 CHAPTER X Davey in search of a sensation. Anne, walking home from school through the birch path one November afternoon, felt convinced afresh that life was a very wonderful thing. The day had been a good day. All had gone well in her little kingdom. Sinclair Donnell had not fought any of the other boys over the question of his name. Prilly Rodgerson's face had been so puffed up from the effects of toothache that she did not once try to cacate with the boys in her vicinity. Barbara Shaw had met with only one accident, spilling a dipper of water over the floor, and Anthony Pye had not been in school at all. "'What a nice month this November has been,' said Anne, who had never quite got over her childish habit of talking to herself. November is usually such a disagreeable month, as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully, just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming, even with grey hair and wrinkles. We've had lovely days and delicious twilight. This last fortnight has been so peaceful, and even Davey has been almost well-behaved. I really think he is improving a great deal." How quiet the woods are today—not a murmur except that soft wind purring in the treetops. It sounds like surf on a faraway shore. How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! I love every one of you as a friend. Anne paused to throw her arm about a slim young birch and kiss its cream-white trunk. Diana, rounding a curve in the path, saw her and laughed. Anne, surely you're only pretending to be grown up. I believe when you're alone you're as much a little girl as you ever were. Well, one can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once, said Anne Gailey. You see, I was a little girl for fourteen years, and I've only been grown upish for scarcely three. I'm sure I shall always feel like a child in the woods. These walks home from school are almost the only time I have for dreaming, except for the half hour or so before I go to sleep. I'm so busy with teaching and studying and helping Marilla with the twins that I haven't another moment for imagining things. You don't know what splendid adventures I have for a little while after I go to bed in the East Gable every night. I always imagine I'm something very brilliant and triumphant and splendid—a great prima donna, or a Red Cross nurse, or a queen. Last night I was a queen. It's really splendid to imagine you're a queen. You have all the fun of it, without any of the inconveniences, and you can start being a queen whenever you want to, which you couldn't in real life. But here in the woods I like best to imagine quite different things. I'm a dryad living in an old pine, or a little brown wood elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch who caught me kissing is a sister of mine. The only difference is, she's a tree and I'm a girl. But that's no real difference. Where are you going, Diana? Down to the Dixons. I promise to help Alberta cut out her new dress. Can't you walk down in the evening, Anne, and come home with me? I might, since Fred Wright is away in town, said I am with a rather too innocent face. Diana blushed, tossed her head, and walked on. She did not look offended, Anne fully intended to go down to the Dixons that evening, but she did not. When she arrived at Green Gables she found a state of affairs which banished every other thought from her mind. Marilla met her in the yard. A wild-eyed Marilla. Anne, Dora is lost. Dora lost? Anne looked at Davy, who was swinging on the yard gate and detected merriment in his eyes. Davy, do you know where she is? No, I don't, said Davy stoutly. I haven't seen her since dinnertime. Cross my heart. I've been away ever since one o'clock, said Marilla. Thomas Lynn took sick all of a sudden, and Rachel sent up for me to go at once. When I left here Dora was playing with her doll in the kitchen and Davy was making mud pies behind the barn. I only got home half an hour ago, and no Dora to be seen. Davy declares he never saw her since I left. Neither I did—about Davy solemnly. She must be somewhere around, said Anne. She would never wander far away alone. You know how timid she is. Perhaps she's fallen asleep in one of the rooms. Marilla shook her head. I've hunted the whole house through. But she may be in some of the buildings. A thorough search followed. Every corner of house, yard, and outbuildings was ransacked by those two distracted people. Anne roved the orchards and the haunted wood calling Dora's name. Marilla took a candle and explored the cellar. Davy accompanied each of them in turn, and was fertile in thinking of places where Dora could possibly be. Finally they met again in the yard. It's a most mysterious thing, groaned Marilla. Where can she be, said Anne miserably. Maybe she's tumbled into the well, suggested Davy cheerfully. Anne and Marilla looked fearfully into each other's eyes. The thought had been with them both through their entire search, but neither had dared to put it into words. She—she might have, whispered Marilla. Anne, feeling faint and sick, went to the well-box and peered over. The bucket sat on the shelf inside. Far down below was a tiny glimmer of still water. The Cuthbert well was the deepest in Avonlea. If Dora—but Anne could not face the idea. She shuddered and turned away. "'Run across for Mr. Harrison,' said Marilla, wringing her hands. "'Mr. Harrison and John Henry are both away. They went to town to-day. I'll go for Mr. Barry.' Mr. Barry came back with Anne, carrying a coil of rope to which was attached a claw-like instrument that had been the business end of a grubbing fork. Marilla and Anne stood by, cold and shaken with horror and dread, while Mr. Barry dragged the well, and Davy, astride the gate, watched the group with a face indicative of huge enjoyment. Finally Mr. Barry shook his head with a relieved air. She can't be down there. It's a mighty curious thing where she could have got to, though. "'Look here, young man. Are you sure you've no idea where your sister is?' "'I've told you a dozen times that I haven't,' said Davy with an injured air. Maybe a tramp come and stole her.' "'Nonsense,' said Marilla sharply, relieved from our horrible fear of the well. "'Anne, do you suppose she could have strayed over to Mr. Harrison's? She has always been talking about his parrot ever since that time you took her over.' "'I can't believe Dora would venture so far alone. But I'll go over and see,' said Anne. Nobody was looking at Davy just then, or it would have been seen that a very decided change came over his face. He quietly slipped off the gate and ran as fast as his fat legs could carry him to the barn. Anne hastened across the fields to the Harrison establishment in no very hopeful frame of mind. The house was locked, the window shades were down, and there was no sign of anything living about the place. She stood on the veranda and called Dora loudly. Ginger in the kitchen behind her shrieked and swore with sudden fierceness. But between his outbursts Anne heard a plaintiff cry from the little building in the yard which served Mr. Harrison as a tool-house. Anne flew to the door, unhasted, and caught up a small mortal with a tear-stained face who was sitting forlornly on an upturned nail-keg. "'Oh, Dora! Dora would have fright you've given us! How came you to be here?' Davy and I came over to see Ginger, sobbed Dora. But we couldn't see him after all. Only Davy made him swear by kicking the door, and then Davy brought me here and run out and shut the door, and I couldn't get out. I cried and cried. I was frightened and— "'Oh, I'm so hungry and cold, and I thought you'd never come, Anne!' Davy! But Anne could say no more. She carried Dora home with a heavy heart. Her joy at finding the child safe and sound was drowned out in the pain caused by Davy's behaviour. The freak of shutting Dora up might easily have been pardoned. But Davy had told falsehoods, downright cold-blooded falsehoods about it. That was the ugly fact, and Anne could not shut her eyes to it. She could have sat down and cried with sheer disappointment. She had grown to love Davy dearly. How dearly she had not known until this minute, and it hurt her unbearably to discover that he was guilty of deliberate falsehood. Marilla listened to Anne's tale in a silence that boated no good Davy word. Mr. Barry laughed and advised that Davy be summarily dealt with. When he had gone home, Anne soothed and warmed the sobbing, shivering Dora, got her her supper and put her to bed. Then she returned to the kitchen, just as Marilla came grimly in, leading, or rather pulling, the reluctant cobwebby Davy whom she had just found hidden away in the darkest corner of the stable. She jerked him to the mat on the middle of the floor, and then went and sat down by the east window. Anne was sitting limply by the west window. Between them stood the culprit. His back was toward Marilla, and it was a meek, subdued, frightened back. But his face was toward Anne, and although it was a little shame-faced there was a gleam of comradeship in Davy's eyes, as if he knew he had done wrong and was going to be punished for it, but could count on a laugh over it all with Anne later on. But no half-hidden smile answered him in Anne's grey eyes, as there might have done had it been only a question of mischief. There was something else, something ugly and repulsive. How could you behave so, Davy? she asked sorrowfully. Davy squirmed uncomfortably. I just did it for fun. Things have been so awful quiet here for so long that I thought it would be fun to give you folks a big scare. It was, too. In spite of fear and a little remorse Davy grinned over the recollection. But you told a falsehood about it, Davy, said Anne, more sorrowfully than ever. Davy looked puzzled. What's a falsehood? Do you mean a whopper? I mean a story that was not true. Of course I did, said Davy, frankly. If I hadn't you wouldn't have been scared. I had to tell it. Anne was feeling the reaction from her fright and exertions. Davy's impenitent attitude gave the finishing touch. Two big tears brimmed up in her eyes. Oh, Davy, how could you, she said with a quiver in her voice. Don't you know how wrong it was? Davy was aghast. Anne crying. He had made Anne cry. A flood of real remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed it. He rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms around her neck and burst into tears. I didn't know it was wrong to tell whoppers, he sobbed. How'd you expect me to know it was wrong? All Mr. Sprott's children told him regular every day and crossed their hearts, too. I suppose Paul Irving never tells whoppers, and here I've been trying awful hard to be as good as him, but now I suppose you'll never love me again. But I think you might have told me it was wrong. I'm awful sorry I've made you cry, Anne, and I'll never tell a whopper again. Davy buried his face in Anne's shoulder and cried stormily. Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly, thatched Marilla. He didn't know it was wrong to tell falsehoods, Marilla. I think we must forgive him for that part of it this time, if he will promise never to say what isn't true again. I never will, now that I know it's bad," aseverated Davy between sobs. If you ever catch me telling a whopper again you can— Davy groped mentally for a suitable penance. You can skin me alive, Anne. Don't say whopper, Davy. Say falsehood, said the schoolman. Why, queried Davy, settling comfortably down and looking up with a tear-stained investigating face, why ain't whopper as good as falsehood? I want to know. It's just as big a word. It's slang, and it's wrong for little boys to use slang. There's an awful lot of things it's wrong to do, said Davy with a sigh. I never supposed there was so many. I'm sorry it's wrong to tell whop falsehoods, because it's awful handy. But since it is, I'm never going to tell any more. What are you going to do to me for tell him this time? I want to know," Anne looked beseechingly at Marilla. I don't want to be too hard on the child, said Marilla. I dare say nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those Sprott children were no frit companions for him. Poor Mary was too sick to train him properly, and I presume you couldn't expect a six-year-old child to know things like that by instinct. I suppose we'll just have to assume he doesn't know anything right, and begin at the beginning. But he'll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can't think of any way except to send him to bed without his supper, and we've done that so often. Can't you suggest something else, Anne? I should think you ought to be able to, with that imagination you're always talking of. But punishments are so horrid, and I like to imagine only pleasant things, said Anne, cuddling Davy. There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there's no use imagining any more. In the end Davy was sent to bed, as usual, there to remain until noon next day. He evidently did some thinking, for when Anne went up to her room a little later she heard him calling her name softly. Going in she found him sitting up in bed with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped on his hands. Anne, he said solemnly, is he wrong for everybody to tell what falsehoods I want to know? Yes, indeed. Is he wrong for a grown-up person? Yes. Then, said Davy decidedly, Marilla is bad for she tells them, and she's worse than me, for I didn't know it was wrong, but she does. Davy Keith, Marilla never told a story in her life, said Anne indignantly. She did so. She told me last Tuesday that something dreadful would happen to me if I didn't say my prayers every night, and I haven't said them for over a week just to see what would happen, and nothing has, concluded Davy in a grieve tone. Anne choked back a mad desire to laugh with a conviction