlish cheek pressed against his yellow curly head. As they went up the stairs, Davey flung a tired arm about Anne's neck, and gave her a warm hug and a sticky kiss. You're awful nice, Anne. Melty Bolter wrote on his slate today and showed it to Jenny's Sloan. Roses, red, and violets, blue, sugar sweet, and so are you. And that spresses my feelings for you exactly, Anne. CHAPTER XXVI. Thomas Lind faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he had lived it. His wife was a tender, patient, unwearyed 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 vitual more un-complaining. 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. She had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white dawn was creeping up over the pointed furs in the hollow, Marillo went softly into the east gable and wakened Anne. Anne? Thomas Lind is gone. Their hired boy just brought the word. I'm going right down to Rachel. On the day after Thomas Lind's funeral Marillo 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. Lind tonight? asked the latter. She's feeling calmer and more composed, answered Marillo, sitting down on Anne's bed, a proceeding which betokens some unusual mental excitement, for in Marillo's coat of household ethics, to sit on a bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offence. But she's very lonely. Eliza had to go home to-day. Her son isn't well, and she felt she couldn't stay any longer. When I finished these exercises I'll run down and chat a while with Mrs. Lind, 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 to, 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. All these past two years have been just delightful. Oh, yes, I know you've been contented enough. But that isn't the question exactly. You want 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. And 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 Ivan Lee. 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 daisedly. But as for asking Mrs. Linda come here, that is for you to decide, Marilla. Do you think—are you sure you would like it? Mrs. Linda's a good woman and a kind neighbor, but—but she's got her faults, you need to say. Well, she has, of course. But I think I'd rather put up with worse faults than see Rachel go away from Ivan Lee. 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 at that time you fluid, Mrs. Rachel, for calling you homely and red-haired. 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 will see to that. So all I'd be giving her would be house-room. Yes, Anne, as far as I'm concerned I'd like it. Can 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 Avonlein. These two decisions, being noise to broad, 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 decisively. 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 dryly. 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. While Anne's methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy, said Mrs. Lynn 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 around 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. Annette 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 needed and 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 D'Nel hadn't been watching me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn't show on my eyes to-morrow, 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 Bolcher 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'll be horribly lonesome here next winter, she mourned one twilight when the moonlight was raining airy silver through the cherry-bows and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like radiance in which the two girls sat and talked, and on her low rocker by the window Diana sitting Turk fashion on the bed. You and Gilbert will be gone, and the Allens too. They're going to call Mr. Allen 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. Lin says there's nothing whatever the matter with him but indigestion. His wife isn't a very good cook, it seems, and Mrs. Lin 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. Allen 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 might 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. Allen for anything. She says she has slipped through the birch-grove back of the man's 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 I would do it too, 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 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, twix light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beach-hole 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 a tiny house behind it all hung with vines, and Little Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes and the wind ruffling her dark hair, wondering 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 hours 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. My 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're 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. But if you never meet him, then I shall die an old maid, was a cheerful response. I dare say 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 Lavender. 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 anyone 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 her 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 queens 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, not a Diana. It's the Gillis coming out in her. She can't help it. Mrs. Lin says that if ever a Gillis girl thought about anything but the boys she never showed it in her walk-in conversation, she talks about nothing but boys and what compliments they pay her and how crazy they all are about her at Carmody. 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 had 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 bows 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, ladylike girl. Dear old Jane is a jewel, agreed Anne. But, she added, leaning forward to bestow a tender pat on the plump, dimple 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 oaf, I think. We've never had a quarrel nor even a coolness. I shall never forget the thrill that went over me the day that 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 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 has 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, sob 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." End of Chapter 26 Chapter 27 of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery Read for LibriVox.org by Karen Savage in March 2008 Chapter 27 An Afternoon at the Stone House Where are you going all dressed up, Anne? Davey 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 colour 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. Davey, 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," and treated Davey. 