that it would be fatal, and then earnestly said about saving Marilla's reputation. Why, Davy Keith, she said solemnly, something dreadful has happened to you this very day. Davy looked skeptical. I suppose you mean being sent to bed without any supper, he said scornfully, but that isn't dreadful. Of course I don't like it, but I've been sent to bed so much since I come here that I'm getting used to it, and you don't save anything by making me go without supper, either, for I always eat twice as much for breakfast. I don't mean you're being sent to bed. I mean the fact that you told a falso to-day, and Davy. Anne leaned over the footboard of the bed and shook her finger impressively at the culprit, for a boy to tell what isn't true is almost the worst thing that could happen to him, almost the very worst. So you see, Marilla told you the truth. But I thought that something bad would be exciting, protested Davy in a injured tone. Marilla isn't to blame for what you thought. Bad things aren't always exciting. They're very often just nasty and stupid. It was awful funny to see Marilla and you looking down the well, though, said Davy, hugging his knees. Anne kept a sober face until she got downstairs, and then she collapsed on the sitting-room lounge and laughed until her sides ached. I wish you'd tell me the joke, said Marilla, a little grimly. I haven't seen much to laugh at to-day. You'll laugh when you hear this, assured Anne. And Marilla did laugh, which showed how much her education had advanced since the adoption of Anne. But she sighed immediately afterwards. I suppose I shouldn't have told him that, although I heard a minister say it to a child once. But he did aggravate me so. It was that night you were at the Carmody concert and I was putting him to bed. He said he didn't see the good of praying until he got big enough to be of some importance to God. Anne, I do not know what we are going to do with that child. I never saw his beat. I'm feeling clean discouraged. Oh, don't say that, Marilla. Remember how bad I was when I came here. Anne, you were never bad. Never. I see that now when I've learned what real badness is. You were always getting into terrible scrapes, I'll admit, but your motive was always good. Davy is just bad from sheer love of it. Oh, no, I don't think it is real badness with him, either, pleaded Anne. It's just mischief. And it is rather quiet for him here, you know. He has no other boys to play with, and his mind has to have something to occupy it. Dora is so prim and proper she is no good for a boy's playmate. I really think it would be better to let them go to school, Marilla. No," said Marilla resolutely. My father always said that no child should be cooped up in the four walls of a school until it was seven years old, and Mr. Allen says the same thing. The twins can have a few lessons at home, but go to school they shant until they're seven. Well, we must try to perform Davy at home, then," said Anne cheerfully. With all his faults he's really a dear little chap. I can't help loving him. Marilla, it may be a dreadful thing to say, but honestly I like Davy better than Dora for all she's so good. I don't know but that I do myself," confessed Marilla, and it isn't fair, for Dora isn't a bit of trouble. There couldn't be a better child, and you'd hardly know she was in the house. "'Dora is too good,' said Anne. She'd behaved just as well if there wasn't a soul to tell her what to do. She was born already brought up, so she doesn't need us. And I think, concluded Anne, hitting on a very vital truth, that we always love best the people who need us. Davy needs us badly. He certainly needs something," agreed Marilla. Rachel Lynde would say it was a good spanking. CHAPTER XI. FACTS AND FANCIES Teaching is really very interesting work, wrote Anne to a Queen's Academy chum. Jane says she thinks it is monotonous, but I don't find it so. Something funny is almost sure to happen every day, and the children say such amusing things. Jane says she punishes her pupils when they make funny speeches, which is probably why she finds teaching monotonous. This afternoon little Jimmy Andrews was trying to spell speckled, and couldn't manage it. "'Well,' he said finally, "'I can't spell it, but I know what it means.' "'What?' I asked. St. Clair-Denel's face miss.' St. Clair is certainly very much freckled, although I try to prevent the others from commenting on it, for I was freckled once, and well do I remember it. But I don't think St. Clair minds. It was because Jimmy called him St. Clair that St. Clair pounded him on the way home from school. I heard of the pounding, but not officially, so I don't think I'll take any notice of it. Yesterday I was trying to teach Lottie Wright to do addition. I said, "'If you had three candies in one hand, and two in the other, how many would you have altogether?' "'A mouthful,' said Lottie. And in the Nature Study class, when I asked them to give me a good reason why toads shouldn't be killed, Benjy Sloan gravely answered, because it would rain the next day. "'It's so hard not to laugh, Stella. I have to save up all my amusement until I get home, and Marilla says it makes her nervous to hear wild shrieks of mirth proceeding from the East Gable without any apparent cause. She says a man engrafted when insane once, and that was how it began. Did you know that Thomas E. Beckett was canonized as a snake?" Rose Bell says he was. Also that William Tyndale wrote the New Testament. Claude White says a glacier is a man that puts in window frames. I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner-hour, and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves. I asked them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some of the answers were commonplace enough—dolls, ponies, and skates. Others were decidedly original. Hester Bolter wanted to wear her Sunday dress every day and eat in the sitting-room. Hannah Bell wanted to be good without having to take any trouble about it. Marjorie White, age ten, wanted to be a widow. Questioned why, she gravely said that if you weren't married people called you an old maid, and if you were your husband bossed you, but if you were a widow there'd be no danger of either. The most remarkable wish was Sally Bell's. She wanted a honeymoon. I asked her if she knew what it was, and she said she thought it was an extra nice kind of bicycle, because her cousin in Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married, and he had always had the very latest in bicycles. Another day I asked them all to tell me the naughtiest thing they had ever done. I couldn't get the older ones to do so, but the third class answered quite freely. Eliza Bell had set fire to her aunt's carted rolls. Asked if she meant to do it, she said, not altogether. She just tried a little end to see how it would burn, and the whole bundle blazed up in a jiffy. Emerson Gillis had spent ten cents for candy when he should have put it in his missionary box. Annette Bell's worst crime was eating some blueberries that grew in the graveyard. Willie White had slid down the sheep-house roof a lot of times with his Sunday trousers on, but I was punished for it, because I had to wear patched pants to Sunday school all summer, and when you're punished for a thing you don't have to repent of it, declared Willie. I wish you could see some of their compositions. So much do I wish it that I'll send you copies of some written recently. Last week I told the fourth class I wanted them to write me letters about anything they pleased, adding by way of suggestion that they might tell me of some place they had visited, or some interesting thing or person they had seen. They were to write the letters on real note paper, seal them in an envelope, and address them to me, all without any assistance from other people. Last Friday morning I found a pile of letters on my desk, and that evening I realized afresh that teaching has its pleasures as well as its pains. These compositions would atone for much. Here is Ned Clay's address, spelling, and grammar as originally penned. Miss Teacher Shirley. Green Gables. P. E. Island. Can. Birds. Dear Teacher, I think I will write you a composition about birds. Birds is very useful animals. My cat catches birds. His name is William, but Pa calls him Tom. He is all striped, and he got one of his ears froze off last winter. Only for that he would be a good-looking cat. My uncle has adopted a cat. It come to his house one day and wouldn't go away, and uncle says it has forgotten more than most people ever knowed. He lets it sleep on his rocking chair, and my aunt says he thinks more of it than he does of his children. That is not right. We ought to be kind to cats and give them new milk, but we ought not be better to them than to our children. This is all I can think of, so no more at present from Edward Blake Clay. Sinclair Donnells is, as usual, short and to the point. Sinclair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the post-script out of malice of forethought. It is just that he has not a great deal of tact or imagination. Dear Miss Shirley. You told us to describe something strange we have seen. I will describe the Avonlea Hall. It has two doors, an inside one and an outside one. It has six windows and a chimney. It has two ends and two sides. It is painted blue. That is what makes it strange. It is built on the lower Carmody Road. It is the third most important building in Avonlea. The others are the church and the blacksmith's shop. They hold debating clubs and lectures in it and concerts. Yours truly, Jacob Donnell. P.S. The Hall is a very bright blue. Annetta Bell's letter was quite long, which surprised me. For writing essays is not Annetta's forte, and hers are generally as brief as Sinclair's. Annetta is a quiet little pus and a model of good behaviour, but there isn't a shadow of originality in her. Here is her letter. Dearest Teacher. I think I will write you a letter to tell you how much I love you. I love you with my whole heart and soul and mind, with all there is of me to love, and I want to serve you forever. It would be my highest privilege. That is why I try so hard to be good in school and learn my lessons. You are so beautiful, my teacher. Your voice is like music and your eyes are like pansies when the dew is on them. You are like a tall, stately queen. Your hair is like rippling gold. Anthony Pye says it is red, but you needn't pay any attention to Anthony. I have only known you for a few months, but I cannot realise that there was ever a time when I did not know you, when you had not come into my life to bless and hallow it. I will always look back to this year as the most wonderful in my life, because it brought you to me. Besides, it's the year we moved to Avonlea from Newbridge. My love for you has made my life very rich, and it has kept me from much of harm and evil. I owe this all to you, my sweetest teacher. I shall never forget how sweet you looked the last time I saw you in that black dress with flowers in your hair. I shall see you like that forever, even when we are both old and gray. You will always be young and fair to me, dearest teacher. I am thinking of you all the time, in the morning and at the noontide and at the twilight. I love you when you laugh and when you sigh, even when you look disdainful. I never saw you look cross, though Anthony Pye says you always look so, but I don't wonder you look cross at him for he deserves it. I love you in every dress. You seem more adorable in each new dress than the last. Dearest teacher, good night. The sun has set and the stars are shining. Stars that are as bright and beautiful as your eyes. I kiss your hands and face, my sweet. May God watch over you and protect you from all harm. Your affectionate pupil and Annetta Bell. This extraordinary letter puzzled me not a little. I knew Annetta couldn't have composed it any more than she could fly. When I went to school the next day I took her for a walk down to the brook at recess and asked her to tell me the truth about the letter. Annetta cried and fessed up freely. She said she had never written a letter and she didn't know how to or what to say, but there was a bundle of love letters in her mother's top bureau door which had been written to her by an old bone. It wasn't father, sobbed Annetta, it was someone who was studying for a minister and so he could write lovely letters but Ma didn't marry him after all. She said she couldn't make out what he was driving at half the time. But I thought the letters were sweet and that I'd just copy things out of them here and there to write you. I put teacher where he put lady and I put in something of my own when I could think of it and I changed some words. I put dress in place of mood. I didn't know just what a mood was but I supposed it was something to wear. I didn't suppose you'd know the difference. I don't see how you found out it wasn't all mine. You must be awful clever, teacher. I told Annetta it was very wrong to copy another person's letter and pass it off as her own, but I'm afraid that all Annetta repented of was being found out. And I do love you, teacher," she sobbed. It was all true, even if the minister wrote it first, I do love you with all my heart. It's very difficult to scold anybody properly under such circumstances. Here is Barbara Shaw's letter. I can't reproduce the blots of the original. Dear teacher, you said we might write about a visit. I never visited but once. It was at my Aunt Mary's last winter. My Aunt Mary is a very particular woman and a great housekeeper. The first night I was there we were at tea. I knocked over a jug and broke it. Aunt Mary said she had had that jug ever since she was married and nobody had ever broken it before. When we got up I stepped on her dress and all the gathers tore out of the skirt. The next morning when I got up I hit the pitcher against the basin and cracked them both and I upset a cup of tea on the tablecloth at breakfast. When I was helping Aunt Mary with the dinner-dishes I dropped a china plate and it smashed. That evening I fell downstairs and sprained my ankle and had to stay in bed for a week. I heard Aunt Mary tell Uncle Joseph it was a mercy or I'd have broken everything in the house. When I got better it was time to go home. I don't like visiting very much. I like going to school better, especially since I came to Avonlea. Yours respectfully, Barbara Shaw. Willie Whites began. Respected Miss. I want to tell you about my very brave aunt. She lives in Ontario and one day she went out to the barn and saw a dog in the yard. The dog had no business there so she got a stick and whacked him hard and drove him into the barn and shut him up. Pretty soon a man came looking for an imaginary lion. Query, did Willie mean a menagerie lion? That had run away from a circus and it turned out that the dog was a lion and my very brave aunt had drove him into the barn with a stick. It was a wonder she was not ed up but she was very brave. Emerson Gillis says if she thought it was a dog she wasn't any braver than if it was really a dog, but Emerson is jealous because he hasn't got a brave aunt himself, nothing but uncles. I have kept the best for last. You laugh at me because I think Paul is a genius, but I am sure his letter will convince you that he has a very uncommon child. Paul lives away down near the shore with his grandmother and he has no playmates. No real playmates. You remember our school management professor told us that we must not have favourites among our pupils? But I can't help loving Paul Irving the best of all mine. I don't think it does any harm though, for everybody loves Paul, even Mrs. Lind, who says she could never have believed she'd get so fond of a Yankee. The other boys in school like him too, there's nothing weak or girlish about him in spite of his dreams and fancies. He is very manly and can hold his own in all games. He thoughts St. Clair Danelle recently because St. Clair said the Union Jack was away ahead of the stars and stripes as a flag. The result was a drawn battle and a mutual agreement to respect each other's patriotism henceforth. St. Clair says he can hit the hardest, but Paul can hit the oftenest. Paul's Letter My dear teacher, you told us we might write you about some interesting people we knew. I think the most interesting people I know are my rock people and I mean to tell you about them. I have never told anybody about them except Grandma and Father, but I would like to have you know about them because you understand things. There are great many people who do not understand things, so there is no use in telling them. My rock people live at the shore. I used to visit them almost every evening before the winter came. Now I can't go till spring, but they will be there. For people like that never change. That is the splendid thing about them. Nora was the first one of them I got acquainted with, and so I think I love her the best. She lives in Andrew's Cove and she has black hair and black eyes, and she knows all about the mermaids and the water-kelpies. You ought to hear the stories she can tell. Then there are the twin sailors. They don't live anywhere, they sail all the time, but they often come ashore to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly Tars and they have seen everything in the world, and more than what is in the world. Do you know what happened to the youngest twin sailor once? He was sailing, and he sailed right into a moon-glade. A moon-glade is the track the full moon makes on the water when it is rising from the tree, no teacher. While the youngest twin sailor sailed along the moon-glade until he came right up to the moon, and there was a little golden door in the moon, and he opened it and sailed right through. He had some wonderful adventures in the moon, but it would make this letter too long to tell them. Then there is the golden lady of the cave. One day I found a big cave down on the shore, and I went away in, and after a while I found the golden lady. She has golden hair right down to her feet, and her dress is all glittering and glistening like gold that is alive. And she has a golden harp and plays on it all day long. You can hear the music any time along shore if you listen carefully, but most people would think it was only the wind among the rocks. I've never told Nora about the golden lady. I was afraid it might hurt her feelings. It even hurt her feelings if I talk too long with the twin sailors. I always met the twin sailors at the striped rocks. The youngest twin sailor is very good tempered, but the oldest twin sailor can look dreadfully fierce at times. I have my suspicions about that oldest twin. I believe he'd be a pirate if he dared. There's really something very mysterious about him. He swore once, and I told him if he ever did it again he needn't come ashore to talk to me, because I'd promised grandmother I'd never associate with anybody that swore. He was pretty well scared, I can tell you, and he said if I would forgive him he would take me to the sunset. So the next evening when I was sitting on the striped rocks, the oldest twin came sailing over the sea in an enchanted boat, and I got in her. The boat was all pearly and rainbowy like the inside of mussel shells, and her sail was like moonshine. Well, we sailed right across to the sunset. Think of that, teacher. I've been in the sunset. And what do you suppose it is? The sunset is a land all flowers. We sailed into a great garden, and the clouds are beds of flowers. We sailed into a great harbour, all the colour of gold, and I stepped right out of the boat on a big meadow all covered with butter-cups as big as roses. I stayed there for ever so long. It seemed nearly a year, but the oldest twin says it was only a few minutes. You see, in the sunset land, the time is ever so much longer than it is here. Your loving pupil, Paul Irving. P.S. Of course, this letter isn't really true, teacher. P.I. CHAPTER XI. A DONA DAY. It really began the night before, with a restless, wakeful vigil of grumbling toothache. When Anna rose in the dull, bitter winter morning, she felt that life was flat, stale, and unprofitable. She went to school in no angelic mood. Her cheek was swollen and her face ached. The schoolroom was cold and smoky, for the fire refused to burn, and the children were huddled about it in shivering groups. Anne sent them to their seats with a sharper tone than she had ever used before. Anthony P.I. strutted to his with his usual impertinent swagger, and she saw him whisper something to his seatmate, and then glanced at her with a grin. Never, so it seemed to Anne, had there been so many squeaky pencils as there were that morning. And when Barbara Shaw came up to the desk with a sum, she tripped over the coal-scuttle with disastrous results. The coal rolled to every part of the room, her slate was broken into fragments, and when she picked herself up, her face, stained with coal dust, sent the boys into roars of laughter. Anne turned from the second-reader class which she was hearing. Really, Barbara, she said, icily, if you cannot move without falling over something you'd better remain in your seat. It is positively disgraceful for a girl of your age to be so awkward. Poor Barbara stumbled back to her desk, her tears combining with the coal dust to produce an effect truly grotesque. Never before had her beloved sympathetic teacher spoken to her in such a tone or fashion, and Barbara was heartbroken. Anne herself felt a prick of conscience, but it only served to increase her mental irritation, and the second-reader class remember that lesson yet, as well as the unmerciful infliction of arithmetic that followed. Just as Anne was snapping the sums out, Sinclair D'Nel arrived breathlessly. You are half an hour late, Sinclair, Anne reminded him frigidly. Why is this? Please, miss, I had to help Ma make a pudding for dinner because we're expecting company and Clarice Elmira is sick, was Sinclair's answer, given in a perfectly respectful voice, but nevertheless provocative of great mirth among his mates. Take your seat and work out the six problems on page eighty-four of your arithmetic for punishment, said Anne. Sinclair looked rather amazed at her tone, but went meekly to his desk and took out his slate. Then he stealthily passed a small parcel to Joe Sloan across the aisle. Anne caught him in the act and jumped to a fatal conclusion about that parcel. Old Mrs. Hiram Sloan had lately taken to making and selling nut cakes by way of adding to her scanty income. The cakes were specially tempting to small boys, and for several weeks Anne had had not a little trouble in regard to them. On their way to school the boys would invest their spare cash to Mrs. Hiram's, bring the cakes along with them to school, and if possible, eat them and treat their mates during school hours. Anne had warned them that if they brought any more cakes to school they would be confiscated, and yet here was Sinclair Danelle coolly passing a parcel of them wrapped up in the blue and white striped paper Mrs. Hiram used under her very eyes. Joseph, said Anne quietly, bring that parcel here. Joe, startled and abashed, obeyed. He was a fat urchin who always blushed and stuttered when he was frightened. Never did anybody look more guilty than poor Joe at that moment. Throw it into the fire, said Anne. Joe looked very blank. P-please, m-m-m-miss, he began. Do as I tell you, Joseph, without any words about it. B-b-b-b-m-m-m-miss, th-th-th-there gasped Joe in desperation. Joe, are you going to obey me or are you not? said Anne. A bolder and more self-possessed lad than Joe Sloan would have been overawed by her tone and the dangerous flash of her eyes. This was a new Anne whom none of her pupils had ever seen before. Joe, with an agonized glance at Sinclair, went to the stove, opened the big square front door and threw the blue and white parcel in before St. Clair, who had sprung to his feet, could utter a word. Then he dodged back just in time. For a few moments the terrified occupants of Avonlea School did not know whether it was an earthquake or a volcanic explosion that had occurred. The innocent-looking parcel which Anne had rashly supposed to contain Mrs. Hiram's nut-cakes really held an assortment of firecrackers and pinwheels for which Warren Sloan had sent to town by Sinclair D'Nel's father the day before, intending to have a birthday celebration that evening. The crackers went off in a thunder-clap of noise and the pinwheels bursting out of the door spun madly around the room, hissing and spluttering. Anne dropped into her chair white with dismay, and all the girls climbed shrieking upon their desks. Joe Sloan stood as one transfixed in the midst of the commotion and Sinclair, helpless with laughter, rocked to and fro in the aisle. Prilly Rogerson fainted, and Annette Bell went into hysterics. It seemed a long time, although it was really only a few minutes, before the last pinwheels subsided. Anne, recovering herself, sprang to open doors and windows and let out the gas and smoke which filled the room. Then she helped the girls carry the unconscious Prilly into the porch, where Barbara Shaw, in an agony of desire to be useful, poured a pailful of half-rozen water over Prilly's face and shoulders before anyone could stop her. It was a full hour before quiet was restored, but it was a quiet that might be filled. Everybody realized that even the explosion had not cleared the teacher's mental atmosphere. Nobody, except Anthony Pye, dared whisper a word. Ned Clay accidentally squeaked his pencil while working a sum, caught Anne's eye, and wished the floor would open and swallow him up. The geography class were whisked through a continent with a speed that made them dizzy. The grammar class were parsed and analyzed within an inch of their lives. Chester Sloan, spelling odiferous with two Fs, was made to feel that he could never live down the disgrace of it, either in this world or that which is to come. Anne knew that she had made herself ridiculous and that the incident would be laughed over that night at a score of tea-tables, but the knowledge only angered her further. In a calmer mood she could have carried off the situation with a laugh, but now that was impossible, so she ignored it in icy disdain. When Anne returned to the school after dinner, all the children were as usual in their seats, and every face was bent studiously over a desk except Anthony Pye's. He peered across his book at Anne, his black eyes sparkling with curiosity and mockery. Anne twitched open the drawer of her desk in search of chalk, and under her very hand a lively mouse sprang out of the drawer, scampered over the desk and leapt to the floor. Anne screamed and sprang back, as if it had been a snake, and Anthony Pye laughed aloud. Then a silence fell. A very creepy, uncomfortable silence. Annette Bell was of two minds whether to go into hysterics again or not, especially as she didn't know just where the mouse had gone. But she decided not to. Who could take any comfort out of hysterics with a teacher so white-faced and so blazing-eyed standing before one? Who put that mouse in my desk? said Anne. Her voice was quite low, but it made a shiver go up and down Paul Irving's spine. Joe Sloan caught her eye, felt responsible from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet, but started out wildly—not me, teacher, not me. Anne paid no attention to the wretched Joseph. She looked at Anthony Pye, and Anthony Pye looked back unabashed and unashamed. Anthony, was it you? Yes, it was, said Anthony insolently. Anne took her pointer from her desk. It was a long, heavy hardwood pointer. Come here, Anthony. It was far from being the most severe punishment Anthony Pye had ever undergone. Anne, even the stormy sold Anne she was at the moment, could not have punished any child cruelly. But the pointer nipped keenly, and finally Anthony's bravado failed him. He winced, and the tears came to his eyes. Anne, conscience-stricken, dropped the pointer and told Anthony to go to his seat. She sat down at her desk feeling ashamed, repentant, and bitterly mortified. Her quick anger was gone, and she would have given much to have been able to seek relief in tears. So all her boasts had come to this. She had actually whipped one of her pupils. How Jane would triumph, and how Mr. Harrison would chuckle. But worse than this, bitterest thought of all, she had lost her last chance of winning Anthony Pye. Never would he like her now. Anne, by what somebody has called a herculaneum effort, kept back her tears until she got home that night. Then she shut herself in the east gable room and wept all her shame and remorse and disappointment into her pillows. Wept so long that Marilla grew alarmed, invaded the room, and insisted on knowing what the trouble was. The trouble is—I've got things that matter with my conscience," sobbed Anne. Oh, this has been such a Jonah day, Marilla. I'm so ashamed of myself. I lost my temper and whipped Anthony Pye. I'm glad to hear it, said Marilla, with decision. It's what you should have done long ago. Oh, no, no, Marilla! And I don't see how I can ever look those children in the face again. I feel that I have humiliated myself to the very dust. You don't know how cross and hateful and horrid I was. I can't forget the expression in Paul Irving's eyes. He looked so surprised and disappointed. Oh, Marilla, I have tried so hard to be patient and to win Anthony's liking, and now it has all gone for nothing. Marilla passed her hard work-worn hand over the girl's glossy tumbled hair with a wonderful tenderness. When Anne sobbed, screwed quieter, she said, very gently for her. You take things too much to heart, Anne. We all make mistakes, but people forget them. And Jonah days come to everybody. As for Anthony Pye, why need you care if he does dislike you? He is the only one. I can't help it. I want everybody to love me, and it hurts me so when anybody doesn't. And Anthony never will now. Oh, I just made an idiot of myself today, Marilla. I'll tell you the whole story. Marilla listened to the whole story, and if she smiled at certain points of it, Anne never knew. When the tale was ended, she said briskly, Well, never mind. This day's done, and there's a new one coming to-morrow with no mistakes in it yet, as you used to say yourself. Just come downstairs and have your supper. You'll see if a good cup of tea and those plum-puffs I made to-day won't harden you up. Plum-puffs won't minister to a mind diseased, said Anne disconsolently. But Marilla thought it a good sign that she had recovered sufficiently to adapt a quotation. The cheerful supper-table, with the twins' bright faces and Marilla's matchless plum-puffs, of which Davy, eight-four, did harden her up considerably after all. She had a good sleep that night and awakened in the morning to find herself and the world transformed. It had snowed softly and thickly all through the hours of darkness, and the beautiful whiteness glittering in the frosty sunshine looked like a mantle of charity cast over all the mistakes and humiliations of the past. Every morning is a fresh beginning, every morning is the world made new, sang Anne, as she dressed. Owing to the snow she had to go around by the road to school, and she thought it was certainly an impish coincidence that Anthony Pye should come plowing along just as she left the Green Gables Lane. She felt as guilty as if their positions were reversed, but to her unspeakable astonishment Anthony not only lifted his cap, which he had never done before, but said easily, "'Kinda bad walking, ain't it? Can I take those books for you, teacher?' Anne surrendered her books and wondered if she could possibly be awake. Anthony walked on in silence to the school, but when Anne took her book she smiled down at him, not the stereotyped, kind smile she had so persistently assumed for his benefit, but a sudden outflashing of good comradeship. Anthony smiled, "'No, if the truth be told, Anthony grinned back. A grin is not generally supposed to be a respectful thing, yet Anne suddenly felt that if she had not yet won Anthony's liking, she had, somehow or other, won his respect.' Mrs. Rachel Lind came up the next Saturday and confirmed this. "'Well, Anne, I guess you've won over Anthony Pye, that's what. He says he believes you are some good after all, even if you are a girl. Says that whipping you gave him was just as good as a man's. I never expected to win him by whipping him, though,' said Anne a little mournfully, feeling that her ideals had played her false somewhere. It doesn't seem right. I'm sure my theory of kindness can't be wrong.' "'No, but the Pies are an exception to every known rule, that's what,' declared Mrs. Rachel with conviction. Mr. Harrison said, thought you'd come to it, when he heard it, and Jane rubbed it in rather unmercifully.' CHAPTER XIII. A GOLDEN PICNIC. Anne on her way to Orchard Slope met Diana, bound for Green Gables, just where the mossy old log bridge spanned the brook below the haunted wood, and they sat down by the margin of the dryad's bubble, where tiny ferns were unrolling like curly-headed green pixie-folk wakening up from a nap. "'I was just on my way over to invite you to help me celebrate my birthday on Saturday,' said Anne. "'Your birthday?' But your birthday was in March.' "'That wasn't my fault,' laughed Anne. "'If my parents had consulted me, it would never have happened then. I should have chosen to be born in spring, of course. It must be delightful to come into the world with the May flowers and violets. You would always feel that you were their foster sister. But since I didn't, the next best thing is to celebrate my birthday in the spring. Priscilla is coming over Saturday, and Jane will be home. We'll all four start off to the woods and spend the golden day making the acquaintance of the spring. We none of us really know her yet, but we'll meet her back there as we never can anywhere else. I want to explore all those fields and lonely places anyhow. I have a conviction that there are scores of beautiful nooks there that have never really been seen, although they may have been looked at. We'll make friends with wind and sky and sun and bring home the spring in our house." "'It sounds awfully nice,' said Diana, with some inward distrust of Anne's magic words. But won't it be very damp in some places yet?' "'Oh, we'll wear rubbers,' was Anne's concession to practicalities. And I want you to come over early Saturday morning and help me prepare lunch. I'm going to have the daintiest things possible, things that will match the spring, you understand—little jelly tarts and ladyfingers and drop cookies frosted with pink and yellow icing and butter-cup cake—and we must have sandwiches, too, though they're not very poetical." Saturday proved an ideal day for a picnic. A day of breeze and blue, warm, sunny, with a little rollicking wind blowing across meadow and orchard. Over every sunlit upland and field was a delicate, flower-starred green. Mr. Harrison, harrowing at the back of his farm and feeling some of the spring witchwork even in his sober middle-aged blood, saw four girls, basket-laden, tripping across the end of his field where it joined a fringing woodland of birch and fur. Their blithe voices and laughter echoed down to him. It's so easy to be happy on a day like this, isn't it? Anne was saying, with true, annish philosophy. Let's try to make this a really golden day, girls, a day to which we can always look back with delight. We're to seek for beauty and refuse to see anything else. Begone, dull care. Jane, you are thinking of something that went wrong in school yesterday. How do you know? gasped Jane amazed. Oh, I know the expression. I felt it often enough on my own face. But put it out of your mind, there's a deer. It will keep till Monday. Or if it doesn't, so much the better. Oh, girls, girls, see that patch of violets? There's something for memory's picture gallery. When I'm eighty years old, if I ever am, I shall shut my eyes and see those violets just as I see them now. That's the first good gift our day has given us. If a kiss could be seen, I think it would look like a violet, said Priscilla, and glowed. I'm so glad you spoke that thought, Priscilla, instead of just thinking it and keeping it to yourself. This world would be a much more interesting place, although it is very interesting, anyhow, if people spoke out their real thoughts. It would be too hot to hold some folks, quoted Jane, sagely. I suppose it might be, but that would be their own faults for thinking nasty things. Anyhow, we can tell all our thoughts today because we are going to have nothing but beautiful thoughts. Everybody can say just what comes into her head. That is conversation. Here's a little path I never saw before. Let's explore it. The path was a winding one, so narrow that the girls walked in single file, and even then the fur boughs brushed their faces. Under the furs were velvety cushions of moss and further on, where the trees were smaller and fewer, the ground was rich in a variety of green growing things. What a lot of elephants ears! exclaimed Diana. I'm going to pick a big bunch there so pretty. How did such graceful, feathery things ever come to have such a dreadful name? asked Priscilla. Because the person who first named them either had no imagination at all, or else far too much, said Anne. Oh, girls, look at that! That was a shallow woodland pool in the centre of a little open glade where the path ended. Later on in the season it would be dried up and its place filled with a rank growth of ferns, but now it was a glimmering placid sheet round as a saucer and clearest crystal. A ring of slender young birches encircled it and little ferns fringed its margin. How sweet! said Jane. Let us dance around it like wood nymphs, cried Anne, dropping her basket and extending her hands. For the dance was not a success, for the ground was boggy and Jane's rubbers came off. You can't be a wood nymph if you have to wear rubbers, was her decision. Well, we must name this place before we leave it, said Anne, yielding to the indisputable logic of facts. Everybody suggests a name and will draw lots. Diana? Birch-pool, suggested Diana promptly. Crystal Lake, said Jane. Anne, standing behind them, implored Priscilla with her eyes not to perpetrate another such name, and Priscilla rose to the occasion with glimmer-glass. Anne's election was the fairies' mirror. The names were written on strips of birch bark with a pencil school-ma'am Jane produced from her pocket and placed in Anne's hat. Then Priscilla shut her eyes and drew one. Crystal Lake, read Jane triumphantly. Crystal Lake it was, and if Anne thought the chance had played the pool a shabby trick, she did not say so. Pushing through the undergrowth beyond, the girls came out to the young green seclusion of Mr. Silas Sloan's back pasture. Across it they found the entrance to a lane striking up through the woods and voted to explore it also. It rewarded their quest with a succession of pretty surprises. First, skirting Mr. Sloan's pasture came an archway of wild cherry-trees all in bloom. The girls swung their hats on their arms and wreathed their hair with the creamy, fluffy blossoms. Then the lane turned at right angles and plunged into a spruce wood so thick and dark that they walked in a gloom as of twilight, with not a glimpse of sky or sunlight to be seen. This is where the bad wood elves dwell, whispered Anne. They are impish and malicious, but they can't harm us because they are not allowed to do evil in the spring. There was one peeping at us around that old twisted fir, and didn't you see a group of them on that big, freckly-told stool we just passed? The good fairies always dwell in the sun-shiny places. I wish there really were fairies, said Jane. Wouldn't it be nice to have three wishes granted you, or even only one? What would you wish for, girls, if you could have a wish granted? I'd wish to be rich and beautiful and clever. I'd wish to be tall and slender, said Diana. I would wish to be famous, said Priscilla, and thought of her hair and then dismissed the thought as unworthy. I'd wish it might be spring all the time, and in everybody's heart and all our lives, she said. But that, said Priscilla, would be just wishing this world were like heaven. Only like a part of heaven. In the other parts there would be summer and autumn, yes, and a bit of winter too. I think I want glittering snowy fields and white frosts in heaven sometimes, don't you, Jane? I—I don't know, said Jane uncomfortably. Jane was a good girl, a member of the church, who tried conscientiously to live up to her profession and believed everything she had been taught. But she never thought about heaven any more than she could help for all that. Many may ask me the other day if we would wear our best dresses every day in heaven, laughed Diana. And didn't you tell her we would? asked Anne. Mercy, no! I told her we wouldn't be thinking of dresses at all there. Oh, I think we will. A little, said Anne earnestly. There will be plenty of time and all eternity for it without neglecting more important things. I believe we'll all wear beautiful dresses. Or I suppose raiment would be a more suitable way of speaking. I shall want to wear pink for a few centuries at first. It would take me that long to get tired of it, I feel sure. I do love pink so, and I could never wear it in this world. Past the spruces the lane dipped down into a sunny little open where a log bridge spanned a brook. And then came the glory of a sun lit beachwood where the air was like transparent golden wine and the leaves fresh and green and the wood-floor mosaic of tremulous sunshine. Then more wild cherries and a little valley of lissum fares, and then a hill so steep that the girls lost their breath climbing it, but when they reached the top and came out into the open the prettiest surprise of all awaited them. Beyond where the back fields of the farms that ran out onto the upper Carmody Road, just before them, hemmed in by beaches and furs but open to the south, was a little corner and in it a garden, or what had once been a garden. A tumbledown stone dyke overgrown with mosses and grass surrounded it. Along the eastern side ran a row of garden cherry trees, white as snowdrift. There were traces of old paths still, and a double line of rose bushes through the middle. But all the rest of the space was a sheet of yellow and white Narcissi, in their ariest, most lavish, windswayed bloom above the lush green grasses. Oh, how perfectly lovely three of the girls cried, and only gazed in eloquent silence. How in the world does it happen that there ever was a garden back here, said Priscilla in amazement? It must be Hester Gray's garden, said Diana. I've heard mother speak of it, but I never saw it before, and I wouldn't have supposed that it could be in existence still. You've heard the story, Anne. No, but the name seems familiar to me. Oh, you've seen it in the graveyard. She is buried down there in the popular corner. You know the little brown stone with the opening gates carved on it and sacred to the memory of Hester Gray, age twenty-two. Anne Gray is buried right beside her, but there's no stone to him. It's a wonder, Marilla never told you about it, Anne. To be sure it happened thirty years ago and everybody has forgotten. Well, if there's a story we must have it, said Anne, let's sit right down here among the Narcissi and Diana will tell it. Why, girls, there are hundreds of them. They've spread over everything. It looks as if the garden were carpeted with moonshine and sunshine combined. This is a discovery worth making, to think that I've lived within a mile of this place for six years and have never seen it before. Now, Diana. Long ago, began Diana, this farm belonged to old Mr. David Gray. He didn't live on it. He lived where Silas Sloan lives now. He had one son, Jordan, and he went up to Boston one winter to work, and while he was there he fell in love with a girl named Hester Murray. She was working in a store and she hated it. She'd been brought up in the country and she always wanted to get back. When Jordan asked her to marry him, she said she would if he'd take her away to some quiet spot where she'd see nothing but fields and trees. So he brought her to Avonlea. Mrs. Linn said he was taking a fearful risk in marrying a Yankee, and it's certain that Hester was very delicate and a very poor housekeeper. But Mother says she was very pretty and sweet, and Jordan just worshipped the ground she walked on. Well, Mr. Gray gave Jordan this farm, and he built a little house back here, and Jordan and Hester lived in it for four years. She never went out much, and hardly anybody went to see her except Mother and Mrs. Linn. Jordan made her this garden and she was just crazy about it and spent most of her time in it. She wasn't much of a housekeeper but she had a knack with flowers. And then she got sick. Mother says she thinks she was in consumption before she ever came here. She never really laid up but just grew weaker and weaker all the time. Jordan wouldn't have anybody to wait on her, he did it all himself, and Mother says he was as tender and gentle as a woman. Every day he'd wrap her in her shawl and carry her out to the garden and she'd lie there on a bench quite happy. They say she used to make Jordan kneel down by her every night and morning and pray with her that she might die out in the garden when the time came. And her prayer was answered. One day Jordan carried her out to the bench and then he picked all the roses that were out and heaped them over her, and she just smiled up at him and closed her eyes. And that, concluded Diana softly, was the end. Oh, what a dear story! sighed Anne, wiping away her tears. What became of Jordan? asked Priscilla. He sold the farm after Hester died and went back to Boston. Mr. Jabez Sloan bought the farm and hauled the little house out to the road. Jordan died about ten years after and he was brought home and buried beside Hester. I can't understand how she could have wanted to live back here away from everything, said Jane. Oh, I can easily understand that, said Anne thoughtfully. I wouldn't want it myself for a steady thing because, although I love the fields and woods, I love people too. But I can understand it in Hester. She was tired to death of the noise of the big city and the crowds of people always coming and going and carrying nothing for her. She just wanted to escape from it all to some still, green, friendly place where she could rest. And she got just what she wanted, which is something very few people do I believe. She had four beautiful years before she died, four years of perfect happiness, so I think she was to be envied more than pitied. And then to shut her eyes and fall asleep among roses, with the one you loved best on earth smiling down at you. Oh, I think it was beautiful. She set out those cherry trees over there, said Diana. She told mother she'd never lived to eat their fruit, but she wanted to think that something she had planted would go on living and helping to make the world beautiful after she was dead. I'm so glad we came this way, said Anne, the shining eyed. This is my adopted birthday, you know, and this garden and its story is the birthday gift it has given me. Did your mother ever tell you what Hester Gray looked like, Diana? No, only just that she was pretty. I'm rather glad of that, because I can imagine what she looked like without being hampered by facts. I think she was very slight and small, with softly curling dark hair and big, sweet, timid brown eyes and a little wistful pale face. The girls left their baskets in Hester's garden and spent the rest of the afternoon rambling in the woods and fields surrounding it, discovering many pretty nooks and lanes. When they got hungry they had lunch in the prettiest spot of all, on the steep bank of a gurgling brook where white birches shot up out of long, feathery grasses. The girls sat down by the roots and did full justice to Anne's dainties, even the unpoetical sandwiches being greatly appreciated by hearty, unspoiled appetites sharpened by all the fresh air and exercise they had enjoyed. Anne had brought glasses and lemonade for her guests, but for her own part drank cold, brook water from a cup fashioned out of birch bark. The cup leaked, and the water tasted of earth as brook water is apt to do in spring. But Anne thought it more appropriate to the occasion than lemonade. Look! Do you see that poem? she said, suddenly pointing. Where? Jane and Diana stared as if expecting to see runic rhymes on the birch trees. There, down in the brook, that old green mossy log with the water flowing over it and those smooth ripples that look as if they'd been combed and that single shaft of sunshine falling right aswarted, far down into the well. Oh! it's the most beautiful poem I ever saw. I should rather call it a picture, said Jane. A poem is lines and verses. Oh! dear me, no! Anne shook her head with its fluffy wild cherry coronal positively. The lines and verses are only the outward garments of the poem, and are no more really it than your ruffles and flounces are you, Jane. The real poem is the soul within them, and that beautiful bit is the soul of an unwritten poem. It is not every day one sees a soul, even of a poem. I wonder what a soul, a person's soul, would look like, said Priscilla dreamily. Like that I should think, answered Anne, pointing to a radiance of sifted sunlight streaming through a birch tree, only with shape and features, of course. I like to fancy souls as being made of light, and some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers, and some have a soft glitter-like moonlight on the sea, and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn. I read somewhere that souls were like flowers, said Priscilla. Then your soul is a golden Narcissus, said Anne, and Diana's is like a red, red rose. Jane's is an apple blossom, pink and wholesome and sweet. And your own is a white violet with purple streaks in its heart, finished Priscilla. Jane whispered to Diana that she really could not understand what they were talking about, could she? The girls went home by the light of a calm, golden sunset, their baskets filled with Narcissus blossoms from Hester's garden, some of which Anne carried to the cemetery next day and laid upon Hester's grave. Minstrel Robbins were whistling in the furs, and the frogs were singing in the marshes. All the basins among the hills were brimmed with topaz and emerald light. Well, we have had a lovely time after all, said Diana, as if she had hardly expected to have it when she set out. It has been a truly golden day, said Priscilla. I'm really awfully fond of the woods myself, said Jane. Anne said nothing. She was looking afar into the western sky and thinking of little Hester Gray. CHAPTER XIV A DANGER AVERTED Anne, walking home from the post office one Friday evening, was joined by Mrs. Lind, who was, as usual, combered with all the cares of church and state. I've just been down to Timothy Cotton's to see if I could get Alice Louise to help me for a few days, she said. I had her last week, for though she's too slow to stop quick, she's better than nobody. But she's sick and can't come. Timothy, sitting there, too, coughing and complaining. He's been dying for ten years, and he'll go on dying for ten years more. That kind can't even diet have done with it. They can't stick to anything, even to being sick long enough to finish it. They're a terrible shiftless family, and what is to become of them, I don't know. But perhaps Providence does. Mrs. Lind sighed, as if she rather doubted the extent of providential knowledge on the subject. Marilla was in about her eyes again Tuesday, wasn't she? What did the specialist think of them, she continued? He was much pleased, said Anne, brightly. He says there was a great improvement in them, and he thinks the danger of her losing her sight completely is past. But he says she'll never be able to read much, or do any fine handwork again. How are your preparations for your bizarre coming on? The Lady's Aid Society was preparing for a fair and supper, and Mrs. Lind was the head and front of the enterprise. Pretty well. And that reminds me, Mrs. Allen thinks it would be nice to fix up a booth like an old-time kitchen and serve a supper of baked beans, doughnuts, pie, and so on. We're collecting old-fashioned fixings everywhere. Mrs. Simon Fletcher is going to lend us her mother's braided rugs, and Mrs. Levi Bolter some old chairs, and Aunt Mary Shaw will lend us her cupboard with the glass doors. I suppose Marilla will let us have her brass candlesticks, and we want all the old dishes we can get. Mrs. Allen is specially set on having a real blue willow-wear platter if we can find one, but nobody seems to have one. Do you know where we could get one? Miss Josephine Barry has one. I'll write and ask her if she'll lend it for the occasion, said Anne. Well, I wish you would. I guess we'll have the supper in about a fortnight's time. Uncle Abe Andrews is prophesying rain and storms for about that time, and that's a pretty sure sign we'll have fine weather. The said Uncle Abe, it may be mentioned, was at least like other prophets in that he had small honour in his own country. He was, in fact, considered in the light of a standing joke, for few of his weather predictions were ever fulfilled. Mr. Elisha Wright, who laboured under the impression that he was a local wid, used to say that nobody in Avonlea ever thought of looking in the Charlotte town dailies for weather probabilities. No, they just asked Uncle Abe what it was going to be to-morrow, and expected the opposite. Nothing daunted, Uncle Abe kept on prophesying. We want to have the fair over before the election comes off, continued Mrs. Lind, for the candidates will be sure to come and spend lots of money. The Tories are bribing right and left, so they might as well be given a chance to spend their money honestly for once. Anne was a red-hot conservative out of loyalty to Matthew's memory, but she said nothing. She knew better than to get Mrs. Lind started on politics. She had a letter from Marilla, postmarked from a town in British Columbia. It's probably from the children's uncle, she said excitedly, when she got home. Oh, Marilla, I wonder what he says about them. The best plan might be to open it and see, said Marilla curtly. A close observer might have thought that she was excited also, but she would have rather died than show it. Anne tore open the letter and glanced over the somewhat untidy and poorly written contents. He says he can't take the children this spring. He's been sick most of the winter and his wedding is put off. He wants to know if we can keep them till the fall, and he'll try and take them then. We will, of course, won't we, Marilla? I don't see that there is anything else for us to do, said Marilla, rather grimly, although she felt a secret relief. Anyhow, they're not so much trouble as they were. Or else we've got used to them. Davy has improved a great deal. His manners are certainly better, said Anne cautiously, as if she were not prepared to say as much for his morals. Anne had come home from school the previous evening to find Marilla wait in aid meeting, Dora sleep on the kitchen sofa, and Davy in the sitting-room closet, blissfully absorbing the contents of a jar of Marilla's famous yellow plum preserves. Company jam, Davy called it, which he had been forbidden to touch. He looked very guilty when Anne pounced on him and whisked him out of the closet. Davy Keith, don't you know that it is very wrong of you to be eating that jam when you were told never to meddle with anything in that closet? Yes, I knew it was wrong, admitted Davy uncomfortably, but plum jam is awful nice, Anne. I just peeped in, and it looked so good I thought I'd just take a weeny taste. I stuck my finger in—and groaned—and licked it clean, and it was so much gooder than I'd ever thought that I got a spoon and just sailed in. Anne gave him such a serious lecture on the sense of stealing plum jam that Davy became conscious-stricken and promised with repentant kisses never to do it again. Anyhow, there'll be plenty of damn in heaven—that's one comfort, he said complacently. Anne nipped a smile in the bud. Perhaps there will, if we want it, she said. But what makes you think so? Why, it's in the catechism, said Davy. Oh, no! There's nothing like that in the catechism, Davy. But I tell you there is, persisted Davy. It was in that question Marilla taught me last Sunday. Why should we love God? It says, because he makes preserves and redeems us. Preserves is just a holy way of saying jam. I must get a drink of water, said Anne hastily. When she came back it cost her some time in trouble to explain to Davy that a certain comma in the said catechism question made a great deal of difference in the meaning. Well, I thought it was too good to be true. He said it last with a sigh of disappointed conviction. And besides, I didn't see when he'd find time to make jam if it's one endless Sabbath day, as the hymn says. I don't believe I want to go to heaven. Want there ever be any Saturdays in heaven, Anne? Yes. Saturdays and every other kind of beautiful days. And every day in heaven will be more beautiful than the one before it, Davy, assured Anne, who was rather glad that Marilla was not by to be shocked. Marilla, it is needless to say, was bringing up the twins in the good old ways of theology and discouraged all fanciful speculations thereupon. Davy and Dora were taught a hymn, a catechism question, and two Bible verses every Sunday. Dora learned meekly and recited like a little machine, with perhaps as much understanding or interest as if she were one. Davy, on the contrary, had a lively curiosity and frequently asked questions which made Marilla tremble for his fate. Chester Sloan says we'll do nothing all the time in heaven but walk around in white dresses and play on harps. And he says he hopes he won't have to go till he's an old man, because maybe he'll like it better than. And he thinks it'll be horrid to wear dresses, and I think so too. Why can't men angels wear trousers, Anne? Chester Sloan is interested in those things, because they're going to make a minister of him. He's got to be a minister, because his grandmother left the money to send him to college, and he can't have it unless he's a minister. She thought a minister was such a spectable thing to have in a family. Chester says he doesn't mind much, though he'd rather be a blacksmith. But he's bound to have all the fun he can before he begins to be a minister, because he doesn't expect to have much afterwards. I ain't going to be a minister. I'm going to be a storekeeper, like Mr. Blair, and keep heaps of candy and bananas. But I'd rather like going to your kind of a heaven if they'd let me play a mouth organ instead of a harp. Do you suppose they would? Yes, I think they would if you wanted it, was all Anne could trust herself to say. The Avus met at Mr. Harmon Andrews that evening, and a full attendance had been requested, since important business was to be discussed. The Avus was in a flourishing condition, and had already accomplished wonders. Early in the spring Mr. Major Spencer had redeemed his promise and had stumped, graded and seated down all the road-front of his farm. A dozen other men, some prompted by a determination not to let a Spencer get ahead of them, others goaded into action by improvers in their own households, had followed his example. The result was that there were long strips of smooth velvet turf where ones had been unsightly undergrowth or brush. The farm fronts that had not been done looked so badly by contrast that their owners were secretly shamed into resolving to see what they could do another spring. The triangle of ground at the crossroads had also been cleared and seated down, and Anne's bed of geraniums, unharmed by any marauding cow, was already set out in the centre. All together the improvers thought that they were getting on beautifully, even if Mr. Levi Bolter tactfully approached by a carefully selected committee in regard to the old house on his upper farm, did bluntly tell them that he wasn't going to have it meddled with. At this special meeting they intended to draw up a petition to the school trustees, humbly praying that a fence be put around the school grounds, and a plan was also to be discussed for planting a few ornamental trees by the church, if the funds of the society would permit of it, for, as Anne said, there was no use in starting another subscription as long as the hall remained blue. The members were assembled in the Andrews parlor, and Jane was already on her feet to move the appointment of a committee which should find out and report on the price of said trees, when Gertie Pye swept in, pompadour'd and filled within an inch of her life. Gertie had a habit of being late, to make her entrance more effective, spiteful people said. Gertie's entrance in this instance was certainly effective, for she paused dramatically on the middle of the floor, threw up her hands, rolled her eyes, and exclaimed, I've just heard something perfectly awful. What do you think? Mr. Judson Parker is going to rent all the road-fence of his farm to a patent medicine company to paint advertisements on. For once in her life Gertie Pye made all the sensations she desired. If she had thrown a bomb among the complacent improvers, she could hardly have made more. It can't be true, said Anne blankly. That's just what I said when I heard it first, don't you know? said Gertie, who was enjoying herself hugely. I said it couldn't be true, that Judson Parker wouldn't have the heart to do it, don't you know? But father met him this afternoon and asked him about it, and he said it was true, just fancy. His farm is side onto the Newbridge Road, and how perfectly awful it will look to see advertisements of pills and plasters all along it, don't you know? The improvers did know. All too well. Even the least imaginative among them could picture the grotesque effect of half a mile of board-fence adorned with such advertisements. All thought of church and school grounds vanished before this new danger. Parliamentary rules and regulations were forgotten, and Anne, in despair, gave up trying to keep minutes at all. Everybody talked at once, and fearful was the hubbub. Oh, let us keep calm, implored Anne, who was the most excited of them all, and try to think of some way of preventing him. I don't know how you're going to prevent him, exclaimed Jing bitterly. Everybody knows what Judson Parker is. He'd do anything for money. He hasn't a spark of public spirit or any sense of the beautiful. The prospect looked rather unpromising. Judson Parker and his sister were the only Parkers in Avonlea, so that no leverage could be exerted by family connections. Martha Parker was a lady of all too certain age, who had disapproved of young people in general and the improvers in particular. Judson was a jovial, smooth-spoken man, so uniformly good-natured and bland, that it was surprising how few friends he had. Perhaps he had got the better in too many business transactions, which seldom makes for popularity. He was reputed to be very sharp, and it was the general opinion that he hadn't much principle. If Judson Parker has a chance to turn an honest penny, as he says himself, he'll never lose it, declared Fred Wright. Is there nobody who has any influence over him? asked Anne despairingly. He goes to see Louisa Spencer at White Sands, suggested Carrie Sloan. Perhaps she could coax him not to rent his fences. Not she, said Gilbert emphatically. I know Louisa Spencer well. She doesn't believe in village improvement societies, but she does believe in dollars and cents. She'd be more likely to urge Judson on than to dissuade him. The only thing to do is to appoint a committee to wait on him for a protest, said Julia Bell, and you must send girls, for he'd hardly be civil to boys. But I won't go, so nobody need nominate me. Better send Anne alone, said Oliver Sloan. She can talk Judson over if anybody can. Anne protested. She was willing to go and do the talking, but she must have others with her for moral support. Diana and Jane were therefore appointed to support her morally, and the improvers broke up, buzzing like angry bees with indignation. Anne was so worried that she didn't sleep until nearly morning, and then she dreamed that the trustees had put a fence around the school and painted tri-purple pills all over it. The committee waited on Judson Parker the next afternoon. Anne pleaded eloquently against his nefarious design, and Jane and Diana supported her morally and valiantly. Judson was sleek, suave, flattering, paid them several compliments of the delicacy of sunflowers, felt real bad to refuse such charming young ladies, but business was business, couldn't afford to let sentiment stand in the way these hard times. But I'll tell you what I will do," he said with a twinkle in his light full eyes. I'll tell the agent that he must use only handsome, tasty colors, red and yellow and so on. I'll tell him he mustn't paint the ads blue on any account. The vanquished committee retired, thinking things not lawful to be uttered. "'We have done all we can do, and must simply trust the rest of Providence,' said Jane, with an unconscious imitation of Mrs. Lynn's tone and manner. I wonder if Mr. Allen could do anything," reflected Diana. Anne shook her head. "'No, it's no use to worry, Mr. Allen, especially now when the baby's so sick.' Judson would slip away from him as smoothly as from us, although he has taken to going to church quite regularly just now. That is simply because Louisa Spencer's father is an elder and very particular about such things. "'Judson Parker is the only man in Avonlea who would dream of renting his fences,' said Jane indignantly. Even Levi Bolter or Lorenzo White would never stoop to that, tight-fisted as they are. They would have too much respect for public opinion.' Public opinion was certainly down on Judson Parker when the facts became known, but that did not help matters much. Judson chuckled to himself and defied it, and the improvers were trying to reconcile themselves to the prospect of seeing the prettiest part of the Newbridge Road defaced by advertisements, when Anne rose quietly at the President's call for reports of committees on the occasion of the next meeting of the Society, and announced that Mr. Judson Parker had instructed her to inform the Society that he was not going to rent his fences to the Patent Medicine Company. Jane and Diana stared, as if they found it hard to believe their ears. Parliamentary etiquette, which was generally very strictly enforced in the Avus, forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but after the Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations. Anne had no explanation to give. Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road the preceding evening, and told her that he had decided to humor the Avus in its peculiar prejudice against Patent Medicine advertisements. That was all Anne would say, then or ever afterwards, and it was the simple truth. But when Jane Andrews on her way home, confided to Oliver Sloan her firm belief that there was more behind Judson Parker's mysterious change of heart than Anne surely had revealed, she spoke the truth also. Anne had been down to old Mrs. Irving's on the shore road the preceding evening, and had come home by a shortcut which led her first over the low-lying shore-fields, and then through the beech-wood below Robert Dixon's by a little footpath that ran out of the main road just above the lake of shining waters, known to unimaginative people as berries pond. Two men were sitting in their buggies, rained off to the side of the road, just at the entrance of the path. One was Judson Parker, the other was Jerry Corcoran, a newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lindwood would have told you in eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been proved. He was an agent for agricultural implements and a prominent personage in matters political. He had a finger, and some people said all his fingers, in every political pie that was cooked. And as Canada was on the eve of a general election, Jerry Corcoran had been a busy man for many weeks, canvassing the county in the interests of his party's candidate. Just as Anne emerged from under the overhanging beach-bows, she heard Corcoran say, if you'll vote for Amesbury Parker, well, I have a note for that pair of Harrows you've got in the spring. I suppose you wouldn't object to having it back, eh? Well, since you put it that way, draw Judson with a grin. I reckon I might as well do it. A man must look out for his own interests in these hard times. Both saw Anne at this moment, and conversation abruptly ceased. Anne bowed frostily and walked on, with her chin slightly more tilted than usual. Soon Judson Parker overtook her. Have a lift, Anne? He inquired genially. Thank you, no, said Anne politely, but with a fine needle-like disdain in her voice that pierced even Judson Parker's none-too-sensitive consciousness. His face reddened, and he twitched his reins angrily, but the next second prudential considerations checked him. He looked uneasily at Anne as she walked steadily on, glancing neither to the right nor to the left. Had she heard Corcoran's unmistakable offer and his own two-plane acceptance of it? Confound Corcoran! If he couldn't put his meaning into less dangerous phrases, he'd get into trouble some of these long-come shorts. And confound red-headed school-mams with a habit of popping out of beach-woods where they had no business to be. If Anne had heard Judson Parker measuring her cord in his own half-bushel, as the country-saying went, and cheating himself there by, as such people generally do, believed that she would tell it far and wide. Now Judson Parker, as has been seen, was not overly regardedful of public opinion, but to be known as having accepted a bribe would be a nasty thing, and if it ever reached Isaac Spencer's ears, farewell forever to all hope of winning Louisa Jane with her comfortable prospect is the heiress of a well-to-do farmer. Judson Parker knew that Mr. Spencer looked somewhat ascanced at him as it was. He could not afford to take any risks. Anne, I've been wanting to see you about that little matter we were discussing the other day. I've decided not to let my fences to that company, after all. A society with an aim like yours ought to be encouraged. Anne thawed out the mirror's trifle. Thank you, she said. Anne, you needn't mention that little conversation of mine with Jerry. I have no intention of mentioning it in any case," said Anne icily, for she would have seen every fence in Avonlea painted with advertisements before she would have stooped a bargain with a man who would sell his vote. Just so, just so, agreed Judson, imagining that they understood each other beautifully. I didn't suppose you would. Of course I was only stringing, Jerry. He thinks he's so all-fired, cute, and smart. I've no intention of voting for Aimsbury. I'm going to vote for Grant as I've always done. You'll see that when the election comes off. I just led Jerry on to see if he would commit himself. It's all right about the fence. You can tell the improver's that. It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I've often heard. But I think there are some who could be spared, Anne told her reflection in the East Gable mirror that night. I wouldn't have mentioned the disgraceful thing to a soul anyhow, so my conscience is clear on that score. I really don't know who or what is to be thanked for this. I did nothing to bring it about, and it's hard to believe that Providence ever works by means of the kind of politics men like Judson, Parker, and Jerry Corcoran have. Anne felt at peace with the world and herself as she walked down the hill with her basket of flowers in her hand. Since the earliest May flowers Anne had never missed her weekly pilgrimage to Matthew's grave. Everyone else in Avonlea except Marilla had already forgotten quiet, shy, unimportant Matthew Cuthbert, but his memory was still green in Anne's heart and always would be. She could never forget the kind old man who had been the first to give her the love and sympathy her starved childhood had craved. At the foot of the hill a boy was sitting on the fence in the shadow of the spruces, a boy with big, dreamy eyes and a beautiful, sensitive face. He swung down and joined Anne, smiling, but there were traces of tears on his cheeks. I thought I'd wait for you, teacher, because I knew you were going to the graveyard, he said, slipping his hand into hers. I'm going there, too. I'm taking the spooke of geraniums to put on Grandpa Irving's grave for Grandma. And, look, teacher, I'm going to put this bunch of white roses beside Grandpa's grave and memory of my little mother, because I can't go to her grave to put it there. But don't you think she'll know all about it just the same? Yes, I'm sure she will, Paul. You see, teacher, it's just three years today since my little mother died. It's such a long, long time, but it hurts just as much as ever. And I miss her just as much as ever. Sometimes it seems to me that I just can't bear it, it hurts so. Paul's voice quivered and his lip trembled. He looked down at his roses, hoping that his teacher would not notice the tears in his eyes. And yet, said Anne, very softly, you wouldn't want it to stop hurting. You wouldn't want to forget your little mother even if you could. No, indeed I wouldn't. That's just the way I feel. You're so good at understanding, teacher. Nobody else understands so well, not even Grandma, although she's so good to me. Father understood pretty well, but still I couldn't talk much to him about Mother because it made him feel so bad. When he put his hand over his face I always knew it was time to stop. Poor Father. He must be dreadfully lonesome without me. But you see, he has nobody but a housekeeper now, and he thinks housekeepers are no good to bring up little boys, especially when he has to be away from home so much on business. Grandmothers are better next to mothers. Someday when I'm brought up I'll go back to Father and we're never going to be parted again. Paul had talked so much to Anne about his mother and father that she felt as if she had known them. She thought his mother must have been very like what he was himself in temperament and disposition, and she had an idea that Steven Irving was a rather reserved man with a deep and tender nature which he kept hidden scrupulously from the world. Father's not very easy to get acquainted with, Paul had said once. I never got really acquainted with him until after my little mother died, but he splendid when you do get to know him. I love him best in all the world and Grandma Irving next, and then you, teacher. I'd love you next to Father if it wasn't my duty to love Grandma Irving best, because she's doing so much for me. You know, teacher. I wish she would leave the lamp in my room till I go to sleep, though. She takes it right out as soon as she tucks me up, because she says I mustn't be a coward. I'm not scared, but I'd rather have the light. My little mother used to always sit beside me and hold my hand till I went to sleep. I expect she spoiled me. Mothers do sometimes, you know. No. And did not know this, although she might imagine it. She thought sadly of her little mother, the mother who had thought her so perfectly beautiful, and who had died so long ago and was buried beside her boyish husband in that unvisited grave far away. Anne could not remember her mother, and for this reason she almost envied Paul. My birthday is next week, said Paul, as they walked up the long red hill, basking in the June sunshine. And father wrote me that he is sending me something that he thinks I like better than anything else he could send. I believe it has come already, for Grandma is keeping the bookcase drawer locked, and that is something new. And when I asked her why, she just looked mysterious and said, little boys mustn't be too curious. It's very exciting to have a birthday, isn't it? I'll be eleven. You'd never think it to look at me, would you? Grandma says I'm very small for my age, and that it's all because I don't eat enough porridge. I do my very best, but Grandma gives such generous platefuls. There's nothing mean about Grandma I can tell you. Ever since I had that talk about praying going home from Sunday school that day, teacher, when you said we ought to pray about all our difficulties, I prayed every night that God would give me enough grace to enable me to eat every bit of my porridge in the mornings. But I've never been able to do it yet, and whether it's because I have too little grace or too much porridge, I really can't decide. Grandma says Father was brought up on porridge, and it certainly did work well in his case, for you ought to see the shoulders he has. But sometimes, concluded Paul with a sigh and a meditative air, I really think porridge will be the death of me. Anne permitted herself a smile, since Paul was not looking at her. All I haven't lean you that old Mrs. Irving was bringing her grandson up in accordance with the good old-fashioned methods of diet and morals. Let us hope not, dear, she said cheerfully. How are your rock people coming on? Does the oldest twin still continue to behave himself? He has to, said Paul emphatically. He knows I won't associate with him if he doesn't. He is really full of wickedness, I think. And has Nora found out about the golden lady yet? No, but I think she suspects. I'm almost sure she watched me the last time I went to the cave. I don't mind if she finds out. It is only for her sake I don't want her to, so that her feelings won't be hurt. But if she is determined to have her feelings hurt it can't be helped. If I were to go to the shore some night with you, do you think I could see your rock people too? Paul shook his head gravely. No, I don't think you could see my rock people. I'm the only person who could see them. But you could see rock people of your own. You're one of the kind that can. We're both that kind. You know teacher, he added, squeezing her hand, chumily. Isn't it splendid to be that kind, teacher? Splendid, Anne agreed, grey shining eyes looking down into blue shining ones. Anne and Paul both knew how fair the realm imagination opens to the view, and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rows of joy bloomed immortal by dale and stream, clouds never darkened the sunny sky, sweet bells never jangled out of tune, and kindred spirits abounded. The knowledge of that land's geography, east of the sun, west of the moon, is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It must be the gift of the good fairies at birth, and the years can never deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it. The heavenly graveyard was as yet the grass-grown solitude it had always been. To be sure, the improvers had an eye on it, and Priscilla Grant had read a paper on cemeteries before the last meeting of the society. At some future time the improvers meant to have the likened, wayward old, bored fence replaced by a neat wire railing, the grass mown, and the leaning monuments straightened up. Anne put on Matthew's grave the flowers she had brought for it, and then went over to the little poplar shaded corner where Hester Gray slept. Ever since the day of the spring picnic Anne had put flowers on Hester's grave when she visited Matthew's. The evening before she had made a pilgrimage back to the little deserted garden in the woods and brought there from some of Hester's own white roses. I thought you would like them better than any others, dear, she said softly. Anne was still sitting there when a shadow fell over the grass and she looked up to see Mrs. Allen. They walked home together. Mrs. Allen's face was not the face of the girl bride whom the minister had brought to Avonlea five years before. It had lost some of its bloom and youthful curves, and there were fine, patient lines about eyes and mouth. A tiny grave in that very cemetery accounted for some of them, and some new ones had come during the recent illness now happily over of her little son. But Mrs. Allen's dimples were as sweet and sudden as ever. Her eyes as clear and bright and true, and what her face lacked of girlish beauty was now more than atoned for and added tenderness and strength. I suppose you were looking forward to your vacation, Anne, she said, as they left the graveyard. Anne nodded. Yes, I could roll the word as a sweet morsel under my tongue. I think the summer is going to be lovely. For one thing Mrs. Morgan is coming to the island in July and Priscilla is going to bring her up. I feel one of my old thrills at the mere thought. I hope you'll have a good time, Anne. You've worked very hard this past year and you have succeeded. Oh, I don't know. I've come so far short in so many things. I haven't done what I meant to do when I began to teach last fall. I haven't lived up to my ideals. None of us ever do, said Mrs. Allen with a sigh. But then, Anne, you know what Lowell says. Not failure but low aim is crime. We must have ideals and try to live up to them, even if we never quite succeed. Life would be a sorry business without them. With them it's grand and great. Hold fast to your ideals, Anne. I shall try. But I have to let go of most of my theories, said Anne, laughing a little. I had the most beautiful set of theories you ever knew when I started out as a schoolman, but every one of them has failed me at some pinch or another. Even the theory on corporal punishment, teased Mrs. Allen. But Anne flushed. I shall never forgive myself for whipping Anthony. Nonsense, dear. He deserved it. Anne had agreed with him. You have had no trouble with him since, and he has come to think there's nobody like you. Your kindness won his love after the idea that a girl was no good was rooted out of his stubborn mind. He may have deserved it, but that is not the point. If I had calmly and deliberately decided to whip him because I thought it a just punishment for him, I would not feel over it as I do. But the truth is, Mrs. Allen, that I just flew into a temper and whipped him because of that. I wasn't thinking whether it was just or unjust. Even if he hadn't deserved it, I'd have done it just the same. That is what humiliates me. Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us. There goes Gilbert Blythe on his wheel. Home for his vacation, too, I suppose. How are you and he getting on with your studies? Pretty well. We plan to finish the Virgil tonight. There are only twenty lines to do. Then we are not going to study any more until September. Do you think you will ever get to college? Oh, I don't know. Anne looked dreamily afar into the opal, tinted horizon. Marilla's eyes will never be much better than they are now, although we are so thankful to think that they will not get worse. And then there are the twins. Somehow I don't believe their uncle will ever really send for them. Perhaps college may be around the bend in the road, but I haven't got to the bend yet, and I don't think much about it lest I might grow discontented. Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne. But if you never do, don't be discontented about it. We make our own lives wherever we are, after all. College can only help us to do it more easily. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here, everywhere, if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fullness. I think I understand what you mean, said Anne thoughtfully, and I know I have so much to feel thankful for. Oh, so much. My work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends. Do you know, Mrs. Allen, I'm so thankful for friendship. It beautifies life so much. True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed, said Mrs. Allen, and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it. Yes, like Gertie Pies and Julia Bells, they are very intimate and go everywhere together, but Gertie is always saying nasty things of Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she is jealous of her because she is always so pleased when anybody criticizes Julia. I think it is desecration to call that friendship. If we have friends we should look only for the best in them and give them the best that is in us, don't you think? Then friendship would be the most beautiful thing in the world. Friendship is beautiful, smiled Mrs. Allen, but someday. Then she paused abruptly. In the delicate white-browed face beside her with its candid eyes and mobile features, there was still far more of the child than of the woman. Anne's heart so far harbored only dreams of friendship and ambition, and Mrs. Allen did not wish to brush the bloom from her sweet-hung consciousness. So she left her sentence for the future years to finish. Anne, I am awful hungry, you've no idea. I'll get you a piece of bread and butter in a minute, said Anne absently. Her letter evidently contained some exciting news, for her cheeks were as pink as the roses on the big bush outside, and her eyes were as starry as only Anne's eyes could be. But I ain't bread and butter hungry, said Davian, a disgusted tone. I'm plum-cake hungry. Oh, laughed Anne, laying down her letter and putting her arm about Davy to give him a squeeze. That's a kind of hunger that can be endured very comfortably, Davy-boy. You know it's one of Marilla's rules that you can't have anything but bread and butter between meals. Well, give me a piece, then. Please. Davy had at last been taught to say please, but he generally tacked it on as an afterthought. He looked with approval at the generous slice Anne presently brought to him. You always put such a nice lot of butter on it, Anne. Marilla spreads it pretty thin. It slips down a lot easier when there's plenty of butter. The slice slipped down with tolerable ease, judging from its rapid disappearance. Davy slid headfirst off the sofa, turned a double somersault on the rug, and then sat up and announced decidedly, Anne, I've made up my mind about heaven. I don't want to go there. Why not? asked Anne gravely. Because heaven is in Simon Fletcher's garret and I don't like Simon Fletcher. Heaven in Simon Fletcher's garret? gasped Anne, too amazed even to laugh. Davy Keith, whatever, put such an extraordinary idea into your head. Melty Bolter says that's where it is. It was last Sunday in Sunday school. The lesson was about Elijah and Elisha, and I up and asked Miss Rogerson where heaven was. Miss Rogerson looked awful offended. She was cross anyhow, because when she'd asked us what Elijah left Elisha when he went to heaven, Melty Bolter said his old clothes, and us fellows all laughed before we thought. I wish you could think first and do things afterwards, because then you wouldn't do them. But Melty didn't mean to be disrespectful. He just couldn't think of the name of the thing. Miss Rogerson says heaven was where God was, and I wasn't to ask questions like that. Melty nudged me and said in a whisper, Heaven's in Uncle Simon's garret, and I'll explain about it on the way home. So when we was coming home he explained. Melty's a great hand at explaining things. Even if he don't know anything about a thing, he'll make up a lot of stuff, and so you get it explained all the same. His mother is Mrs. Simon's sister, and he went with her to the funeral when his cousin Jane Ellen died. The minister said she'd gone to heaven, though Melty says she was lying right before them in the coffin. But he's posed they carried the coffin to the garret afterwards. Well, when Melty and his mother went upstairs after it was all over to get her bonnet, he asked her where heaven was that Jane Ellen had gone to, and she pointed right to the ceiling and said, up there. Melty knew there wasn't anything but the garret over the ceiling, so that's how he found out, and he's been awful scared to go to his Uncle Simon's ever since. Ann took Davion her knee and did her best to straighten out this theological tangle also. She was much better fitted for the task than Marilla, for she remembered her own childhood, and had an instinctive understanding of the curious ideas that seven-year-olds sometimes get about matters that are, of course, very plain and simple to grown-up people. She had just succeeded in convincing Davy that heaven was not, in Simon Fletcher's garret, when Marilla came in from the garden where she and Dora had been picking peas. Dora was an industrious little soul, and never happier than when helping in various small tasks suited to her chubby fingers. She fed chickens, picked up chips, wiped dishes, and ran errands galore. She was neat, faithful, and observant. She never had to be told how to do a thing twice, and never forgot any of her little duties. Davy, on the other hand, was rather heedless and forgetful, but he had the borne knack of winning love, and even yet Ann and Marilla liked him the better. While Dora proudly shelled the peas and Davy made boats of the pods with masts of matches and sails of paper, Ann told Marilla about the wonderful contents of her letter. Oh, Marilla, what do you think? I've had a letter from Priscilla, and she says that Mrs. Morgan is on the island, and that if it is fine Thursday they are going to drive up to Avonlea, and we'll reach here about twelve. They will spend the afternoon with us and go to the hotel at White Sands in the evening, because some of Mrs. Morgan's American friends are staying there. Oh, Marilla, isn't it wonderful? I can hardly believe I'm not dreaming. I daresay Mrs. Morgan is a lot like other people, said Marilla dryly, although she did feel a trifle excited herself. Mrs. Morgan was a famous woman, and a visit from her was no commonplace occurrence. They'll be here to dinner, then. Yes, and oh, Marilla, may I cook every bit of the dinner myself? I want to feel that I can do something for the author of the Rosebud Garden if it is only to cook a dinner for her. You won't mind, will you? Goodness, I'm not so fond of stewing over a hot fire in July that it would vex me very much to have someone else do it. You're quite welcome to the job. Oh, thank you, Sadane, as if Marilla had just conferred a tremendous favour. I'll make out the menu this very night. You'd better not try to put on too much style, warn't Marilla, a little alarmed by the high-flown sound of menu. You'll likely come to grief if you do. Oh, I'm not going to put on any style, if you mean trying to do or have things we don't usually have on festal occasions, assured Anne. That would be affectation. And although I know I haven't as much sense and steadiness as a girl of seventeen and a school teacher ought to have, I'm not so silly as that. But I want to have everything as nice and dainty as possible. Davey boy, don't leave those pea pods on the back stairs. Someone might slip on them. I'll have a light soup to begin with. You know I can make lovely cream of onion soup. And then a couple of roast fowls. I'll have the two white roosters. I have real affection for those roosters, and they've been pets ever since the grey hen hatched out just the two of them, little balls of yellow down. But I knew they would have to be sacrificed some time, and surely there couldn't be a worthier occasion than this. But, oh, Marilla, I cannot kill them. Not even for Mrs. Morgan's sake. I'll have to ask John Henry Carter to come over and do it for me. I'll do it, volunteer Davey, if Marilla will hold them by the legs, because I guess it'd take both my hands to manage the axe. It's awful jolly to see them hopping about after their heads are cut off. Then I'll have peas and beans and cream potatoes and a lettuce salad for vegetables, resumed Anne, and for dessert, lemon pie with whipped cream and coffee and cheese and ladyfingers. I'll make the pies and ladyfingers to-morrow, and do up my white muslin dress. And I must tell Diana to-night, for she'll want to do up hers. Mrs. Morgan's heroines are nearly always dressed in white muslin, and Diana and I have always resolved that that was what we would wear if we ever met her. It will be such a delicate compliment, don't you think? Davey, dear, you mustn't poke pea-pods into the cracks of the floor. I must ask Mr. and Mrs. Allen and Miss Stacy did in her too, for they're all very anxious to meet Mrs. Morgan. It's so fortunate she's coming while Miss Stacy is here. Davey, dear, don't sail the pea-pods in the water bucket. Go out to the trough. Oh, I do hope it will be fine Thursday. And I think it will, for Uncle Abe said last night when he called it Mr. Harrison, that it was going to rain most of this week. That's a good sign, agreed Marilla. Anne ran across to Orchard's slope that evening to tell the news to Diana, who was also very much excited over it, and they discussed the matter in the hammock swung under the big willow in the berry garden. Oh, Anne, may I help you cook the dinner, implored Diana? You know I can make splendid lettuce salad. Indeed you may, said Anne unselfishly. And I shall want you to help me decorate, too. I mean to have the parlor simply a bower of blossoms, and the dining-table is to be adorned with wild roses. Oh, I do hope everything will go smoothly. Mrs. Morgan's heroines never get into scrapes or are taken at a disadvantage, and they are always so self-possessed in such good housekeepers. They seem to be born good housekeepers. You remember that Gertrude in Edgewood Days kept house for her father when she was only eight years old. When I was eight years old I hardly knew how to do a thing except bring up children. Mrs. Morgan must be an authority on girls when she has written so much about them, and I do want her to have a good opinion of us. I've imagined it all out a dozen different ways, what she'll look like and what she'll say and what I'll say, and I'm so anxious about my nose. There are seven freckles on it, as you can see. They came at the avus picnic when I went around in the sun without my hat. I suppose it's ungrateful of me to worry over them when I should be thankful they're not spread all over my face as they once were. But I do wish they hadn't come. All Mrs. Morgan's heroines have such perfect complexions. I can't recall a freckled one among them. Yours are not very noticeable, comforted Diana. Try a little lemon juice on them to-night. The next day Anne made her pies and ladyfingers, did up her muslin dress, and swept and dusted every room in the house, a quite unnecessary proceeding, for Green Gables was, as usual, in the apple pie order dear to Marilla's heart. But Anne felt that a fleck of dust would be a desecration in a house that was to be honoured by a visit from Charlotte E. Morgan. She even cleaned out the catch-all closet under the stairs, although there was not the remotest possibility of Mrs. Morgan seeing its interior. But I want to feel that it is in perfect order, even if she isn't to see it, Anne told Marilla. You know, in her book Golden Keys she makes her two heroines, Alice and Louisa, take for their motto that verse of longfellows. In the elder days of art builders wrought with greatest care each minute an unseen part for the gods see everywhere. And so they always kept their cellar stairs scrubbed, and never forgot to sweep under the beds. I should have a guilty conscience if I thought this closet was in disorder when Mrs. Morgan was in the house. Ever since we read Golden Keys last April Diana and I have taken that verse for our motto, too. That night John Henry Carter and Davy between them contrived to execute the two white roosters, and Anne dressed them, the usually distasteful task glorified in her eyes by the destination of the plump birds. I don't like picking fowls, she told Marilla, but isn't it fortunate we don't have to put our souls into what our hands may be doing? I've been picking chickens with my hands, but in imagination I've been roaming the milky way. I thought you'd scattered more feathers over the floor than usual, remarked Marilla. Then Anne put Davy to bed and made him promise that he would behave perfectly the next day. If I'm as good as good can be all day tomorrow will you let me be just as bad as I like all the next day? asked Davy. I couldn't do that, said Anne discreetly, but I'll take you and Dora for a row in the flat right to the bottom of the pond, and we'll go ashore on the sand hills and have a picnic. It's a bargain, said Davy. I'll be good, you bet. I meant to go over to Mr. Harrison's and fire peas from my new pop-gun at Ginger, but another day I'll do as well. I expect it'll be just like Sunday, but a picnic at the shore'll make up for that.