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 won't enjoy yourself and his company. Oh, I like Paul lots better than I did," said Davey, beginning to make fearful inroads into his pudding. Since I've got pretty good myself, I don't mind his being good or so much. If I can keep on, I'll catch up with him some day, both in legs and goodness. Besides, 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 his accident, explained Davey. He stuck his head in on purpose, but the rest of him fell in accidentally. We was all down at the brook, and Prilly Rodgerson 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 beat 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 than ever, but Gracie didn't laugh. He 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 Davey 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 Davey 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 Lavender'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 amiously 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 Davey. Oh, Davey! said Dora Primley, 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 Davey. At least to me everything's put on the men in this world. Can I have some more pudding, Marilla? You 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 Davey, 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-bolters. 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-bolter talks like that about his mother, at least you needn't repeat it, said Marilla severely. Bless my soul!" Davey had picked up this expression for Mr. Harrison, and used it with great gusto. Milty meant it as a compliment. He's awful proud of his mother, because folks say she could scratch a living on a rock. I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy beds 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. Then she sat down on the cellar-hat and laughed until she was ashamed of herself. When Anne and Paul reached the stone-house that afternoon they found Miss Lavender and Carlotta IV in the garden, weeding, raking, clipping and trimming as if for dear life. Miss Lavender herself, all gay and sweet in the frills and laces she loved, dropped her shears and ran joyously to meet her guests, while Carlotta IV grinned cheerfully. Welcome, Anne! I thought you'd come to-day. You belong to the afternoon, so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come together. Not a lot of trouble that would save some people if only they 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-ahead taller than when you were here before. Yes, I've begun to grow like pigweed in the night, as Mrs. Lin says, said Paul in Frank to Light 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 any one 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 Lavender. Yes, Miss Lavender 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 Lavender? 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 Lavender, 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 beachwoods without getting hungry, and Carlotta 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 Carlotta the fourth and I prepared. I think you're 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've had a long walk. That makes a difference," said Miss Lavender, 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, Carlotta 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 Carlotta the fourth has been known to have bad dreams after we had eaten donuts and minced 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 Sunday's 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 Lavender'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 Lavender sat on the stone bench under the poplar and talked. So you are going away in the fall, said Miss Lavender 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 a while 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 Lavender, 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! Ho! Ho! Ho! When 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 Lavender 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, Carlotta IV, who had disappeared after lunch, returned, and announced that the north-east corner of Mr. John Kimball's pasture was red with early strawberries, and wouldn't missherly like to go and pick some. Early strawberries for tea, exclaimed Miss Lavender. 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 homegrown cream. Anne and Carlotta IV 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 gold in his 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 Carlotta IV. 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, Carlotta IV mounted to her little room over the kitchen, and tried before her looking-glass to speak and look and move like Anne. Carlotta could never flatter herself that she quite succeeded. But practice makes perfect, as Carlotta 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 bow swaying in the wind. It seemed so easy when you watched Anne. Carlotta IV admired Anne wholeheartedly. It was not that she thought her so very handsome. And a berry's beauty of crimson cheek and black curls was much more to Carlotta IV's taste than Anne's moonshine charm of luminous grey eyes and the pale, ever-changing 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, Carlotta IV confided to Anne her fears regarding Miss Lavender. The warm-hearted little handmaiden was honestly worried over her adored mistress's condition. Miss Lavender isn't well, Miss Shirley, ma'am. I am 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 jerk up a bit. And the worst sign of all, Miss Shirley, ma'am—Carlotta IV 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 broke her green and yellow bowl that's always stood on the bookcase. Her grandmother brought it out from England and Miss Lavender was awful choice of it. I was dusting it just as careful, Miss Shirley, ma'am, and it slipped out so fashion before I could grab hold of it and break into about forty million pieces. I tell you, I was sorry and scared. I thought Miss Lavender would scold me awful, ma'am, and I'd rather she had than take it the way she did. She just come in and hardly looked at it and said, It's no matter, Carlotta, 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. Carlotta the fourth size brimmed up with tears, and patted the little brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically. I think Miss Lavender needs a change, Carlotta. She stays here alone too much. Can't we induce her to go away for a little trip? Carlotta shook her head with its rampant bows disconsolently. I don't think so, Miss Shirley, ma'am. Miss Lavender 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 came home, she said she wasn't going to visit for family duty no more. I've come home in love with loneliness, Carlotta, 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 coach 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 Lavender up. That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma'am," exclaimed Carlotta the fourth and rapture. She was glad for Miss Lavender'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 Lavender 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 Carlotta wash the dishes in the kitchen, while Miss Lavender sat on the stone bench with Paul and heard all about his rock people. She was a good listener, this sweet Miss Lavender, but just at the last it struck Paul that she had suddenly lost interest in the twin sailors. Miss Lavender, 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 Lavender 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 teachers when you laugh. I tell you what, Miss Lavender. 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'd dreamed him long before you were born, but I'll never let him get any older than eleven or twelve, because if he did, some day he might grow up altogether and then I'd lose him. I know. Not at 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 Jo thinks I'm wrong in the upper story because I have them, but I think it's splendid to have them. You know, Miss Lavender. Tell me all about your little dream boy. He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals and awakens 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 Lavender. Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house, and something in Miss Lavender's face made her hate to disturb them. I'm afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark. Miss Lavender, 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 Lavender. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE PRINCE COMES BACK TO THE ENCHANTED PALACE. The last day of school came and went. A triumphant semiannual 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 Sloan, and Mrs. William Bell walked home together and topped things over. I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seemed so much attached to her, sighed Mrs. Peter Sloan, 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 honour, and the New Bridge 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 last 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 avanly 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. Allen 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. Sloan. It will be a great loss to the community, though I always did think that Mrs. Allen 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 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 might 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? Man says Paul is a genius, said Mrs. Sloan. 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 a colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual a queer genius. She probably thought, with Mary Jo, that it meant a person with something wrong in his upper story. Back in the school room 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 the window to the lake of shining waters. Her heart was so rung 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. Things 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 savoured 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 of 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 Lavender on a shopping expedition to town, and persuaded her to buy a new, organ-ty dress. Then came the excitement of cutting and making it together, while the happy Carlotta IV basted and swept up clippings. Miss Lavender had complained that she could not feel much interest in anything, but the sparkle came back to her eyes over the pretty dress. What a foolish, frivolous person I must be, she sighed. I am wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress, even if it is, forget me not organ-ty, 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's 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! 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 modelled 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 Lavender'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 laddies. 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. 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 Jo 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 the kitchen all day, making the things Father likes to eat. She wouldn't trust them to Mary Jo, 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 Jo. 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 has 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, and felt instinctively that romance was peeping at her round 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," Anne replied promptly. You see, she explained hastily, Miss Lavender 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'm going to ask a favour of you. I would like to go and see Miss Lavender if she will let me. Will you ask her if I may come? Would she not? Oh, indeed she would. Yes. This was romance. Maybe 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 nonetheless a rose, all sweetness and fragrance with a gleam of gold in its heart. Never did Anne's feet bear her on a more willing errand than on that walk through the beach-woods to graft in the next morning. She found Miss Lavender in the garden, and was fearfully excited. Her hands grew cold and her voice trembled. Miss Lavender, I have something to tell you, something very important. Can you guess what it is? Anne never supposed that Miss Lavender could guess, but Miss Lavender's face grew very pale, and Miss Lavender said in a quiet, still voice, from which all the colour and sparkle that Miss Lavender's voice usually suggested had faded. Stephen Herving 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 Lavender. 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 Lavender's desk. Oh, it's delightful to be living in a story-book, 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 Miss Herving will take Miss Lavender 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 way-laid 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. Carlotta IV felt that some mystery pervaded the stone house that afternoon—a mystery from which she was excluded. Miss Lavender 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. Carlotta IV 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 Carlotta IV with an indignant toss of her very blue bows. It's plain to be seen you and Miss Lavender 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, Carlotta dear, I'd have told you all about it if it were my secret. But it's Miss Lavender'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 to-night. 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 Carlotta. Anne laughed. In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavender's is coming to see her to-night. Do you mean an old beau of hers, demanded the literal Carlotta? 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, Carlotta. I hope that he'll marry Miss Lavender, was Carlotta'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 Lavender 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 Carlotta 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 fateful little handmaiden dashed off 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 Lavender 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 Lavender pretended to be very calm and indifferent. I must really mend that rent in the curtain to-morrow, she said anxiously, inspecting it as if her 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, Carlotta has forgotten to dust the stair railing again. I 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 only 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's smile a little sadly into her uplifted face, all a star 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 Carlotta IV, 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, at just the right age for Miss Lavender. And, oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am, do you think it would be much harm to listen at the door? It would be dreadful, Carlotta, 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 around just waiting, sighed Carlotta. What if you don't propose after all, Miss Shirley, ma'am? You can never be sure of them men. My older sister, Carlotta I, 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 to-night, 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 Carlotta. 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 Lavender 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 Carlotta the forth delightedly. He must have proposed to her or she'd never allow it. Anne caught Carlotta the forth by her own plump waist and danced her around the kitchen until they were both out of breath. Oh, Carlotta, she cried gaily, I am neither a prophetess nor the daughter of a prophetess, but I am 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, Carlotta? No, I can understand that, said Carlotta. A wedding ain't poetry. Why, Miss Shirley, ma'am, you're crying. What for? Oh, because it's all so beautiful and storybookish 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 risk in marrying anybody, conceded Carlotta the forth. But when all said and done, Miss Shirley, ma'am, there's many a worse thing than a husband. CHAPTER XXIX For the next month, Anne lived in what, for Avonlea, might be called a world of excitement. The preparation of her own modest outfit for Redmond was of secondary importance. Miss Lavender was getting ready to be married, and the stone house was the scene of endless consultations and plannings and discussions with Carlotta the forth hovering on the outskirts of things and 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 Lavender to select brown rather than navy blue for her travelling dress and to have her grey silk-made princess. Everybody concerned in Miss Lavender'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 Lavender. 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. Lynn says she thoroughly approves of the match and thinks it's likely Miss Lavender 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 up her queer notions, 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." Carlotta IV was another radiant person. Oh, Miss Shirley, ma'am! It has all turned out so beautiful! When Mr. Irving and Miss Lavender 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 risk, Miss Shirley, ma'am. Oh, it's all so romantic! Breathed aunt to Marilla that night. If I hadn't taken the wrong path that day we went to Mr. Kimbell's, I'd never have known Miss Lavender, 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 Lavender 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 Lavender for fifteen years. Somebody had told him 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. Linn 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 Lavender. In the first place, two young fools quarrel and turn sulk-y. Then Steve Irving goes to the States, and after a spell gets married up there and is perfectly happy for Mal 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 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 apparel in celestial light, wearing a glory and a freshness not visible to those who, like herself and Carlotta IV, looked at things only through prose. When's the wedding to be? She asked after a pause. The last Wednesday in August, there 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 Lavender'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 Carlotta IV 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 woodcut, and came out into the berry 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 suspicion that Diana was proving false to the melancholy, bironic hero of her early dreams. But as things seen are my dear 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 right. It is always a very puzzling question. What can somebody see in somebody else? But how fortunate, after all, that it is so. Or 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 right, however Anne's eyes might be holding. Diana came to Green Gable's 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? 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 Diane in vexation. I didn't mean that. It's so hard to explain. Never mind, you'll understand some time when your own turn comes. Bless you, dearest of Diana's, 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 forever 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 Doiley's to-morrow. My reggillus had thirty-seven Doiley's 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 Doiley's, 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 repentently. 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 of dreams." Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, home of 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 of 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, had a 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 Sloan and his wife. Mrs. Lynn says it always makes her think of the long and the short of it when she sees them together. Well, said Anne to herself that night as she brushed her hair before her guilt-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 in a pokey commonplace way, he'd have to do something splendid to win her, but she's 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. CHAPTER XXXIII A WEDDING AT THE STONE HOUSE The last week in August came. Miss Lavender was to be married in it. Two weeks later, Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College. The next time Mrs. Rachel Lind would move to Green Gables and set up her lairs and pennants 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 Allens pack up. Mr. Allam 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. It isn'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 stay 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 good will 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 Lavender and Carlotta IV with their final preparations for the morrow's bridle. Miss Lavender 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 in the neighboring districts that summer, thanks to Uncle Abe's storm. And Anne and Diana thought that a certain old cream-coloured stone jug, usually kept secreted donuts, 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 suppose 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 will 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 new neutrality. "'Yes, I'm going,' said Anne. "'I'm very glad with my head, and very sorry with my heart. I suppose you'll be scooping up all the honours 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 neighbour's gardens had yielded. They found the stone house a-gog with excitement. Carlotta IV 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, Carlotta's blue bows waved ever in the thickest of the frame. "'Praise, Peter, goodness you've come,' she said devoutly, for there's heaps of things to do when the frosting on that cake won't harden, and there's all the silver to be rubbed up yet, and the horse-hair trunk to be packed, and the roosters for the chicken-salad are running out there beyond the hen-house yet crowing, Miss Shirley-Mam, and Miss Lavender 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. Cording's all right in its place, Miss Shirley-Mam, but if you try to mix it up with cooking and scouring, everything's spoiled. That's my opinion, Miss Shirley-Mam." Anne and Diana worked so heartily that by ten o'clock even Carlotta IV was satisfied. She braided her hair in innumerable plaques, and took her weary little bones off to bed. "'But I'm sure I shan't sleep a blessed wink, Miss Shirley-Mam, 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 dim- pulled corners of her mouth twitching. To Diana, Carlotta IV was, if not exactly a thing of beauty, certainly a joy for ever. "'They're not things that go by habit,' said Carlotta IV, 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 Lade predicted rain for the middle of the week, and ever since that big storm I can't help believing there's a good deal in what Uncle Lade says—and, who knew better than Diana just how much Uncle Lade 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 Carlotta IV. "'Oh, Miss Shirley-Mam, 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-Mam, I'm scared 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 Carlotta IV was saying this merely by way of rousing her effectually. But alas! the morning did look unpropitious. Below the window, Miss Lavender's garden, which should have been a glory of pale virgin sunshine, lay dim and windless, and the sky over the furs 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 Carlotta, creeping into the room, a figure of fun with her many braids wound round 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 would get sopping and track mud all over the house, and they won't be able to get 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 till last.' Carlotta IV 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 Carlotta'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 Carlotta's neck, somewhat after the fashion of Raphael's cherubs. But Carlotta IV 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 Carlotta despairingly. "'You just have to be born so, I guess. Don't seems if any amount of practice could give you that air.' By one o'clock the guests had come, including Mr. and Mrs. Allen, for Mr. Allen was to perform the ceremony in the absence of the Grafton minister on his vacation. There was no formality about the marriage. Miss Lavender 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 Carlotta IV, who intercepted it, feel queerer than ever. They went out to the honeysuckle arbor where Mr. Allen was awaiting them. The guests grouped themselves as they pleased. Allen and Diana stood by the old stone bench, with Carlotta IV between them, desperately clutching their hands in her cold, tremulous little pause. Mr. Allen opened his blue book, and the ceremony proceeded. Just as Miss Lavender and Stephen Irving were pronounced man and wife, a very beautiful and symbolic thing happened. The sun suddenly burst through the grey 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 Carlotta IV, 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 suller 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 Lavender—I beg her pardon, Mrs. Irving—stepped from the door of her old home, Gilbert and the girls threw the rice, and Carlotta IV hurled an old shoe with such excellent aim that she struck Mr. Allen 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 clanger 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 Lavender's beloved echoes were bidding her greeting and farewell. And so amid this benediction of sweet sounds, Miss Lavender 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 Carlotta IV came down the lane again. Lord had gone to West Grafton on an errand, and Diana had to keep an engagement at home. Anne and Carlotta 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 layer of desolation which always follows a festivity. Oh, dear me, don't it look lonesome, sniffed Carlotta IV, who had been crying all the way home from the station. A wedding ain't much cheerfuler 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 Carlotta IV's young brothers at home. Anne would not rest until everything was in apple pie order. After Carlotta 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 unwirably thinking long, long thoughts. What are you thinking of, Anne? asked Gilbert, coming down the walk. He had left his horse and buggy out of the road. Of Miss Lavender 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 belong to each other? For a moment Anne's heart fluttered clearly, 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 night 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 at 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 girdon of a useful knowledge gained in 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 durants the echoes bided their time. End of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery