Anne of Windy Poplars

1

(Letter from Anne Shirley, B.A., Principal of Summerside High School, to Gilbert Blythe, medical student at Redmond College, Kingsport.)

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”S'side, P. E. I.,

”Monday, September 12th.

”DEAREST:

”Isn't that an address! Did you ever hear anything so delicious?

Windy Poplars is the name of my new home and I love it. I also love Spook's Lane, which has no legal existence. It should be Trent Street but it is never called Trent Street except on the rare occasions when it is mentioned in the Weekly Courier ... and then people look at each other and say, 'Where on earth is that?' Spook's Lane it is ... although for what reason I cannot tell you. I have already asked Rebecca Dew about it, but all she can say is that it has always been Spook's Lane and there was some old yarn years ago of its being haunted. But SHE has never seen anything worse-looking than herself in it.

”However, I mustn't get ahead of my story. You don't know Rebecca Dew yet. But you will, oh, yes, you will. I foresee that Rebecca Dew will figure largely in my future correspondence.

”It's dusk, dearest. (In passing, isn't 'dusk' a lovely word? I like it better than twilight. It sounds so velvety and shadowy and ... and ... DUSKY.) In daylight I belong to the world ... in the night to sleep and eternity. But in the dusk I'm free from both and belong only to myself ... and YOU. So I'm going to keep this hour sacred to writing to you. Though THIS won't be a love- letter. I have a scratchy pen and I can't write love-letters with a scratchy pen ... or a sharp pen ... or a stub pen. So you'll only get THAT kind of letter from me when I have exactly the right kind of pen. Meanwhile, I'll tell you about my new domicile and its inhabitants. Gilbert, they're such DEARS.

”I came up yesterday to look for a boarding-house. Mrs. Rachel Lynde came with me, ostensibly to do some shopping but really, I know, to choose a boarding-house for me. In spite of my Arts course and my B.A., Mrs. Lynde still thinks I am an inexperienced young thing who must be guided and directed and overseen.

”We came by train and oh, Gilbert, I had the funniest adventure.

You know I've always been one to whom adventures came unsought.

I just seem to attract them, as it were.

”It happened just as the train was coming to a stop at the station.

I got up and, stooping to pick up Mrs. Lynde's suitcase (she was planning to spend Sunday with a friend in Summerside), I leaned my knuckles heavily on what I thought was the shiny arm of a seat. In a second I received a violent crack across them that nearly made me howl. Gilbert, what I had taken for the arm of a seat was a man's bald head. He was glaring fiercely at me and had evidently just waked up. I apologized abjectly and got off the train as quickly as possible. The last I saw of him he was still glaring. Mrs. Lynde was horrified and my knuckles are sore yet!

”I did not expect to have much trouble in finding a boarding-house, for a certain Mrs. Tom Pringle has been boarding the various principals of the High School for the last fifteen years. But, for some unknown reason, she has grown suddenly tired of 'being bothered' and wouldn't take me. Several other desirable places had some polite excuse. Several other places WEREN'T desirable. We wandered about the town the whole afternoon and got hot and tired and blue and headachy ... at least I did. I was ready to give up in despair ... and then, Spook's Lane just happened!

”We had dropped in to see Mrs. Braddock, an old crony of Mrs. Lynde's. And Mrs. Braddock said she thought 'the widows' might take me in.

”'I've heard they want a boarder to pay Rebecca Dew's wages. They can't afford to keep Rebecca any longer unless a little extra money comes in. And if Rebecca goes, WHO is to milk that old red cow?'

”Mrs. Braddock fixed me with a stern eye as if she thought I ought to milk the red cow but wouldn't believe me on oath if I claimed I could.

”'What widows are you talking about?' demanded Mrs. Lynde.

”'Why, Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty,' said Mrs. Braddock, as if everybody, even an ignorant B.A., ought to know that. 'Aunt Kate is Mrs. Amasa MacComber (she's the Captain's widow) and Aunt Chatty is Mrs. Lincoln MacLean, just a plain widow. But every one calls them "aunt." They live at the end of Spook's Lane.'

”Spook's Lane! That settled it. I knew I just had to board with the widows.

”'Let's go and see them at once,' I implored Mrs. Lynde. It seemed to me if we lost a moment Spook's Lane would vanish back into fairyland.

”'You can see them, but it'll be Rebecca who'll really decide whether they'll take you or not. Rebecca Dew rules the roost at Windy Poplars, I can tell you.”

”Windy Poplars! It couldn't be true ... no it couldn't. I must be dreaming. And Mrs. Rachel Lynde was actually saying it was a funny name for a place.

”'Oh, Captain MacComber called it that. It was his house, you know. He planted all the poplars round it and was mighty proud of it, though he was seldom home and never stayed long. Aunt Kate used to say that was inconvenient, but we never got it figured out whether she meant his staying such a little time or his coming back at all. Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you'll get there. Rebecca Dew's a good cook and a genius with cold potatoes. If she takes a notion to you you'll be in clover. If she doesn't ... well, she won't, that's all. I hear there's a new banker in town looking for a boarding-house and she may prefer him. It's kind of funny Mrs. Tom Pringle wouldn't take you. Summerside is full of Pringles and half Pringles. They're called "The Royal Family" and you'll have to get on their good side, Miss Shirley, or you'll never get along in Summerside High. They've always ruled the roost hereabouts ... there's a street called after old Captain Abraham Pringle. There's a regular clan of them, but the two old ladies at Maplehurst boss the tribe. I did hear they were down on you.'

”'Why should they be?' I exclaimed. 'I'm a total stranger to them.'

”'Well, a third cousin of theirs applied for the Principalship and they all think he should have got it. When your application was accepted the whole kit and boodle of them threw back their heads and howled. Well, people are like that. We have to take them as we find them, you know. They'll be as smooth as cream to you but they'll work against you every time. I'm not wanting to discourage you but forewarned is forearmed. I hope you'll make good just to spite them. If the widows take you, you won't mind eating with Rebecca Dew, will you? She isn't a SERVANT, you know. She's a far-off cousin of the Captain's. She doesn't come to the table when there's company ... she knows her place THEN ... but if you were boarding there she wouldn't consider you company, of course.'

”I assured the anxious Mrs. Braddock that I'd love eating with Rebecca Dew and dragged Mrs. Lynde away. I MUST get ahead of the banker.

”Mrs. Braddock followed us to the door.

”'And don't hurt Aunt Chatty's feelings, will you? Her feelings are so easily hurt. She's so sensitive, poor thing. You see, she hasn't QUITE as much money as Aunt Kate ... though Aunt Kate hasn't any too much either. And then Aunt Kate liked her husband real well ... her own husband, I mean ... but Aunt Chatty didn't ... didn't like hers, I mean. Small wonder! Lincoln MacLean was an old crank ... but she thinks people hold it against her. It's lucky this is Saturday. If it was Friday Aunt Chatty wouldn't even consider taking you. You'd think Aunt Kate would be the superstitious one, wouldn't you? Sailors are kind of like that. But it's Aunt Chatty ... although HER husband was a carpenter. She was very pretty in her day, poor thing.'

”I assured Mrs. Braddock that Aunt Chatty's feelings would be sacred to me, but she followed us down the walk.

”'Kate and Chatty won't explore your belongings when you're out.

They're very conscientious. Rebecca Dew may, but she won't tell on you. And I wouldn't go to the front door if I was you. They only use it for something real important. I don't think it's been opened since Amasa's funeral. Try the side door. They keep the key under the flower-pot on the window-sill, so if nobody's home just unlock the door and go in and wait. And whatever you do, don't praise the cat, because Rebecca Dew doesn't like him.'

”I promised I wouldn't praise the cat and we actually got away.

Erelong we found ourselves in Spook's Lane. It is a very short side street, leading out to open country, and far away a blue hill makes a beautiful back-drop for it. On one side there are no houses at all and the land slopes down to the harbor. On the other side there are only three. The first one is just a house ... nothing more to be said of it. The next one is a big, imposing, gloomy mansion of stone-trimmed red brick, with a mansard roof warty with dormer-windows, an iron railing around the flat top and so many spruces and firs crowding about it that you can hardly see the house. It must be frightfully dark inside. And the third and last is Windy Poplars, right on the corner, with the grass-grown street on the front and a real country road, beautiful with tree shadows, on the other side.

”I fell in love with it at once. You know there are houses which impress themselves upon you at first sight for some reason you can hardly define. Windy Poplars is like that. I may describe it to you as a white frame house ... very white ... with green shutters ... very green ... with a 'tower' in the corner and a dormer-window on either side, a low stone wall dividing it from the street, with aspen poplars growing at intervals along it, and a big garden at the back where flowers and vegetables are delightfully jumbled up together ... but all this can't convey its charm to you. In short, it is a house with a delightful personality and has something of the flavor of Green Gables about it.

”'This is the spot for me ... it's been foreordained,' I said rapturously.

”Mrs. Lynde looked as if she didn't quite trust foreordination.

”'It'll be a long walk to school,' she said dubiously.

”'I don't mind that. It will be good exercise. Oh, look at that lovely birch and maple grove across the road.'

”Mrs. Lynde looked but all she said was,

”'I hope you won't be pestered with mosquitoes.'

”I hoped so, too. I detest mosquitoes. One mosquito can keep me 'awaker' than a bad conscience.

”I was glad we didn't have to go in by the front door. It looked so forbidding ... a big, double-leaved, grained-wood affair, flanked by panels of red, flowered glass. It doesn't seem to belong to the house at all. The little green side door, which we reached by a darling path of thin, flat sandstones sunk at intervals in the grass, was much more friendly and inviting. The path was edged by very prim, well-ordered beds of ribbon grass and bleeding-heart and tiger-lilies and sweet-William and southernwood and bride's bouquet and red-and-white daisies and what Mrs. Lynde calls 'pinies.' Of course they weren't all in bloom at this season, but you could see they had bloomed at the proper time and done it well. There was a rose plot in a far corner and between Windy Poplars and the gloomy house next a brick wall all overgrown with Virginia creeper, with an arched trellis above a faded green door in the middle of it. A vine ran right across it, so it was plain it hadn't been opened for some time. It was really only half a door, for its top half is merely an open oblong through which we could catch a glimpse of a jungly garden on the other side.

”Just as we entered the gate of the garden of Windy Poplars I noticed a little clump of clover right by the path. Some impulse led me to stoop down and look at it. Would you believe it, Gilbert? There, right before my eyes, were THREE four-leafed clovers! Talk about omens! Even the Pringles can't contend against that. And I felt sure the banker hadn't an earthly chance.

”The side door was open so it was evident somebody was at home and we didn't have to look under the flower-pot. We knocked and Rebecca Dew came to the door. We knew it was Rebecca Dew because it couldn't have been any one else in the whole wide world. And she couldn't have had any other name.

”Rebecca Dew is 'around forty' and if a tomato had black hair racing away from its forehead, little twinkling black eyes, a tiny nose with a knobby end and a slit of a mouth, it would look exactly like her. Everything about her is a little too short ... arms and legs and neck and nose ... everything but her smile. It is long enough to reach from ear to ear.

”But we didn't see her smile just then. She looked very grim when I asked if I could see Mrs. MacComber.

”'You mean Mrs. CAPTAIN MacComber?' she said rebukingly, as if there were at least a dozen Mrs. MacCombers in the house.

”'Yes,' I said meekly. And we were forthwith ushered into the parlor and left there. It was rather a nice little room, a bit cluttered up with antimacassars but with a quiet, friendly atmosphere about it that I liked. Every bit of furniture had its own particular place which it had occupied for years. How that furniture shone! No bought polish ever produced that mirror-like gloss. I knew it was Rebecca Dew's elbow grease. There was a full-rigged ship in a bottle on the mantelpiece which interested Mrs. Lynde greatly. She couldn't imagine how it ever got into the bottle ... but she thought it gave the room 'a nautical air.'

”'The widows' came in. I liked them at once. Aunt Kate was tall and thin and gray, and a little austere ... Marilla's type exactly: and Aunt Chatty was short and thin and gray, and a little wistful. She may have been very pretty once but nothing is now left of her beauty except her eyes. They are lovely ... soft and big and brown.

”I explained my errand and the widows looked at each other.

”'We must consult Rebecca Dew,' said Aunt Chatty.

”'Undoubtedly,' said Aunt Kate.

”Rebecca Dew was accordingly summoned from the kitchen. The cat came in with her ... a big fluffy Maltese, with a white breast and a white collar. I should have liked to stroke him, but, remembering Mrs. Braddock's warning, I ignored him.

”Rebecca gazed at me without the glimmer of a smile.

”'Rebecca,' said Aunt Kate, who, I have discovered, does not waste words, 'Miss Shirley wishes to board here. I don't think we can take her.'

”'Why not?' said Rebecca Dew.

”'It would be too much trouble for you, I am afraid,' said Aunt Chatty.

"'I'm well used to trouble,' said Rebecca Dew. You CAN'T separate those names, Gilbert. It's impossible ... though the widows do it. They call her Rebecca when they speak to her. I don't know how they manage it.

”'We are rather old to have young people coming and going,' persisted Aunt Chatty.

”'Speak for yourself,' retorted Rebecca Dew. 'I'm only forty-five and I still have the use of my faculties. And I think it would be nice to have a young person sleeping in the house. A girl would be better than a boy any time. HE'D be smoking day AND night ... burn us in our beds. If you must take a boarder, MY advice would be to take HER. But of course it's your house.'

”She said and vanished ... as Homer was so fond of remarking. I knew the whole thing was settled but Aunt Chatty said I must go up and see if I was suited with my room.

”'We will give you the tower room, dear. It's not quite as large as the spare room, but it has a stove-pipe hole for a stove in winter and a much nicer view. You can see the old graveyard from it.'

”I knew I would love the room ... the very name, 'tower room,' thrilled me. I felt as if we were living in that old song we used to sing in Avonlea School about the maiden who 'dwelt in a high tower beside a gray sea.' It proved to be the dearest place. We ascended to it by a little flight of corner steps leading up from the stair-landing. It was rather small ... but not nearly as small as that dreadful hall bedroom I had my first year at Redmond.

It had two windows, a dormer one looking west and a gable one looking north, and in the corner formed by the tower another three- sided window with casements opening outward and shelves underneath for my books. The floor was covered with round, braided rugs, the big bed had a canopy top and a 'wild-goose' quilt and looked so perfectly smooth and level that it seemed a shame to spoil it by sleeping in it. And, Gilbert, it is so high that I have to climb into it by a funny little movable set of steps which in daytime are stowed away under it. It seems Captain MacComber bought the whole contraption in some 'foreign' place and brought it home.

”There was a dear little corner cupboard with shelves trimmed with white scalloped paper and bouquets painted on its door. There was a round blue cushion on the window-seat ... a cushion with a button deep in the center, making it look like a fat blue doughnut.

And there was a sweet washstand with two shelves ... the top one just big enough for a basin and jug of robin's-egg blue and the under one for a soap dish and hot water pitcher. It had a little brass-handled drawer full of towels and on a shelf over it a white china lady sat, with pink shoes and gilt sash and a red china rose in her golden china hair.

”The whole place was engoldened by the light that came through the corn-colored curtains and there was the rarest tapestry on the whitewashed walls where the shadow patterns of the aspens outside fell ... living tapestry, always changing and quivering.

Somehow, it seemed such a HAPPY room. I felt as if I were the richest girl in the world.

”'You'll be safe there, that's what,' said Mrs. Lynde, as we went away.

”'I expect I'll find some things a bit cramping after the freedom of Patty's Place,' I said, just to tease her.

”'Freedom!' Mrs. Lynde sniffed. 'Freedom! Don't talk like a Yankee, Anne.'

”I came up today, bag and baggage. Of course I hated to leave Green Gables. No matter how often and long I'm away from it, the minute a vacation comes I'm part of it again as if I had never been away, and my heart is torn over leaving it. But I know I'll like it here. And it likes me. I always know whether a house likes me or not.

”The views from my windows are lovely ... even the old graveyard, which is surrounded by a row of dark fir trees and reached by a winding, dyke-bordered lane. From my west window I can see all over the harbor to distant, misty shores, with the dear little sail-boats I love and the ships outward bound 'for ports unknown' ... fascinating phrase! Such 'scope for imagination' in it! From the north window I can see into the grove of birch and maple across the road. You know I've always been a tree worshiper. When we studied Tennyson in our English course at Redmond I was always sorrowfully at one with poor Enone, mourning her ravished pines.

”Beyond the grove and the graveyard is a lovable valley with the glossy red ribbon of a road winding through it and white houses dotted along it. Some valleys ARE lovable ... you can't tell why. Just to look at them gives you pleasure. And beyond it again is my blue hill. I'm naming it Storm King ... the ruling passion, etc.

”I can be so ALONE up here when I want to be. You know it's lovely to be alone once in a while. The winds will be my friends.

They'll wail and sigh and croon around my tower ... the white winds of winter ... the green winds of spring ... the blue winds of summer ... the crimson winds of autumn ... and the wild winds of all seasons ... 'stormy wind fulfilling his word.' How I've always thrilled to that Bible verse ... as if each and every wind had a message for me. I've always envied the boy who flew with the north wind in that lovely old story of George MacDonald's. Some night, Gilbert, I'll open my tower casement and just step into the arms of the wind ... and Rebecca Dew will never know why my bed wasn't slept in that night.

”I hope when we find our 'house of dreams,' dearest, that there will be winds around it. I wonder where it is ... that unknown house. Shall I love it best by moonlight or dawn? That home of the future where we will have love and friendship and work ... and a few funny adventures to bring laughter in our old age. Old age! Can WE ever be old, Gilbert? It seems impossible.

”From the left window in the tower I can see the roofs of the town ... this place where I am to live for at least a year.

People are living in those houses who will be my friends, though I don't know them yet. And perhaps my enemies. For the ilk of Pye are found everywhere, under all kinds of names, and I understand the Pringles are to be reckoned with. School begins tomorrow. I shall have to teach geometry! Surely that can't be any worse than learning it. I pray heaven there are no mathematical geniuses among the Pringles.

”I've been here only for half a day, but I feel as if I had known the widows and Rebecca Dew all my life. They've asked me to call them 'aunt' already and I've asked them to call me Anne. I called Rebecca Dew 'Miss Dew' ... once.

”'Miss What?' quoth she.

”'Dew,' I said meekly. 'Isn't that your name?'

”'Well, yes, it is, but I ain't been called Miss Dew for so long it gave me quite a turn. You'd better not do it any more, Miss Shirley, me not being used to it.'

”'I'll remember, Rebecca ... Dew,' I said, trying my hardest to leave off the Dew but not succeeding.

”Mrs. Braddock was quite right in saying Aunt Chatty was sensitive.

I discovered that at supper-time. Aunt Kate had said something about 'Chatty's sixty-sixth birthday.' Happening to glance at Aunt Chatty I saw that she had ... no, not BURST into tears. That is entirely too explosive a term for her performance. She just overflowed. The tears welled up in her big brown eyes and brimmed over, effortlessly and silently.

”'What's the matter now, Chatty?' asked Aunt Kate rather dourly.

”'It ... it was only my sixty-fifth birthday,' said Aunt Chatty.

”'I beg your pardon, Charlotte,' said Aunt Kate ... and all was sunshine again.

”The cat is a lovely big Tommy-cat with golden eyes, an elegant coat of dusty Maltese and irreproachable linen. Aunts Kate and Chatty call him Dusty Miller, because that is his name, and Rebecca Dew calls him That Cat because she resents him and resents the fact that she has to give him a square inch of liver every morning and evening, clean his hairs off the parlor arm-chair seat with an old tooth-brush whenever he has sneaked in and hunt him up if he is out late at night.

”'Rebecca Dew has always hated cats,' Aunt Chatty tells me, 'and she hates Dusty especially. Old Mrs. Campbell's dog ... she kept a dog then ... brought him here two years ago in his mouth. I suppose he thought it was no use to take him to Mrs. Campbell.

Such a poor miserable little kitten, all wet and cold, with its poor little bones almost sticking through its skin. A heart of stone couldn't have refused it shelter. So Kate and I adopted it, but Rebecca Dew has never really forgiven us. We were not diplomatic that time. We should have refused to take it in. I don't know if you've noticed ...' Aunt Chatty looked cautiously around at the door between the dining-room and kitchen ... 'how we manage Rebecca Dew.'

”I HAD noticed it ... and it was beautiful to behold. Summerside and Rebecca Dew may think she rules the roost but the widows know differently.

”'We didn't want to take the banker ... a young man would have been SO unsettling and we would have had to worry so much if he didn't go to church regularly. But we pretended we did and Rebecca Dew simply wouldn't hear of it. I'm so glad we have you, dear. I feel sure you'll be a very nice person to cook for. I hope you'll like us all. Rebecca Dew has some very fine qualities. She was not so tidy when she came fifteen years ago as she is now. Once Kate had to write her name ... "Rebecca Dew" ... right across the parlor mirror to show the dust. But she never had to do it again. Rebecca Dew can take a hint. I hope you'll find your room comfortable, dear. You may have the window open at night. Kate does not approve of night air but she knows boarders must have privileges. She and I sleep together and we have arranged it so that one night the window is shut for her and the next it is open for me. One can always work out little problems like that, don't you think? Where there is a will there is always a way. Don't be alarmed if you hear Rebecca prowling a good deal in the night. She is always hearing noises and getting up to investigate them. I think that is why she didn't want the banker. She was afraid she might run into him in her nightgown. I hope you won't mind Kate not talking much. It's just her way. And she must have so many things to talk of ... she was all over the world with Amasa MacComber in her young days. I wish I had the subjects for conversation she has, but I've never been off P. E. Island. I've often wondered why things should be arranged so ... me loving to talk and with nothing to talk about and Kate with everything and hating to talk. But I suppose Providence knows best.'

”Although Aunt Chatty is a talker all right, she didn't say all this without a break. I interjected remarks at suitable intervals, but they were of no importance.

”They keep a cow which is pastured at Mr. James Hamilton's up the road and Rebecca Dew goes there to milk her. There is any amount of cream and every morning and evening I understand Rebecca Dew passes a glass of new milk through the opening in the wall gate to Mrs. Campbell's 'Woman.' It is for 'little Elizabeth,' who must have it under doctor's orders. Who the Woman is, or who little Elizabeth is, I have yet to discover. Mrs. Campbell is the inhabitant and owner of the fortress next door ... which is called The Evergreens.

”I don't expect to sleep tonight ... I never do sleep my first night in a strange bed and THIS is the very strangest bed I've ever seen. But I won't mind. I've always loved the night and I'll like lying awake and thinking over everything in life, past, present and to come. Especially TO COME.

”This is a merciless letter, Gilbert. I won't inflict such a long one on you again. But I wanted to tell you everything, so that you could picture my new surroundings for yourself. It has come to an end now, for far up the harbor the moon is 'sinking into shadow- land.' I must write a letter to Marilla yet. It will reach Green Gables the day after tomorrow and Davy will bring it home from the post-office, and he and Dora will crowd around Marilla while she opens it and Mrs. Lynde will have both ears open.... Ow ... w ...w! That has made me homesick. Good-night, dearest, from one who is now and ever will be,

”Fondestly yours,

”ANNE SHIRLEY.”

2

(Extracts from various letters from the same to the same.)

”September 26th.

”Do you know where I go to read your letters? Across the road into the grove. There is a little dell there where the sun dapples the ferns. A brook meanders through it; there is a twisted mossy tree- trunk on which I sit, and the most delightful row of young sister birches. After this, when I have a dream of a certain kind ... a golden-green, crimson-veined dream ... a very dream of dreams ...

I shall please my fancy with the belief that it came from my secret dell of birches and was born of some mystic union between the slenderest, airiest of the sisters and the crooning brook. I love to sit there and listen to the silence of the grove. Have you ever noticed how many different silences there are, Gilbert? The silence of the woods ... of the shore ... of the meadows ... of the night ... of the summer afternoon. All different because all the undertones that thread them are different. I'm sure if I were totally blind and insensitive to heat and cold I could easily tell just where I was by the quality of the silence about me.

”School has been 'keeping' for two weeks now and I've got things pretty well organized. But Mrs. Braddock was right ... the Pringles are my problem. And as yet I don't see exactly how I'm going to solve it in spite of my lucky clovers. As Mrs. Braddock says, they are as smooth as cream ... and as slippery.

”The Pringles are a kind of clan who keeps tabs on each other and fight a good bit among themselves but stand shoulder to shoulder in regard to any outsider. I have come to the conclusion that there are just two kinds of people in Summerside ... those who are Pringles and those who aren't.

”My room is full of Pringles and a good many students who bear another name have Pringle blood in them. The ring-leader of them seems to be Jen Pringle, a green-eyed bantling who looks as BECKY SHARP must have looked at fourteen. I believe she is deliberately organizing a subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect, with which I am going to find it hard to cope. She has a knack of making irresistibly comic faces and when I hear a smothered ripple of laughter running over the room behind my back I know perfectly well what has caused it, but so far I haven't been able to catch her out in it. She has brains, too ... the little wretch! ... can write compositions that are fourth cousins to literature and is quite brilliant in mathematics ... woe is me! There is a certain SPARKLE in everything she says or does and she has a sense of humorous situations which would be a bond of kinship between us if she hadn't started out by hating me. As it is, I fear it will be a long time before Jen and I can laugh TOGETHER over anything.

”Myra Pringle, Jen's cousin, is the beauty of the school ... and apparently stupid. She does perpetrate some amusing howlers ... as, for instance, when she said today in history class that the Indians thought Champlain and his men were gods or 'something inhuman.'

”Socially the Pringles are what Rebecca Dew calls 'the e-light' of Summerside. Already I have been invited to two Pringle homes for supper ... because it is the proper thing to invite a new teacher to supper and the Pringles are not going to omit the required gestures. Last night I was at James Pringle's ... the father of the aforesaid Jen. He looks like a college professor but is in reality stupid and ignorant. He talked a great deal about 'disCIPline,' tapping the tablecloth with a finger the nail of which was not impeccable and occasionally doing dreadful things to grammar. The Summerside High had always required a firm hand ... an experienced teacher, male preferred. He was afraid I was a LEETLE too young ... 'a fault which time will cure all too soon,' he said sorrowfully. I didn't say anything because if I had said anything I might have said too much. So I was as smooth and creamy as any Pringle of them all could have been and contented myself with looking limpidly at him and saying inside of myself, 'You cantankerous, prejudiced old creature!'

”Jen must have got her brains from her mother ... whom I found myself liking. Jen, in her parents' presence, was a model of decorum. But though her words were polite her tone was insolent.

Every time she said 'Miss Shirley' she contrived to make it sound like an insult. And every time she looked at my hair I felt that it was just plain carroty red. No Pringle, I am certain, would ever admit it was auburn.

”I liked the Morton Pringles much better ... though Morton Pringle never really listens to anything you say. He says something to you and then, while you're replying, he is busy thinking out his next remark.

”Mrs. Stephen Pringle ... the Widow Pringle ... Summerside abounds in widows ... wrote me a letter yesterday ... a nice, polite, poisonous letter. Millie has too much home work ... Millie is a delicate child and must not be overworked. Mr. Bell NEVER gave her home work. She is a sensitive child that must be UNDERSTOOD. Mr. Bell understood her so well! Mrs. Stephen is sure I will, too, if I try!

”I do not doubt Mrs. Stephen thinks I made Adam Pringle's nose bleed in class today by reason of which he had to go home. And I woke up last night and couldn't go to sleep again because I remembered an 'i' I hadn't dotted in a question I wrote on the board. I'm certain Jen Pringle would notice it and a whisper will go around the clan about it.

”Rebecca Dew says that all the Pringles will invite me to supper, except the old ladies at Maplehurst, and then ignore me forever afterwards. As they are the 'e-light,' this may mean that socially I may be banned in Summerside. Well, we'll see. The battle is on but is not yet either won or lost. Still, I feel rather unhappy over it all. You can't reason with prejudice. I'm still just as I used to be in my childhood ... I can't bear to have people not liking me. It isn't pleasant to think that the families of half my pupils hate me. And for no fault of my own. It is the INJUSTICE that stings me. There go more italics! But a few italics really do relieve your feelings.

”Apart from the Pringles I like my pupils very much. There are some clever, ambitious, hard-working ones who are really interested in getting an education. Lewis Allen is paying for his board by doing HOUSEWORK at his boarding-house and isn't a bit ashamed of it. And Sophy Sinclair rides bareback on her father's old gray mare six miles in and six miles out every day. There's pluck for you! If I can help a girl like that, am I to mind the Pringles?

”The trouble is ... if I can't win the Pringles I won't have much chance of helping anybody.

”But I love Windy Poplars. It isn't a boardinghouse ... it's a home! And they like me ... even Dusty Miller likes me, though he sometimes disapproves of me and shows it by deliberately sitting with his back turned towards me, occasionally cocking a golden eye over his shoulder at me to see how I'm taking it. I don't pet him much when Rebecca Dew is around because it really does irritate her. By day he is a homely, comfortable, meditative animal ... but he is decidedly a weird creature at night. Rebecca says it is because he is never allowed to stay out after dark. She hates to stand in the back yard and call him. She says the neighbors will all be laughing at her. She calls in such fierce, stentorian tones that she really can be heard all over the town on a still night shouting for 'Puss ... PUSS ... PUSS!' The widows would have a conniption if Dusty Miller wasn't in when they went to bed.

'Nobody knows what I've gone through on account of That Cat... NOBODY,' Rebecca has assured me.

”The widows are going to wear well. Every day I like them better.

Aunt Kate doesn't believe in reading novels, but informs me that she does not propose to censor my reading-matter. Aunt Chatty loves novels. She has a 'hidy-hole' where she keeps them ... she smuggles them in from the town library ... together with a pack of cards for solitaire and anything else she doesn't want Aunt Kate to see. It is in a chair seat which nobody but Aunt Chatty knows is more than a chair seat. She has shared the secret with me, because, I strongly suspect, she wants me to aid and abet her in the aforesaid smuggling. There shouldn't really be any need for hidy-holes at Windy Poplars, for I never saw a house with so many mysterious cupboards. Though to be sure, Rebecca Dew won't let them BE mysterious. She is always cleaning them out ferociously.

'A house can't keep itself clean,' she says sorrowfully when either of the widows protests. I am sure she would make short work of a novel or a pack of cards if she found them. They are both a horror to her orthodox soul. Rebecca Dew says cards are the devil's books and novels even worse. The only things Rebecca ever reads, apart from her Bible, are the society columns of the Montreal Guardian.

She loves to pore over the houses and furniture and doings of millionaires.

”'Just fancy soaking in a golden bathtub, Miss Shirley,' she said wistfully.

”But she's really an old duck. She has produced from somewhere a comfortable old wing chair of faded brocade that just fits my kinks and says, 'This is YOUR chair. We'll keep it for YOU.' And she won't let Dusty Miller sleep on it lest I get hairs on my school skirt and give the Pringles something to talk about.

”The whole three are very much interested in my circlet of pearls ... and what it signifies. Aunt Kate showed me her engagement ring (she can't wear it because it has grown too small) set with turquoises. But poor Aunt Chatty owned to me with tears in her eyes that she had never had an engagement ring ... her husband thought it 'an unnecessary expenditure.' She was in my room at the time, giving her face a bath in buttermilk. She does it every night to preserve her complexion, and has sworn me to secrecy because she doesn't want Aunt Kate to know it.

”'She would think it ridiculous vanity in a woman of my age. And I am sure Rebecca Dew thinks that no Christian woman should try to be beautiful. I used to slip down to the kitchen to do it after Kate had gone to sleep but I was always afraid of Rebecca Dew coming down. She has ears like a cat's even when she is asleep. If I could just slip in here every night and do it ... oh, thank you, my dear.'

”I have found out a little about our neighbors at The Evergreens.

Mrs. Campbell (who was a Pringle!) is eighty. I haven't seen her but from what I can gather she is a very grim old lady. She has a maid, Martha Monkman, almost as ancient and grim as herself, who is generally referred to as 'Mrs. Campbell's Woman.' And she has her great-granddaughter, little Elizabeth Grayson, living with her.

Elizabeth ... on whom I have never laid eyes in spite of my two weeks' sojourn ... is eight years old and goes to the public school by 'the back way' ... a short cut through the back yards ... so I never encounter her, going or coming. Her mother, who is dead, was a granddaughter of Mrs. Campbell, who brought her up also ... HER parents being dead. She married a certain Pierce Grayson, a 'Yankee,' as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would say. She died when Elizabeth was born and as Pierce Grayson had to leave America at once to take charge of a branch of his firm's business in Paris, the baby was sent home to old Mrs. Campbell. The story goes that he 'couldn't bear the sight of her' because she had cost her mother's life, and has never taken any notice of her. This of course may be sheer gossip because neither Mrs. Campbell nor the Woman ever opens her lips about him.

”Rebecca Dew says they are far too strict with little Elizabeth and she hasn't much of a time of it with them.

”'She isn't like other children ... far too old for eight years.

The things that she says sometimes! "Rebecca," she sez to me one day, "suppose just as you were ready to get into bed you felt your ankle NIPPED?" No wonder she's afraid to go to bed in the dark.

And they make her do it. Mrs. Campbell says there are to be no cowards in HER house. They watch her like two cats watching a mouse, and boss her within an inch of her life. If she makes a speck of noise they nearly pass out. It's "hush, hush" all the time. I tell you that child is being hush-hushed to death. And what is to be done about it?'

”What, indeed?

”I feel that I'd like to see her. She seems to me a bit pathetic.

Aunt Kate says she is well looked after from a physical point of view ... what Aunt Kate really said was, 'They feed and dress her well' ... but a child can't live by bread alone. I can never forget what my own life was before I came to Green Gables.

”I'm going home next Friday evening to spend two beautiful days in Avonlea. The only drawback will be that everybody I see will ask me how I like teaching in Summerside.

”But think of Green Gables now, Gilbert ... the Lake of Shining Waters with a blue mist on it ... the maples across the brook beginning to turn scarlet ... the ferns golden brown in the Haunted Wood ... and the sunset shadows in Lover's Lane, darling spot. I find it in my heart to wish I were there now with ... with ... guess whom?

”Do you know, Gilbert, there are times when I strongly suspect that I love you!”

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”S'side,

”October 10th.

”HONORED AND RESPECTED SIR:-- "That is how a love letter of Aunt Chatty's grandmother began.

Isn't it delicious? What a thrill of superiority it must have given the grandfather! Wouldn't you really prefer it to 'Gilbert darling, etc.'? But, on the whole, I think I'm glad you're not the grandfather ... or A grandfather. It's wonderful to think we're young and have our whole lives before us ... TOGETHER ... isn't it?”

(Several pages omitted. Anne's pen being evidently neither sharp, stub nor rusty.)

”I'm sitting on the window seat in the tower looking out into the trees waving against an amber sky and beyond them to the harbor.

Last night I had such a lovely walk with myself. I really had to go somewhere for it was just a trifle dismal at Windy Poplars.

Aunt Chatty was crying in the sitting-room because her feelings had been hurt and Aunt Kate was crying in her bedroom because it was the anniversary of Captain Amasa's death and Rebecca Dew was crying in the kitchen for no reason that I could discover. I've never seen Rebecca Dew cry before. But when I tried tactfully to find out what was wrong she pettishly wanted to know if a body couldn't enjoy a cry when she felt like it. So I folded my tent and stole away, leaving her to her enjoyment.

”I went out and down the harbor road. There was such a nice frosty, Octobery smell in the air, blent with the delightful odor of newly plowed fields. I walked on and on until twilight had deepened into a moonlit autumn night. I was alone but not lonely.

I held a series of imaginary conversations with imaginary comrades and thought out so many epigrams that I was agreeably surprised at myself. I couldn't help enjoying myself in spite of my Pringle worries.

”The spirit moves me to utter a few yowls regarding the Pringles.

I hate to admit it but things are not going any too well in Summerside High. There is no doubt that a cabal has been organized against me.

”For one thing, home work is never done by any of the Pringles or half Pringles. And there is no use in appealing to the parents.

They are suave, polite, evasive. I know all the pupils who are not Pringles like me but the Pringle virus of disobedience is undermining the morale of the whole room. One morning I found my desk turned inside out and upside down. Nobody knew who did it, of course. And no one could or would tell who left on it another day the box out of which popped an artificial snake when I opened it.

But every Pringle in the school screamed with laughter over my face. I suppose I did look wildly startled.

”Jen Pringle comes late for school half the time, always with some perfectly water-tight excuse, delivered politely, with an insolent tilt to her mouth. She passes notes in class under my very nose.

I found a peeled onion in the pocket of my coat when I put it on today. I should love to lock that girl up on bread and water until she learned how to behave herself.

”The worst thing to date was the caricature of myself I found on the blackboard one morning ... done in white chalk with SCARLET hair. Everybody denied doing it, Jen among the rest, but I knew Jen was the only pupil in the room who could draw like that. It WAS done well. My nose ... which, as you know, has always been my one pride and joy ... was humpbacked and my mouth was the mouth of a vinegary spinster who had been teaching a school full of Pringles for thirty years. But it was ME. I woke up at three o'clock that night and writhed over the recollection. Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.

”All sorts of things are being said. I am accused of 'marking down' Hattie Pringle's examination papers just because she is a Pringle. I am said to 'laugh when the children make mistakes.' (Well, I DID laugh when Fred Pringle defined a centurion as 'a man who had lived a hundred years.' I couldn't help it.)

”James Pringle is saying, 'There is no disCIPline in the school ... no disCIPline whatever.' And a report is being circulated that I am a 'foundling.'

”I am beginning to encounter the Pringle antagonism in other quarters. Socially as well as educationally, Summerside seems to be under the Pringle thumb. No wonder they are called the Royal Family. I wasn't invited to Alice Pringle's walking party last Friday. And when Mrs. Frank Pringle got up a tea in aid of a church project (Rebecca Dew informs me that the ladies are going to 'build' the new spire!), I was the only girl in the Presbyterian church who was not asked to take a table. I have heard that the minister's wife, who is a newcomer in Summerside, suggested asking me to sing in the choir and was informed that all the Pringles would drop out of it if she did. That would leave such a skeleton that the choir simply couldn't carry on.

”Of course I'm not the only one of the teachers who has trouble with pupils. When the other teachers send theirs up to me to be 'disciplined' ... how I hate that word! ... half of them are Pringles. But there is never any complaint made about THEM.

”Two evenings ago I kept Jen in after school to do some work she had deliberately left undone. Ten minutes later the carriage from Maplehurst drew up before the school house and Miss Ellen was at the door ... a beautifully dressed, sweetly smiling old lady, with elegant black lace mitts and a fine hawk-like nose, looking as if she had just stepped out of an 1840 band-box. She was so sorry but could she have Jen? She was going to visit friends in Lowvale and had promised to take Jen. Jen went off triumphantly and I realized afresh the forces arrayed against me.

”In my pessimistic moods I think the Pringles are a compound of Sloanes and Pyes. But I know they're not. I feel that I could like them if they were not my enemies. They are, for the most part, a frank, jolly, loyal set. I could even like Miss Ellen.

I've never seen Miss Sarah. Miss Sarah has not left Maplehurst for ten years.

”'Too delicate ... or thinks she is,' says Rebecca Dew with a sniff. 'But there ain't anything the matter with her pride. All the Pringles are proud but those two old girls pass everything.

You should hear them talk about their ancestors. Well, their old father, Captain Abraham Pringle, WAS a fine old fellow. His brother Myrom wasn't quite so fine, but you don't hear the Pringles talking much about HIM. But I'm desprit afraid you're going to have a hard time with them all. When they make up their mind about anything or anybody they've never been known to change it. But keep your chin up, Miss Shirley ... keep your chin up.'

”'I wish I could get Miss Ellen's recipe for pound cake,' sighed Aunt Chatty. 'She's promised it to me time and again but it never comes. It's an old English family recipe. They're SO exclusive about their recipes.'

”In wild fantastic dreams I see myself compelling Miss Ellen to hand that recipe over to Aunt Chatty on bended knee and make Jen mind her p's and q's. The maddening thing is that I could easily make Jen do it myself if her whole clan weren't backing her up in her deviltry.”

(Two pages omitted.)

”Your obedient servant,

”ANNE SHIRLEY.

”P.S. That was how Aunt Chatty's grandmother signed her love letters.”

”October 15th.

”We heard today that there had been a burglary at the other end of the town last night. A house was entered and some money and a dozen silver spoons stolen. So Rebecca Dew has gone up to Mr. Hamilton's to see if she can borrow a dog. She will tie him on the back veranda and she advises me to lock up my engagement ring!

”By the way, I found out why Rebecca Dew cried. It seems there had been a domestic convulsion. Dusty Miller had 'misbehaved again' and Rebecca Dew told Aunt Kate she would really have to do something about That Cat. He was wearing her to a fiddle-string.

It was the third time in a year and she knew he did it on purpose.

And Aunt Kate said that if Rebecca Dew would always let the cat out when he meowed there would be no danger of his misbehaving.

”'Well, this IS the last straw,' said Rebecca Dew.

”Consequently, tears!

”The Pringle situation grows a little more acute every week.

Something very impertinent was written across one of my books yesterday and Homer Pringle turned handsprings all the way down the aisle when leaving school. Also, I got an anonymous letter recently full of nasty innuendoes. Somehow, I don't blame Jen for either the book or the letter. Imp as she is, there are things she wouldn't stoop to. Rebecca Dew is furious and I shudder to think what she would do to the Pringles if she had them in her power.

Nero's wish isn't to be compared to it. I really don't blame her, for there are times when I feel myself that I could cheerfully hand any and all of the Pringles a poisoned philter of Borgia brewing.

”I don't think I've told you much about the other teachers. There are two, you know ... the Vice-principal, Katherine Brooke of the Junior Room, and George MacKay of the Prep. Of George I have little to say. He is a shy, good-natured lad of twenty, with a slight, delicious Highland accent suggestive of low shielings and misty islands ... his grandfather 'was Isle of Skye' ... and does very well with the Preps. So far as I know him I like him.

But I'm afraid I'm going to have a hard time liking Katherine Brooke.

”Katherine is a girl of, I think, about twenty-eight, though she looks thirty-five. I have been told she cherished hopes of promotion to the Principalship and I suppose she resents my getting it, especially when I am considerably her junior. She is a good teacher ... a bit of a martinet ... but she is not popular with any one. And doesn't worry over it! She doesn't seem to have any friends or relations and boards in a gloomy-looking house on grubby little Temple Street. She dresses very dowdily, never goes out socially and is said to be 'mean.' She is very sarcastic and her pupils dread her biting remarks. I am told that her way of raising her thick black eyebrows and drawling at them reduces them to a pulp. I wish I could work it on the Pringles. But I really shouldn't like to govern by fear as she does. I want my pupils to love me.

”In spite of the fact that she has apparently no trouble in making them toe the line she is constantly sending some of them up to me ... especially Pringles. I know she does it purposely and I feel miserably certain that she exults in my difficulties and would be glad to see me worsted.

”Rebecca Dew says that no one can make friends with her. The widows have invited her several times to Sunday supper ... the dear souls are always doing that for lonely people, and always have the most delicious chicken salad for them ... but she never came.

So they have given it up because, as Aunt Kate says, 'there are limits.'

”There are rumors that she is very clever and can sing and recite ... 'elocute,' a la Rebecca Dew ... but will not do either.

Aunt Chatty once asked her to recite at a church supper.

”'We thought she refused very ungraciously,' said Aunt Kate.

”'Just growled,' said Rebecca Dew.

”Katherine has a deep throaty voice ... almost a man's voice ... and it does sound like a growl when she isn't in good humor.

”She isn't pretty but she might make more of herself. She is dark and swarthy, with magnificent black hair always dragged back from her high forehead and coiled in a clumsy knot at the base of her neck. Her eyes don't match her hair, being a clear, light amber under her black brows. She has ears she needn't be ashamed to show and the most beautiful hands I've ever seen. Also, she has a well- cut mouth. But she dresses terribly. Seems to have a positive genius for getting the colors and lines she should not wear. Dull dark greens and drab grays, when she is too sallow for greens and grays, and stripes which make her tall, lean figure even taller and leaner. And her clothes always look as if she'd slept in them.

”Her manner is very repellent ... as Rebecca Dew would say, she always has a chip on her shoulder. Every time I pass her on the stairs I feel that she is thinking horrid things about me. Every time I speak to her she makes me feel I've said the wrong thing.

And yet I'm very sorry for her ... though I know she would resent my pity furiously. And I can't do anything to help her because she doesn't want to be helped. She is really hateful to me. One day, when we three teachers were all in the staff room, I did something which, it seems, transgressed one of the unwritten laws of the school, and Katherine said cuttingly, 'Perhaps you think YOU are above rules, Miss Shirley.' At another time, when I was suggesting some changes which I thought would be for the good of the school, she said with a scornful smile, 'I'm not interested in fairy tales.' Once, when I said some nice things about her work and methods, she said, 'And what is to be the pill in all this jam?'

”But the thing that annoyed me most ... well, one day when I happened to pick up a book of hers in the staff room and glanced at the flyleaf I said,

”'I'm glad you spell your name with a K. Katherine is so much more alluring than Catherine, just as K is ever so much gypsier a letter than smug C.'

”She made no response, but the next note she sent up was signed 'Catherine Brooke'!

”I sneezed all the way home.

”I really would give up trying to be friends with her if I hadn't a queer, unaccountable feeling that under all her bruskness and aloofness she is actually starved for companionship.

”Altogether, what with Katherine's antagonism and the Pringle attitude, I don't know just what I'd do if it wasn't for dear Rebecca Dew and your letters ... and little Elizabeth.

”Because I've got acquainted with little Elizabeth. And she is a darling.

”Three nights ago I took the glass of milk to the wall door and little Elizabeth herself was there to get it instead of the Woman, her head just coming above the solid part of the door, so that her face was framed in the ivy. She is small, pale, golden and wistful. Her eyes, looking at me through the autumn twilight, are large and golden-hazel. Her silver-gold hair was parted in the middle, sleeked plainly down over her head with a circular comb, and fell in waves on her shoulders. She wore a pale blue gingham dress and the expression of a princess of elf-land. She had what Rebecca Dew calls 'a delicate air,' and gave me the impression of a child who was more or less undernourished ... not in body, but in soul. More of a moonbeam than a sunbeam.

”'And this is Elizabeth?' I said.

”'Not tonight,' she answered gravely. 'This is my night for being Betty because I love everything in the world tonight. I was Elizabeth last night and tomorrow night I'll prob'ly be Beth.

It all depends on how I feel.'

”There was the touch of the kindred spirit for you. I thrilled to it at once.

”'How very nice to have a name you can change so easily and still feel it's your own.'

”Little Elizabeth nodded.

”'I can make so many names out of it. Elsie and Betty and Bess and Elisa and Lisbeth and Beth ... but not Lizzie. I never can feel like Lizzie.'

”'Who could?' I said.

”'Do you think it silly of me, Miss Shirley? Grandmother and the Woman do.'

”'Not silly at all ... very wise and very delightful,' I said.

”Little Elizabeth made saucer eyes at me over the rim of her glass.

I felt that I was being weighed in some secret spiritual balance and presently I realized thankfully that I had not been found wanting. For little Elizabeth asked a favor of me ... and little Elizabeth does not ask favors of people she does not like.

”'Would you mind lifting up the cat and letting me pat him?' she asked shyly.

”Dusty Miller was rubbing against my legs. I lifted him and little Elizabeth put out a tiny hand and stroked his head delightedly.

”'I like kittens better than babies,' she said, looking at me with an odd little air of defiance, as if she knew I would be shocked but tell the truth she must.

”'I suppose you've never had much to do with babies, so you don't know how sweet they are,' I said, smiling. 'Have you a kitten of your own?'

”Elizabeth shook her head.

”'Oh, no; Grandmother doesn't like cats. And the Woman hates them.

The Woman is out tonight, so that is why I could come for the milk.

I love coming for the milk because Rebecca Dew is such an agree'ble person.'

”'Are you sorry she didn't come tonight?' I laughed.

”Little Elizabeth shook her head.

”'No. You are very agree'ble, too. I've been wanting to get 'quainted with you but I was afraid it mightn't happen before Tomorrow comes.'

”We stood there and talked while Elizabeth sipped her milk daintily and she told me all about Tomorrow. The Woman had told her that Tomorrow never comes, but Elizabeth knows better. It WILL come sometime. Some beautiful morning she will just wake up and find it is Tomorrow. Not Today but Tomorrow. And then things will happen ... wonderful things. She may even have a day to do exactly as she likes in, with nobody watching her ... though I think Elizabeth feels THAT is too good to happen even in Tomorrow. Or she may find out what is at the end of the harbor road ... that wandering, twisting road like a nice red snake, that leads, so Elizabeth thinks, to the end of the world. Perhaps the Island of Happiness is there. Elizabeth feels sure there is an Island of Happiness somewhere where all the ships that never come back are anchored, and she will find it when Tomorrow comes.

”'And when Tomorrow comes,' said Elizabeth, 'I will have a million dogs and forty-five cats. I told Grandmother that when she wouldn't let me have a kitten, Miss Shirley, and she was angry and said, "I'm not 'customed to be spoken to like that, Miss Impert'nence." I was sent to bed without supper ... but I didn't mean to be impert'nent. And I couldn't sleep, Miss Shirley, because the Woman told me that she knew a child once that died in her sleep after being impert'nent.'

”When Elizabeth had finished her milk there came a sharp tapping at some unseen window behind the spruces. I think we had been watched all the time. My elf-maiden ran, her golden head glimmering along the dark spruce aisle until she vanished.

”'She's a fanciful little creature,' said Rebecca Dew when I told her of my adventure ... really, it somehow had the quality of an adventure, Gilbert. 'One day she said to me, "Are you scared of lions, Rebecca Dew?" "I never met any so I can't tell you," sez I.

"There will be any amount of lions in Tomorrow," sez she, "but they will be nice friendly lions." "Child, you'll turn into eyes if you look like that," sez I. She was looking clean through me at something she saw in that Tomorrow of hers. "I'm thinking deep thoughts, Rebecca Dew," she sez. The trouble with that child is she doesn't laugh enough.'

”I remembered Elizabeth had never laughed once during our talk. I feel that she hasn't learned how. The great house is so still and lonely and laughterless. It looks dull and gloomy even now when the world is a riot of autumn color. Little Elizabeth is doing too much listening to lost whispers.

”I think one of my missions in Summerside will be to teach her how to laugh.

”Your tenderest, most faithful friend,

”ANNE SHIRLEY.

”P.S. More of Aunt Chatty's grandmother!”

3

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”S'side,

”October 25th.

”GILBERT DEAR:

”What do you think? I've been to supper at Maplehurst!

”Miss Ellen herself wrote the invitation. Rebecca Dew was really excited ... she had never believed they would take any notice of me. And she was quite sure it was not out of friendliness.

”'They have some sinister motive, that I'm certain of!' she exclaimed.

”I really had some such feeling in my own mind.

”'Be sure you put on your best,' ordered Rebecca Dew.

”So I put on my pretty cream challis dress with the purple violets in it and did my hair the new way with the dip in the forehead.

It's very becoming.

”The ladies of Maplehurst are positively delightful in their own way, Gilbert. I could love them if they'd let me. Maplehurst is a proud, exclusive house which draws its trees around it and won't associate with common houses. It has a big, white, wooden woman off the bow of old Captain Abraham's famous ship, the Go and Ask Her, in the orchard and billows of southernwood about the front steps, which was brought out from the old country over a hundred years ago by the first emigrating Pringle. They have another ancestor who fought at the battle of Minden and his sword is hanging on the parlor wall beside Captain Abraham's portrait.

Captain Abraham was their father and they are evidently tremendously proud of him.

”They have stately mirrors over the old, black, fluted mantels, a glass case with wax flowers in it, pictures full of the beauty of the ships of long ago, a hair-wreath containing the hair of every known Pringle, big conch shells and a quilt on the spare-room bed quilted in infinitesimal fans.

”We sat in the parlor on mahogany Sheraton chairs. It was hung with silver-stripe wallpaper. Heavy brocade curtains at the windows. Marble-topped tables, one bearing a beautiful model of a ship with crimson hull and snow-white sails--the Go and Ask Her.

An enormous chandelier, all glass and dingle-dangles, suspended from the ceiling. A round mirror with a clock in the center ... something Captain Abraham had brought home from 'foreign parts.' It was wonderful. I'd like something like it in our house of dreams. ”The very shadows were eloquent and traditional. Miss Ellen showed me millions ... more or less ... of Pringle photographs, many of them daguerreotypes in leather cases. A big tortoise-shell cat came in, jumped on my knee and was at once whisked out to the kitchen by Miss Ellen. She apologized to me. But I expect she had previously apologized to the cat in the kitchen.

”Miss Ellen did most of the talking. Miss Sarah, a tiny thing in a black silk dress and starched petticoat, with snow-white hair and eyes as black as her dress, thin, veined hands folded on her lap amid fine lace ruffles, sad, lovely, gentle, looked almost too fragile to talk. And yet I got the impression, Gilbert, that every Pringle of the clan, including Miss Ellen herself, danced to her piping.

”We had a delicious supper. The water was cold, the linen beautiful, the dishes and glassware thin. We were waited on by a maid, quite as aloof and aristocratic as themselves. But Miss Sarah pretended to be a little deaf whenever I spoke to her and I thought every mouthful would choke me. All my courage oozed out of me. I felt just like a poor fly caught on fly-paper. Gilbert, I can never, never conquer or win the Royal Family. I can see myself resigning at New Year's. I haven't a chance against a clan like that.

”And yet I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for the old ladies as I looked around their house. It had once LIVED ... people had been born there ... died there ... exulted there ... known sleep, despair, fear, joy, love, hope, hate. And now it has nothing but the memories by which they live ... and their pride in them.

”Aunt Chatty is much upset because when she unfolded clean sheets for my bed today she found a diamond-shaped crease in the center.

She is sure it foretells a death in the household. Aunt Kate is very much disgusted with such superstition. But I believe I rather like superstitious people. They lend color to life. Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible ... and GOOD? What would we find to talk about?

”We had a catastrophe here two nights ago. Dusty Miller stayed out all night, in spite of Rebecca Dew's stentorian shouts of 'Puss' in the back yard. And when he turned up in the morning ... oh, such a looking cat! One eye was closed completely and there was a lump as big as an egg on his jaw. His fur was stiff with mud and one paw was bitten through. But what a triumphant, unrepentant look he had in his one good eye! The widows were horrified but Rebecca Dew said exultantly, 'That Cat has never had a good fight in his life before. And I'll bet the other cat looks far worse than he does!'

”A fog is creeping up the harbor tonight, blotting out the red road that little Elizabeth wants to explore. Weeds and leaves are burning in all the town gardens and the combination of smoke and fog is making Spook's Lane an eerie, fascinating, enchanted place.

It is growing late and my bed says, 'I have sleep for you.' I've grown used to climbing a flight of steps into bed ... and climbing down them. Oh, Gilbert, I've never told any one this, but it's too funny to keep any longer. The first morning I woke up in Windy Poplars I forgot all about the steps and made a blithe morning-spring out of bed. I came down like a thousand of brick, as Rebecca Dew would say. Luckily I didn't break any bones, but I was black and blue for a week.

”Little Elizabeth and I are very good friends by now. She comes every evening for her milk because the Woman is laid up with what Rebecca Dew calls 'brownkites.' I always find her at the wall gate, waiting for me, her big eyes full of twilight. We talk with the gate, which has never been opened for years, between us.

Elizabeth sips the glass of milk as slowly as possible in order to spin our conversation out. Always, when the last drop is drained, comes the tap-tap on the window.

”I have found that one of the things that is going to happen in Tomorrow is that she will get a letter from her father. She had never got one. I wonder what the man can be thinking of.

”'You know, he couldn't bear the sight of me, Miss Shirley,' she told me, 'but he mightn't mind writing to me.'

”'Who told you he couldn't bear the sight of you?' I asked indignantly.

”'The Woman.' (Always when Elizabeth says 'the Woman,' I can see her like a great big forbidding 'W,' all angles and corners.) 'And it must be true or he would come to see me sometimes.'

”She was Beth that night ... it is only when she is Beth that she will talk of her father. When she is Betty she makes faces at her grandmother and the Woman behind their backs; but when she turns into Elsie she is sorry for it and thinks she ought to confess, but is scared to. Very rarely she is Elizabeth and then she has the face of one who listens to fairy music and knows what roses and clovers talk about. She's the quaintest thing, Gilbert ... as sensitive as one of the leaves of the windy poplars, and I love her. It infuriates me to know that those two terrible old women make her go to bed in the dark.

”'The Woman said I was big enough to sleep without a light. But I feel so small, Miss Shirley, because the night is so big and awful.

And there is a stuffed crow in my room and I am afraid of it. The Woman told me it would pick my eyes out if I cried. Of course, Miss Shirley, I don't believe that, but still I'm scared. Things WHISPER so to each other at night. But in Tomorrow I'll never be scared of anything ... not even of being kidnaped!'

”'But there is no danger of your being kidnaped, Elizabeth.'

”'The Woman said there was if I went anywhere alone or talked to strange persons. But you're not a strange person, are you, Miss Shirley?'

”'No, darling. We've always known each other in Tomorrow,' I said.”

4

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”S'side,

”November 10th.

”DEAREST:

”It used to be that the person I hated most in the world was the person who spoiled my pen-nib. But I can't hate Rebecca Dew in spite of her habit of using my pen to copy recipes when I'm in school. She's been doing it again and as a result you won't get a long or a loving letter this time. (Belovedest.)

”The last cricket song has been sung. The evenings are so chilly now that I have a small chubby, oblong wood-stove in my room.

Rebecca Dew put it up ... I forgive her the pen for it. There's nothing that woman can't do; and she always has a fire lighted for me in it when I come home from school. It is the tiniest of stoves ... I could pick it up in my hands. It looks just like a pert little black dog on its four bandy iron legs. But when you fill it with hardwood sticks it blooms rosy red and throws a wonderful heat and you can't think how cozy it is. I'm sitting before it now, with my feet on its tiny hearth, scribbling to you on my knee.

”Every one else in S'side ... more or less ... is at the Hardy Pringles' dance. I was not invited. And Rebecca Dew is so cross about it that I'd hate to be Dusty Miller. But when I think of Hardy's daughter Myra, beautiful and brainless, trying to prove in an examination paper that the ANGELS at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal, I forgive the entire Pringle clan. And last week she included 'gallows tree' quite seriously in a list of trees! But, to be just, all the howlers don't originate with the Pringles. Blake Fenton defined an alligator recently as 'a large kind of insect.' Such are the high lights of a teacher's life!

”It feels like snow tonight. I like an evening when it feels like snow. The wind is blowing 'in turret and tree' and making my cozy room seem even cozier. The last golden leaf will be blown from the aspens tonight.

”I think I've been invited to supper everywhere by now ... I mean to the homes of all my pupils, both in town and country. And oh, Gilbert darling, I am SO sick of pumpkin preserves! Never, never let us have pumpkin preserves in our house of dreaMs. ”Almost everywhere I've gone for the last month I've had P. P. for supper. The first time I had it I loved it ... it was so golden that I felt I was eating preserved sunshine ... and I incautiously raved about it. It got bruited about that I was very fond of P. P. and people had it on purpose for me. Last night I was going to Mr. Hamilton's and Rebecca Dew assured me that I wouldn't have to eat P. P. there because none of the Hamiltons liked it. But when we sat down to supper, there on the sideboard was the inevitable cut-glass bowl full of P. P.

”'I hadn't any punkin preserves of my own,' said Mrs. Hamilton, ladling me out a generous dishful, 'but I heard you was terrible partial to it, so when I was to my cousin's in Lowvale last Sunday I sez to her, "I'm having Miss Shirley to supper this week and she's terrible partial to punkin preserves. I wish you'd lend me a jar for her." So she did and here it is and you can take home what's left.'

”You should have seen Rebecca Dew's face when I arrived home from the Hamiltons' bearing a glass jar two-thirds full of P. P.!

Nobody likes it here so we buried it darkly at dead of night in the garden.

”'You won't put this in a story, will you?' she asked anxiously.

Ever since Rebecca Dew discovered that I do an occasional bit of fiction for the magazines she has lived in the fear ... or hope, I don't know which ... that I'll put everything that happens at Windy Poplars into a story. She wants me to 'write up the Pringles and blister them.' But alas, it's the Pringles that are doing the blistering and between them and my work in school I have scant time for writing fiction.

”There are only withered leaves and frosted stems in the garden now. Rebecca Dew has done the standard roses up in straw and potato bags, and in the twilight they look exactly like a group of humped-back old men leaning on staffs.

”I got a post-card from Davy today with ten kisses crossed on it and a letter from Priscilla written on some paper that 'a friend of hers in Japan' sent her ... silky thin paper with dim cherry blossoms on it like ghosts. I'm beginning to have my suspicions about that friend of hers. But your big fat letter was the purple gift the day gave me. I read it four times over to get every bit of its savor ... like a dog polishing off a plate! THAT certainly isn't a romantic simile, but it's the one that just popped into my head. Still, letters, even the nicest, aren't SATISFACTORY. I want to see YOU. I'm glad it's only five weeks to Christmas holidays.”

5

Anne, sitting at her tower window one late November evening, with her pen at her lip and dreams in her eyes, looked out on a twilight world and suddenly thought she would like a walk to the old graveyard. She had never visited it yet, preferring the birch and maple grove or the harbor road for her evening rambles. But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods ... for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them. So Anne betook herself to the graveyard instead. She was feeling for the time so dispirited and hopeless that she thought a graveyard would be a comparatively cheerful place. Besides, it was full of Pringles, so Rebecca Dew said. They had buried there for generations, keeping it up in preference to the new graveyard until ”no more of them could be squeezed in." Anne felt that it would be positively encouraging to see how many Pringles were where they couldn't annoy anybody any more.

In regard to the Pringles Anne felt that she was at the end of her tether. More and more the whole situation was coming to seem like a nightmare. The subtle campaign of insubordination and disrespect which Jen Pringle had organized had at last come to a head. One day, a week previously, she had asked the Seniors to write a composition on "The Most Important Happenings of the Week." Jen Pringle had written a brilliant one ... the little imp WAS clever ... and had inserted in it a sly insult to her teacher ... one so pointed that it was impossible to ignore it. Anne had sent her home, telling her that she would have to apologize before she would be allowed to come back. The fat was fairly in the fire. It was open warfare now between her and the Pringles. And poor Anne had no doubt on whose banner victory would perch. The school board would back the Pringles up and she would be given her choice between letting Jen come back or being asked to resign.

She felt very bitter. She had done her best and she knew she could have succeeded if she had had even a fighting chance.

”It's not my fault," she thought miserably. "Who COULD succeed against such a phalanx and such tactics?”

But to go home to Green Gables defeated! To endure Mrs. Lynde's indignation and the Pyes' exultation! Even the sympathy of friends would be an anguish. And with her Summerside failure bruited abroad she would never be able to get another school.

But at least they had not got the better of her in the matter of the play. Anne laughed a little wickedly and her eyes filled with mischievous delight over the memory.

She had organized a High School Dramatic Club and directed it in a little play hurriedly gotten up to provide some funds for one of her pet schemes ... buying some good engravings for the rooms. She had made herself ask Katherine Brooke to help her because Katherine always seemed so left out of everything. She could not help regretting it many times, for Katherine was even more brusk and sarcastic than usual. She seldom let a practice pass without some corrosive remark and she overworked her eyebrows. Worse still, it was Katherine who had insisted on having Jen Pringle take the part of Mary Queen of Scots.

”There's no one else in the school who can play it," she said impatiently. "No one who has the necessary personality.”

Anne was not so sure of this. She rather thought that Sophy Sinclair, who was tall and had hazel eyes and rich chestnut hair, would make a far better Queen Mary than Jen. But Sophy was not even a member of the club and had never taken part in a play.

”We don't want absolute greenhorns in this. I'm not going to be associated with anything that is not successful," Katherine had said disagreeably, and Anne had yielded. She could not deny that Jen was very good in the part. She had a natural flair for acting and she apparently threw herself into it wholeheartedly. They practiced four evenings a week and on the surface things went along very smoothly. Jen seemed to be so interested in her part that she behaved herself as far as the play was concerned. Anne did not meddle with her but left her to Katherine's coaching. Once or twice, though, she surprised a certain look of sly triumph on Jen's face that puzzled her. She could not guess just what it meant.

One afternoon, soon after the practices had begun, Anne found Sophy Sinclair in tears in a corner of the girls' coatroom. At first she had blinked her hazel eyes vigorously and denied it ... then broke down.

”I did so want to be in the play ... to be Queen Mary," she sobbed. "I've never had a chance ... father wouldn't let me join the club because there are dues to pay and every cent counts so much. And of course I haven't had any experience. I've always loved Queen Mary ... her very name just thrills me to my finger tips. I don't believe ... I never will believe she had anything to do with murdering Darnley. It would have been wonderful to fancy I was she for a little while!”

Afterwards Anne concluded that it was her guardian angel who prompted her reply.

”I'll write the part out for you, Sophy, and coach you in it. It will be good training for you. And, as we plan to give the play in other places if it goes well here, it will be just as well to have an understudy in case Jen shouldn't always be able to go. But we'll say nothing about it to any one.”

Sophy had the part memorized by the next day. She went home to Windy Poplars with Anne every afternoon when school came out and rehearsed it in the tower. They had a lot of fun together, for Sophy was full of quiet vivacity. The play was to be put on the last Friday in November in the town hall; it was widely advertised and the reserved seats were sold to the last one. Anne and Katherine spent two evenings decorating the hall, the band was hired, and a noted soprano was coming up from Charlottetown to sing between the acts. The dress rehearsal was a success. Jen was really excellent and the whole cast played up to her. Friday morning Jen was not in school; and in the afternoon her mother sent word that Jen was ill with a very sore throat ... they were afraid it was tonsillitis. Everybody concerned was very sorry, but it was out of the question that she should take part in the play that night.

Katherine and Anne stared at each other, drawn together for once in their common dismay.

”We'll have to put it off," said Katherine slowly. "And that means failure. Once we're into December there's so much going on. Well, I always thought it was foolish to try to get up a play this time of the year.”

”We are not going to postpone it," said Anne, her eyes as green as Jen's own. She was not going to say it to Katherine Brooke, but she knew as well as she had ever known anything in her life that Jen Pringle was in no more danger of tonsillitis than she was. It was a deliberate device, whether any of the other Pringles were a party to it or not, to ruin the play because she, Anne Shirley, had sponsored it.

”Oh, if you feel that way about it!" said Katherine with a nasty shrug. "But what do you intend to do? Get some one to read the part? That would ruin it ... Mary is the whole play.”

”Sophy Sinclair can play the part as well as Jen. The costume will fit her and, thanks be, you made it and have it, not Jen.”

The play was put on that night before a packed audience. A delighted Sophy played Mary ... WAS Mary, as Jen Pringle could never have been ... LOOKED Mary in her velvet robes and ruff and jewels. Students of Summerside High, who had never seen Sophy in anything but her plain, dowdy, dark serge dresses, shapeless coat and shabby hats, stared at her in amazement. It was insisted on the spot that she become a permanent member of the Dramatic Club-- Anne herself paid the membership fee--and from then on she was one of the pupils who "counted" in Summerside High. But nobody knew or dreamed, Sophy herself least of all, that she had taken the first step that night on a pathway that was to lead to the stars. Twenty years later Sophy Sinclair was to be one of the leading actresses in America. But probably no plaudits ever sounded so sweet in her ears as the wild applause amid which the curtain fell that night in Summerside town hall.

Mrs. James Pringle took a tale home to her daughter Jen which would have turned that damsel's eyes green if they had not been already so. For once, as Rebecca Dew said feelingly, Jen had got her comeuppance. And the eventual result was the insult in the composition on Important Happenings.

Anne went down to the old graveyard along a deep-rutted lane between high, mossy stone dykes, tasseled with frosted ferns.

Slim, pointed lombardies, from which November winds had not yet stripped all the leaves, grew along it at intervals, coming out darkly against the amethyst of the far hills; but the old graveyard, with half its tombstones leaning at a drunken slant, was surrounded by a four-square row of tall, somber fir trees. Anne had not expected to find any one there and was a little taken aback when she met Miss Valentine Courtaloe, with her long delicate nose, her thin delicate mouth, her sloping delicate shoulders and her general air of invincible lady-likeness, just inside the gate. She knew Miss Valentine, of course, as did everyone in Summerside. She was "the" local dressmaker and what she didn't know about people, living or dead, was not worth taking into account. Anne had wanted to wander about by herself, read the odd old epitaphs and puzzle out the names of forgotten lovers under the lichens that were growing over them. But she could not escape when Miss Valentine slipped an arm through hers and proceeded to do the honors of the graveyard, where there were evidently as many Courtaloes buried as Pringles. Miss Valentine had not a drop of Pringle blood in her and one of Anne's favorite pupils was her nephew. So it was no great mental strain to be nice to her, except that one must be very careful never to hint that she "sewed for a living." Miss Valentine was said to be very sensitive on that point.

”I'm glad I happened to be here this evening," said Miss Valentine.

"I can tell you all about everybody buried here. I always say you have to know the ins and outs of the corpses to find a graveyard real enjoyable. I like a walk here better than in the new. It's only the OLD families that are buried here but every Tom, Dick and Harry is being buried in the new. The Courtaloes are buried in this corner. My, we've had a terrible lot of funerals in our family.”

”I suppose every old family has," said Anne, because Miss Valentine evidently expected her to say something.

”Don't tell me ANY family has ever had as many as ours," said Miss Valentine jealously. "We're VERY consumptive. Most of us died of a cough. This is my Aunt Bessie's grave. She was a saint if ever there was one. But there's no doubt her sister, Aunt Cecilia, was the more interesting to talk to. The last time I ever saw her she said to me, 'Sit down, my dear, sit down. I'm going to die tonight at ten minutes past eleven but that's no reason why we shouldn't have a real good gossip for the last.' The strange thing, Miss Shirley, is that she did die that night at ten minutes past eleven.

Can you tell me how she knew it?”

Anne couldn't.

”My Great-great-grandfather Courtaloe is buried HERE. He came out in 1760 and he made spinning-wheels for a living. I've heard he made fourteen hundred in the course of his life. When he died the minister preached from the text, 'Their works do follow them,' and old Myrom Pringle said in that case the road to heaven behind my great-great-grandfather would be choked with spinning-wheels. Do you think such a remark was in good taste, Miss Shirley?”

Had any one but a Pringle said it, Anne might not have remarked so decidedly, "I certainly do not," looking at a gravestone adorned with a skull and cross-bones as if she questioned the good taste of that also.

”My cousin Dora is buried HERE. She had three husbands but they all died very rapidly. Poor Dora didn't seem to have any luck picking a healthy man. Her last one was Benjamin Banning ... NOT buried here ... buried in Lowvale beside HIS first wife ... and he wasn't reconciled to dying. Dora told him he was going to a better world. 'Mebbe, mebbe,' says poor Ben, 'but I'm sorter used to the imperfections of this one.' He took sixty-one different kinds of medicine but in spite of that he lingered for a good while. All Uncle David Courtaloe's family are HERE. There's a cabbage rose planted at the foot of every grave and, my, don't they bloom! I come here every summer and gather them for my rose-jar.

It would be a pity to let them go to waste, don't you think?”

”I ... I suppose so.”

”My poor young sister Harriet lies HERE," sighed Miss Valentine.

"She had magnificent hair ... about the color of yours ... not so red perhaps. It reached to her knees. She was engaged when she died. They tell me you're engaged. I never much wanted to be married but I think it would have been nice to be engaged. Oh, I've had some chances of course ... perhaps I was too fastidious ... but a Courtaloe couldn't marry EVERYBODY, could she?”

It did not seem likely she could.

”Frank Digby ... over in that corner under the sumacs ... wanted me. I DID feel a little regretful over refusing him ... but a Digby, my dear! He married Georgina Troop. She always went to church a little late to show off her clothes. My, she was fond of clothes. She was buried in such a pretty blue dress ... I made it for her to wear to a wedding but in the end she wore it to her own funeral. She had three darling little children. They used to sit in front of me at church and I always gave them candy. Do you think it wrong to give children candy in church, Miss Shirley?

Not peppermints ... that would be all right ... there's something RELIGIOUS about peppermints, don't you think? But the poor things don't like them.”

When the Courtaloe's plots were exhausted Miss Valentine's reminiscences became a bit spicier. It did not make so much difference if you weren't a Courtaloe.

”Old Mrs. Russell Pringle is here. I often wonder if she's in heaven or not.”

”But why?" gasped a rather shocked Anne.

”Well, she always hated her sister, Mary Ann, who had died a few months before. 'If Mary Ann is in heaven I won't stay there,' says she. And she was a woman who always kept her word, my dear ... Pringle-like. She was born a Pringle and married her cousin Russell. This is Mrs. Dan Pringle ... Janetta Bird. Seventy to a day when she died. Folks say she would have thought it wrong to die a day older than three-score and ten because that is the Bible limit. People do say such funny things, don't they? I've heard that dying was the only thing she ever dared do without asking her husband. Do you know, my dear, what he did once when she bought a hat he didn't like?”

”I can't imagine.”

”He ET it," said Miss Valentine solemnly. "Of course it was only a small hat ... lace and flowers ... no feathers. Still, it must have been rather indigestible. I understand he had gnawing pains in his stomach for quite a time. Of course I didn't SEE him eat it, but I've always been assured the story was true. Do you suppose it was?”

”I'd believe anything of a Pringle," said Anne bitterly.

Miss Valentine pressed her arm sympathetically.

”I feel for you ... indeed I do. It's terrible the way they're treating you. But Summerside isn't ALL Pringle, Miss Shirley.”

”Sometimes I think it is," said Anne with a rueful smile.

”No, it isn't. And there are plenty of people would like to see you get the better of them. Don't you give in to them no matter what they do. It's just the old Satan that's got into them. But they hang together so and Miss Sarah did want that cousin of theirs to get the school.

”The Nathan Pringles are HERE. Nathan always believed his wife was trying to poison him but he didn't seem to mind. He said it made life kind of exciting. Once he kind of suspected she'd put arsenic in his porridge. He went out and fed it to a pig. The pig died three weeks afterwards. But he said maybe it was only a coincidence and anyway he couldn't be sure it was the same pig. In the end she died before him and he said she'd always been a real good wife to him except for that one thing. I think it would be charitable to believe that he was mistaken about IT.”

”'Sacred to the memory of MISS KINSEY,'" read Anne in amazement.

"What an extraordinary inscription! Had she no other name?”

”If she had, nobody ever knew it," said Miss Valentine. "She came from Nova Scotia and worked for the George Pringles for forty years. She gave her name as Miss Kinsey and everybody called her that. She died suddenly and then it was discovered that nobody knew her first name and she had no relations that anybody could find. So they put that on her stone ... the George Pringles buried her very nicely and paid for the monument. She was a faithful, hard-working creature but if you'd ever seen her you'd have thought she was BORN Miss Kinsey. The James Morleys are HERE.

I was at their golden wedding. Such a to-do ... gifts and speeches and flowers ... and their children all home and them smiling and bowing and just hating each other as hard as they could.”

”Hating each other?”

”Bitterly, my dear. Every one knew it. They had for years and years ... almost all their married life in fact. They quarreled on the way home from church after the wedding. I often wonder how they manage to lie here so peaceably side by side.”

Again Anne shivered. How terrible ... sitting opposite each other at table ... lying down beside each other at night ... going to church with their babies to be christened ... and hating each other through it all! Yet they must have loved to begin with.

Was it possible she and Gilbert could ever ... nonsense! The Pringles were getting on her nerves.

”Handsome John MacTabb is buried here. He was always suspected of being the reason why Annetta Kennedy drowned herself. The MacTabbs were all handsome but you could never believe a word they said.

There used to be a stone here for his Uncle Samuel, who was reported drowned at sea fifty years ago. When he turned up alive the family took the stone down. The man they bought it from wouldn't take it back so Mrs. Samuel used it for a baking-board.

Talk about a marble slab for mixing on! That old tombstone was just fine, she said. The MacTabb children were always bringing cookies to school with raised letters and figures on them ... scraps of the epitaph. They gave them away real generous, but I never could bring myself to eat one. I'm peculiar that way. Mr. Harley Pringle is HERE. He had to wheel Peter MacTabb down Main Street once, in a wheelbarrow, wearing a bonnet, for an election bet. All Summerside turned out to see it ... except the Pringles, of course. THEY nearly died of shame. Milly Pringle is HERE. I was very fond of Milly, even if she was a Pringle. She was so pretty and as light-footed as a fairy. Sometimes I think, my dear, on nights like this she must slip out of her grave and dance like she used to do. But I suppose a Christian shouldn't be harboring such thoughts. This is Herb Pringle's grave. He was one of the jolly Pringles. He always made you laugh. He laughed right out in church once ... when the mouse dropped out of the flowers on Meta Pringle's hat when she bowed in prayer. I didn't feel much like laughing. I didn't know where the mouse had gone. I pulled my skirts tight about my ankles and held them there till church was out, but it spoiled the sermon for me. Herb sat behind me and such a shout as he gave. People who couldn't see the mouse thought he'd gone crazy. It seemed to me that laugh of his COULDN'T die. If HE was alive he'd stand up for you, Sarah or no Sarah. THIS, of course, is Captain Abraham Pringle's monument.”

It dominated the whole graveyard. Four receding platforms of stone formed a square pedestal on which rose a huge pillar of marble topped with a ridiculous draped urn beneath which a fat cherub was blowing a horn.

”How ugly!" said Anne candidly.

”Oh, do you think so?" Miss Valentine seemed rather shocked. "It was thought very handsome when it was erected. That is supposed to be Gabriel blowing his trumpet. I think it gives quite a touch of elegance to the graveyard. It cost nine hundred dollars. Captain Abraham was a very fine old man. It is a great pity he is dead.

If he was living they wouldn't be persecuting you the way they are.

I don't wonder Sarah and Ellen are proud of him, though I think they carry it a bit too far.”

At the graveyard gate Anne turned and looked back. A strange, peaceful hush lay over the windless land. Long fingers of moonlight were beginning to pierce the darkling firs, touching a gravestone here and there, and making strange shadows among them.

But the graveyard wasn't a sad place after all. Really, the people in it seemed alive after Miss Valentine's tales.

”I've heard you write," said Miss Valentine anxiously, as they went down the lane. "You won't put the things I've told you in your stories, will you?”

”You may be sure I won't," promised Anne.

”Do you think it is really wrong ... or dangerous ... to speak ill of the dead?" whispered Miss Valentine a bit anxiously.

”I don't suppose it's exactly either," said Anne. "Only ... rather unfair ... like hitting those who can't defend themselves.

But you didn't say anything very dreadful of anybody, Miss Courtaloe.”

”I told you Nathan Pringle thought his wife was trying to poison him ...”

”But you give her the benefit of the doubt ..." and Miss Valentine went her way reassured.

6

”I wended my way to the graveyard this evening," wrote Anne to Gilbert after she got home. "I think 'wend your way' is a lovely phrase and I work it in whenever I can. It sounds funny to say I enjoyed my stroll in the graveyard but I really did. Miss Courtaloe's stories were so funny. Comedy and tragedy are so mixed up in life, Gilbert. The only thing that haunts me is that tale of the two who lived together fifty years and hated each other all that time. I can't believe they really did. Somebody has said that 'hate is only love that has missed its way.' I feel sure that under the hatred they really loved each other ... just as I really loved you all those years I thought I hated you ... and I think death would show it to them. I'm glad I found out in life.

And I have found out there ARE some decent Pringles ... dead ones.

”Last night when I went down late for a drink of water I found Aunt Kate buttermilking her face in the pantry. She asked me not to tell Chatty ... she would think it so silly. I promised I wouldn't.

”Elizabeth still comes for the milk, though the Woman is pretty well over her bronchitis. I wonder they let her, especially since old Mrs. Campbell is a Pringle. Last Saturday night Elizabeth ... she was Betty that night I think ... ran in singing when she left me and I distinctly heard the Woman say to her at the porch door, 'It's too near the Sabbath for you to be singing THAT song.' I am sure that Woman would prevent Elizabeth from singing on any day if she could!

”Elizabeth had on a new dress that night, a dark wine color ... they DO dress her nicely ... and she said wistfully, 'I thought I looked a little bit pretty when I put it on tonight, Miss Shirley, and I wished father could see me. Of course he will see me in Tomorrow ... but it sometimes seems so slow in coming. I wish we could hurry time a bit, Miss Shirley.'

”Now, dearest, I must work out some geometrical exercises.

Geometry exercises have taken the place of what Rebecca calls my 'literary efforts.' The specter that haunts my daily path now is the dread of an exercise popping up in class that I can't do. And what would the Pringles say then, oh, then ... oh, what would the Pringles say then!

”Meanwhile, as you love me and the cat tribe, pray for a poor broken-hearted, ill-used Thomas cat. A mouse ran over Rebecca Dew's foot in the pantry the other day and she has fumed ever since. 'That Cat does nothing but eat and sleep and let mice overrun everything. This IS the last straw.' So she chivies him from pillar to post, routs him off his favorite cushion and ... I know, for I caught her at it ... assists him none too gently with her foot when she lets him out.”

7

One Friday evening, at the end of a mild, sunny December day Anne went out to Lowvale to attend a turkey supper. Wilfred Bryce's home was in Lowvale, where he lived with an uncle, and he had asked her shyly if she would go out with him after school, go to the turkey supper in the church and spend Saturday at his home. Anne agreed, hoping that she might be able to influence the uncle to let Wilfred keep on going to High School. Wilfred was afraid that he would not be able to go back after New Year. He was a clever, ambitious boy and Anne felt a special interest in him.

It could not be said that she enjoyed her visit overmuch, except in the pleasure it gave Wilfred. His uncle and aunt were a rather odd and uncouth pair. Saturday morning was windy and dark, with showers of snow, and at first Anne wondered how she was going to put in the day. She felt tired and sleepy after the late hours of the turkey supper; Wilfred had to help thrash; and there was not even a book in sight. Then she thought of the battered old seaman's chest she had seen in the back of the hall upstairs and recalled Mrs. Stanton's request. Mrs. Stanton was writing a history of Prince County and had asked Anne if she knew of, or could find, any old diaries or documents that might be helpful.

”The Pringles, of course, have lots that I could use," she told Anne. "But I can't ask THEM. You know the Pringles and Stantons have never been friends.”

”I can't ask them either, unfortunately," said Anne.

”Oh, I'm not expecting you to. All I want is for you to keep your eyes open when you are visiting round in other people's homes and if you find or hear of any old diaries or maps or anything like that, try to get the loan of them for me. You've no idea what interesting things I've found in old diaries ... little bits of real life that make the old pioneers live again. I want to get things like that for my book as well as statistics and genealogical tables.”

Anne asked Mrs. Bryce if they had any such old records. Mrs. Bryce shook her head.

”Not as I knows on. In course ..." brightening up ... "there's old Uncle Andy's chist up there. There might be something in it.

He used to sail with old Captain Abraham Pringle. I'll go out and ask Duncan if ye kin root in it.”

Duncan sent word back that she could "root" in it all she liked and if she found any "dockymints" she could have them. He'd been meaning to burn the hull contents anyway and take the chest for a tool-box. Anne accordingly rooted, but all she found was an old yellowed diary or "log" which Andy Bryce seemed to have kept all through his years at sea. Anne beguiled the stormy forenoon away by reading it with interest and amusement. Andy was learned in sea lore and had gone on many voyages with Captain Abraham Pringle, whom he evidently admired immensely. The diary was full of ill- spelled, ungrammatical tributes to the Captain's courage and resourcefulness, especially in one wild enterprise of beating round the Horn. But his admiration had not, it seemed, extended to Abraham's brother Myrom, who was also a captain but of a different ship.

”Up to Myrom Pringle's tonight. His wife made him mad and he up and throwed a glass of water in her face.”

”Myrom is home. His ship was burned and they took to the boats.

Nearly starved. In the end they et up Jonas Selkirk, who had shot himself. They lived on him till the Mary G. picked them up.

Myrom told me this himself. Seemed to think it a good joke.”

Anne shivered over this last entry, which seemed all the more horrifying for Andy's unimpassioned statement of the grim facts.

Then she fell into a reverie. There was nothing in the book that could be of any use to Mrs. Stanton, but wouldn't Miss Sarah and Miss Ellen be interested in it since it contained so much about their adored old father? Suppose she sent it to them? Duncan Bryce had said she could do as she liked with it.

No, she wouldn't. Why should she try to please them or cater to their absurd pride, which was great enough now without any more food? They had set themselves to drive her out of the school and they were succeeding. They and their clan had beaten her.

Wilfred took her back to Windy Poplars that evening, both of them feeling happy. Anne had talked Duncan Bryce into letting Wilfred finish out his year in High School.

”Then I'll manage Queen's for a year and after that teach and educate myself," said Wilfred. "How can I ever repay you, Miss Shirley? Uncle wouldn't have listened to any one else, but he likes you. He said to me out in the barn, 'Red-haired women could always do what they liked with me.' But I don't think it was your hair, Miss Shirley, although it is so beautiful. It was just ... YOU.”

At two o'clock that night Anne woke up and decided that she would send Andy Bryce's diary to Maplehurst. After all, she had a bit of liking for the old ladies. And they had so little to make life warm ... only their pride in their father. At three she woke again and decided she wouldn't. Miss Sarah pretending to be deaf, indeed! At four she was in the swithers again. Finally she determined she would send it to them. She wouldn't be petty.

Anne had a horror of being petty ... like the Pyes.

Having settled this, Anne went to sleep for keeps, thinking how lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm of the winter around your tower and then snuggle down in your blankets and drift into dreamland again.

Monday morning she wrapped up the old diary carefully and sent it to Miss Sarah with a little note.

”DEAR MISS PRINGLE:

”I wonder if you would be interested in this old diary. Mr. Bryce gave it to me for Mrs. Stanton, who is writing a history of the county, but I don't think it would be of any use to her and I thought you might like to have it.

”Yours sincerely,

”ANNE SHIRLEY.”

”That's a horribly stiff note," thought Anne, "but I can't write naturally to them. And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they sent it haughtily back to me.”

In the fine blue of the early winter evening Rebecca Dew got the shock of her life. The Maplehurst carriage drove along Spook's Lane, over the powdery snow, and stopped at the front gate. Miss Ellen got out of it and then ... to every one's amazement ... Miss Sarah, who had not left Maplehurst for ten years.

”They're coming to the front door," gasped Rebecca Dew, panic-stricken.

”Where else would a Pringle come to?" asked Aunt Kate.

”Of course ... of course ... but it sticks," said Rebecca tragically. "It DOES stick ... you know it does. And it hasn't been opened since we house-cleaned last spring. This IS the last straw.”

The front door did stick ... but Rebecca Dew wrenched it open with desperate violence and showed the Maplehurst ladies into the parlor.

”Thank heaven, we've had a fire in it today," she thought, "and all I hope is That Cat hasn't haired up the sofa. If Sarah Pringle got cat hairs on her dress in our parlor ...”

Rebecca Dew dared not imagine the consequences. She called Anne from the tower room, Miss Sarah having asked if Miss Shirley were in, and then betook herself to the kitchen, half mad with curiosity as to what on earth was bringing the old Pringle girls to see Miss Shirley.

”If there's any more persecution in the wind ..." said Rebecca Dew darkly.

Anne herself descended with considerable trepidation. Had they come to return the diary with icy scorn?

It was little, wrinkled, inflexible Miss Sarah who rose and spoke without preamble when Anne entered the room.

”We have come to capitulate," she said bitterly. "We can do nothing else ... of course you knew that when you found that scandalous entry about poor Uncle Myrom. It wasn't true ... it COULDN'T be true. Uncle Myrom was just taking a rise out of Andy Bryce ... Andy was SO credulous. But everybody outside of our family will be glad to believe it. You knew it would make us all a laughing stock ... and worse. Oh, you are very clever. We admit THAT. Jen will apologize and behave herself in future ... I, Sarah Pringle, assure you of that. If you will only promise not to tell Mrs. Stanton ... not to tell any one ... we will do anything ... ANYTHING.”

Miss Sarah wrung her fine lace handkerchief in her little blue- veined hands. She was literally trembling.

Anne stared in amazement ... and horror. The poor old darlings!

They thought she had been threatening them!

”Oh, you've misunderstood me dreadfully," she exclaimed, taking Miss Sarah's poor, piteous hands. "I ... I never dreamed you would think I was trying to ... oh, it was just because I thought you would like to have all those interesting details about your splendid father. I never dreamed of showing or telling that other little item to any one. I didn't think it was of the least importance. And I never will.”

There was a moment's silence. Then Miss Sarah freed her hands gently, put her handkerchief to her eyes and sat down, with a faint blush on her fine wrinkled face.

”We ... we HAVE misunderstood you, my dear. And we've ... we've been abominable to you. Will you forgive us?”

Half an hour later ... a half hour which nearly was the death of Rebecca Dew ... the Misses Pringle went away. It had been a half hour of friendly chat and discussion about the non-combustible items of Andy's diary. At the front door Miss Sarah ... who had not had the least trouble with her hearing during the interview ... turned back for a moment and took a bit of paper, covered with very fine, sharp writing, from her reticule.

”I had almost forgotten ... we promised Mrs. MacLean our recipe for pound cake some time ago. Perhaps you won't mind handing it to her? And tell her the sweating process is very important ... quite indispensable, indeed. Ellen, your bonnet is slightly over one ear. You had better adjust it before we leave. We ... we were somewhat agitated while dressing.”

Anne told the widows and Rebecca Dew that she had given Andy Bryce's old diary to the ladies of Maplehurst and that they had come to thank her for it. With this explanation they had to be contented, although Rebecca Dew always felt that there was more behind it than that ... much more. Gratitude for an old faded, tobacco-stained diary would never have brought Sarah Pringle to the front door of Windy Poplars. Miss Shirley was deep ... very deep!

”I'm going to open that front door once a day after this," vowed Rebecca. "Just to keep it in practice. I all but went over flat when it DID give way. Well, we've got the recipe for the pound cake anyway. Thirty-six eggs! If you'd dispose of That Cat and let me keep hens we might be able to afford it once a year.”

Whereupon Rebecca Dew marched to the kitchen and got square with fate by giving That Cat milk when she knew he wanted liver.

The Shirley-Pringle feud was over. Nobody outside of the Pringles ever knew why, but Summerside people understood that Miss Shirley, single-handed, had, in some mysterious way, routed the whole clan, who ate out of her hand from then on. Jen came back to school the next day and apologized meekly to Anne before the whole room. She was a model pupil thereafter and every Pringle student followed her lead. As for the adult Pringles, their antagonism vanished like mist before the sun. There were no more complaints regarding ”disCIPline" or home work. No more of the fine, subtle snubs characteristic of the ilk. They fairly fell over one another trying to be nice to Anne. No dance or skating party was complete without her. For, although the fatal diary had been committed to the flames by Miss Sarah herself, memory was memory and Miss Shirley had a tale to tell if she chose to tell it. It would never do to have that nosey Mrs. Stanton know that Captain Myrom Pringle had been a cannibal!

8

(Extract from letter to Gilbert)

”I am in my tower and Rebecca Dew is caroling Could I but climb? in the kitchen. Which reminds me that the minister's wife has asked me to sing in the choir! Of course the Pringles have told her to do it. I may do it on the Sundays I don't spend at Green Gables.

The Pringles have held out the right hand of fellowship with a vengeance ... accepted me lock, stock and barrel. What a clan!

”I've been to three Pringle parties. I set nothing down in malice but I think all the Pringle girls are imitating my style of hair- dressing. Well, 'imitation is the sincerest flattery.' And, Gilbert, I'm really liking them ... as I always knew I would if they would give me a chance. I'm even beginning to suspect that sooner or later I'll find myself liking Jen. She can be charming when she wants to be and it is very evident she wants to be.

”Last night I bearded the lion in his den ... in other words, I went boldly up the front steps of The Evergreens to the square porch with the four whitewashed iron urns in its corners, and rang the bell. When Miss Monkman came to the door I asked her if she would lend little Elizabeth to me for a walk. I expected a refusal, but after the Woman had gone in and conferred with Mrs. Campbell, she came back and said dourly that Elizabeth could go but, please, I wasn't to keep her out late. I wonder if even Mrs. Campbell has got her orders from Miss Sarah.

”Elizabeth came dancing down the dark stairway, looking like a pixy in a red coat and little green cap, and almost speechless for joy.

”'I feel all squirmy and excited, Miss Shirley,' she whispered as soon as we got away. 'I'm Betty ... I'm always Betty when I feel like that.'

”We went as far down the Road that Leads to the End of the World as we dared and then back. Tonight the harbor, lying dark under a crimson sunset, seemed full of implications of 'fairylands forlorn' and mysterious isles in uncharted seas. I thrilled to it and so did the mite I held by the hand.

”'If we ran hard, Miss Shirley, could we get into the sunset?' she wanted to know. I remembered Paul and his fancies about the 'sunset land.'

”'We must wait for Tomorrow before we can do that,' I said. 'Look, Elizabeth, at that golden island of cloud just over the harbor mouth. Let's pretend that's your island of Happiness.'

”'There is an island down there somewhere,' said Elizabeth dreamily. 'Its name is Flying Cloud. Isn't that a lovely name ... a name just out of Tomorrow? I can see it from the garret windows. It belongs to a gentleman from Boston and he has a summer home there. But I pretend it's mine.'

”At the door I stooped and kissed Elizabeth's cheek before she went in. I shall never forget her eyes. Gilbert, that child is just starved for love.

”Tonight, when she came over for her milk, I saw that she had been crying.

”'They ... they made me wash your kiss off, Miss Shirley,' she sobbed. 'I didn't want ever to wash my face again. I VOWED I wouldn't. Because, you see, I didn't want to wash your kiss off.

I got away to school this morning without doing it, but tonight the Woman just took me and SCRUBBED it off.'

”I kept a straight face.

”'You couldn't go through life without washing your face occasionally, darling. But never mind about the kiss. I'll kiss you every night when you come for the milk and then it won't matter if it is washed off the next morning.'

”'You are the only person who loves me in the world,' said Elizabeth. 'When you talk to me I smell violets.'

”Was anybody ever paid a prettier compliment? But I couldn't quite let the first sentence pass.

”'Your grandmother loves you, Elizabeth.'

”'She doesn't ... she hates me.'

”'You're just a wee bit foolish, darling. Your grandmother and Miss Monkman are both old people and old people are easily disturbed and worried. Of course you annoy them sometimes. And ... of course ... when THEY were young, children were brought up much more strictly than they are now. They cling to the old way.'

”But I felt I was not convincing Elizabeth. After all, they DON'T love her and she knows it. She looked carefully back at the house to see if the door was shut. Then she said deliberately:

”'Grandmother and the Woman are just two old tyrants and when Tomorrow comes I'm going to escape them forever.'

”I think she expected I'd die of horror.... I really suspect Elizabeth said it just to make a sensation. I merely laughed and kissed her. I hope Martha Monkman saw it from the kitchen window.

”I can see over Summerside from the left window in the tower. Just now it is a huddle of friendly white roofs ... friendly at last since the Pringles are my friends. Here and there a light is gleaming in gable and dormer. Here and there is a suggestion of gray-ghost smoke. Thick stars are low over it all. It is 'a dreaming town.' Isn't that a lovely phrase? You remember ... 'Galahad through dreaming towns did go'?

”I feel so happy, Gilbert. I won't have to go home to Green Gables at Christmas, defeated and discredited. Life is good ... good!

”So is Miss Sarah's pound cake. Rebecca Dew made one and 'sweated' it according to directions ... which simply means that she wrapped it in several thicknesses of brown paper and several more towels and left it for three days. I can recommend it.

”(Are there, or are there not, two 'c's' in recommend'? In spite of the fact that I am a B.A. I can never be certain. Fancy if the Pringles had discovered that before I found Andy's diary!)”

9

Trix Taylor was curled up in the tower one night in February, while little flurries of snow hissed against the windows and that absurdly tiny stove purred like a red-hot black cat. Trix was pouring out her woes to Anne. Anne was beginning to find herself the recipient of confidences on all sides. She was known to be engaged, so that none of the Summerside girls feared her as a possible rival, and there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.

Trix had come up to ask Anne to dinner the next evening. She was a jolly, plump little creature, with twinkling brown eyes and rosy cheeks, and did not look as if life weighed too heavily on her twenty years. But it appeared that she had troubles of her own.

”Dr. Lennox Carter is coming to dinner tomorrow night. That is why we want you especially. He is the new Head of the Modern Languages Department at Redmond and dreadfully clever, so we want somebody with brains to talk to him. You know I haven't any to boast of, nor Pringle either. As for Esme ... well, you know, Anne, Esme is the sweetest thing and she's really clever, but she's so shy and timid she can't even make use of what brains she has when Dr.

Carter is around. She's so terribly in love with him. It's pitiful. I'M very fond of Johnny ... but before I'd dissolve into such a liquid state for him!”

”Are Esme and Dr. Carter engaged?”

”Not yet" ... significantly. "But, oh, Anne, she's hoping he means to ask her this time. Would he come over to the Island to visit his cousin right in the middle of the term if he didn't intend to? I hope he will for Esme's sake, because she'll just die if he doesn't. But between you and me and the bed-post I'm not terribly struck on him for a brother-in-law. He's awfully fastidious, Esme says, and she's desperately afraid he won't approve of US. If he doesn't, she thinks he'll never ask her to marry him. So you can't imagine how she's hoping everything will go well at the dinner tomorrow night. I don't see why it shouldn't ... Mamma is the most wonderful cook ... and we have a good maid and I've bribed Pringle with half my week's allowance to behave himself. Of course he doesn't like Dr. Carter either ... says he's got swelled head ... but he's fond of Esme. If only Papa won't have a sulky fit on!”

”Have you any reason to fear it?" asked Anne. Every one in Summerside knew about Cyrus Taylor's sulky fits.

”You never can tell when he'll take one," said Trix dolefully.

"He was frightfully upset tonight because he couldn't find his new flannel nightshirt. Esme had put it in the wrong drawer. He may be over it by tomorrow night or he may not. If he's not, he'll disgrace us all and Dr. Carter will conclude he can't marry into such a family. At least, that is what Esme says and I'm afraid she may be right. I think, Anne, that Lennox Carter is very fond of Esme ... thinks she would make a 'very suitable wife' for him ... but doesn't want to do anything rash or throw his wonderful self away. I've heard that he told his cousin a man couldn't be too careful what kind of family he married into. He's just at the point where he might be turned either way by a trifle. And, if it comes to that, one of Papa's sulky fits isn't any trifle.”

”Doesn't he like Dr. Carter?”

”Oh, he does. He thinks it would be a wonderful match for Esme.

But when Father has one of his spells on, NOTHING has any influence over him while it lasts. That's the Pringle for you, Anne.

Grandmother Taylor was a Pringle, you know. You just can't imagine what we've gone through as a family. He never goes into rages, you know ... like Uncle George. Uncle George's family don't mind his rages. When he goes into a temper he blows off ... you can hear him roaring three blocks away ... and then he's like a lamb and brings every one a new dress for a peace-offering. But Father just sulks and glowers, and won't say a word to ANYBODY at meal times.

Esme says that, after all, that's better than cousin Richard Taylor, who is always saying sarcastic things at the table and insulting his wife; but it seems to me NOTHING could be worse than those awful silences of Papa's. They rattle us and we're terrified to open our mouths. It wouldn't be so bad, of course, if it was only when we are alone. But it's just as apt to be where we have company. Esme and I are simply tired of trying to explain away Papa's insulting silences. She's just sick with fear that he won't have got over the nightshirt before tomorrow night ... and what will Lennox think? And she wants you to wear your blue dress. Her new dress is blue, because Lennox likes blue. But Papa hates it.

Yours may reconcile him to hers.”

”Wouldn't it be better for her to wear something else?”

”She hasn't anything else fit to wear at a company dinner except the green poplin Father gave her at Christmas. It's a lovely dress in itself ... Father likes us to have pretty dresses ... but you can't think of anything as awful as Esme in green. Pringle says it makes her look as if she was in the last stages of consumption. And Lennox Carter's cousin told Esme he would never marry a delicate person. I'm more than glad Johnny isn't so 'fastidious.'“

”Have you told your father about your engagement to Johnny yet?”

asked Anne, who knew all about Trix's love affair.

”No," poor Trix groaned. "I can't summon up the courage, Anne. I know he'll make a frightful scene. Papa has always been so down on Johnny because he's poor. Papa forgets that he was poorer than Johnny when he started out in the hardware business. Of course he'll have to be told soon ... but I want to wait until Esme's affair is settled. I know Papa won't speak to ANY of us for weeks after I tell him, and Mamma will worry so ... she can't BEAR Father's sulky fits. We're all such cowards before Papa. Of course, Mamma and Esme are naturally timid with every one, but Pringle and I have lots of ginger. It's only Papa who can cow us.

Sometimes I think if we had any one to back us up ... but we haven't, and we just feel paralyzed. You can't imagine, Anne darling, what a company dinner is like at our place when Papa is sulking. But if he only behaves tomorrow night I'll forgive him for everything. He CAN be very agreeable when he wants to be ... Papa is really just like Longfellow's little girl ... 'when he's good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's horrid.' I've seen him the life of the party.”

”He was very nice the night I had dinner with you last month.”

”Oh, he likes you, as I've said. That's one of the reasons why we want you so much. It may have a good influence on him. We're not neglecting ANYTHING that may please him. But when he has a really bad fit of sulks on he seems to hate everything and everybody.

Anyhow, we've got a bang-up dinner planned, with an elegant orange- custard dessert. Mamma wanted pie because she says every man in the world but Papa likes pie for dessert better than anything else ... even Professors of Modern Languages. But Papa doesn't, so it would never do to take a chance on it tomorrow night, when so much depends on it. Orange custard is Papa's favorite dessert. As for poor Johnny and me, I suppose I'll just have to elope with him some day and Papa will never forgive me.”

”I believe if you'd just get up enough spunk to tell him and endure his resulting sulks you'd find he'd come round to it beautifully and you'd be saved months of anguish.”

”You don't know Papa," said Trix darkly.

”Perhaps I know him better than you do. You've lost your perspective.”

”Lost my ... what? Anne darling, remember I'm not a B.A. I only went through the High. I'd have loved to go to college, but Papa doesn't believe in the Higher Education of women.”

”I only meant that you're too close to him to understand him. A stranger could very well see him more clearly ... understand him better.”

”I understand that nothing can induce Papa to speak if he has made up his mind not to ... NOTHING. He prides himself on that.”

”Then why don't the rest of you just go on and talk as if nothing was the matter?”

”We CAN'T ... I've told you he paralyzes us. You'll find it out for yourself tomorrow night if he hasn't got over the nightshirt.

I don't know how he does it but he does. I don't believe we'd mind so much how cranky he was if he would only talk. It's the silence that shatters us. I'll never forgive Papa if he acts up tomorrow night when so much is at stake.”

”Let's hope for the best, dear.”

”I'm trying to. And I know it will help to have you there. Mamma thought we ought to have Katherine Brooke too, but I knew it wouldn't have a good effect on Papa. He hates her. I don't blame him for THAT, I must say. I haven't any use for her myself. I don't see how you can be as nice to her as you are.”

”I'm sorry for her, Trix.”

”Sorry for her! But it's all her own fault she isn't liked. Oh, well, it takes all kinds of people to make a world ... but Summerside could spare Katherine Brooke ... glum old cat!”

”She's an excellent teacher, Trix....”

”Oh, do I know it? I was in her class. She DID hammer things into my head ... and flayed the flesh off my bones with sarcasm as well. And the way she dresses! Papa can't bear to see a woman badly dressed. He says he has no use for dowds and he's sure God hasn't either. Mamma would be horrified if she knew I told you that, Anne. She excused it in Papa because he is a man. If that was all we had to excuse in him! And poor Johnny hardly daring to come to the house now because Papa is so rude to him. I slip out on fine nights and we walk round and round the square and get half frozen.”

Anne drew what was something like a breath of relief when Trix had gone, and slipped down to coax a snack out of Rebecca Dew.

”Going to the Taylors for dinner, are you? Well, I hope old Cyrus will be decent. If his family weren't all so afraid of him in his sulky fits he wouldn't indulge in them so often, of that I feel certain. I tell you, Miss Shirley, he ENJOYS his sulks. And now I suppose I must warm That Cat's milk. Pampered animal!”

10

When Anne arrived at the Cyrus Taylor house the next evening she felt the chill in the atmosphere as soon as she entered the door.

A trim maid showed her up to the guest room but as Anne went up the stairs she caught sight of Mrs. Cyrus Taylor scuttling from the dining-room to the kitchen and Mrs. Cyrus was wiping tears away from her pale, careworn, but still rather sweet face. It was all too clear that Cyrus had not yet "got over" the nightshirt.

This was confirmed by a distressed Trix creeping into the room and whispering nervously,

”Oh, Anne, he's in a dreadful humor. He seemed pretty amiable this morning and our hopes rose. But Hugh Pringle beat him at a game of checkers this afternoon and Papa can't BEAR to lose a checker game.

And it had to happen today, of course. He found Esme 'admiring herself in the mirror,' as he put it, and just walked her out of her room and locked the door. The poor darling was only wondering if he looked nice enough to please Lennox Carter, Ph.D. She hadn't even a chance to put her pearl string on. And look at me. I didn't dare curl my hair ... Papa doesn't like curls that are not natural ... and I look like a fright. Not that it matters about me ... only it just shows you. Papa threw out the flowers Mamma put on the dining-room table and she feels it so ... she took such trouble with them ... and he wouldn't let her put on her garnet earrings. He hasn't had such a bad spell since he came home from the west last spring and found Mamma had put red curtains in the sitting-room, when he preferred mulberry. Oh, Anne, do talk as hard as you can at dinner, if he won't. If you don't, it will be TOO dreadful.”

”I'll do my best," promised Anne, who certainly had never found herself at a loss for something to say. But then never had she found herself in such a situation as presently confronted her.

They were all gathered around the table ... a very pretty and well appointed table in spite of the missing flowers. Timid Mrs. Cyrus, in a gray silk dress, had a face that was grayer than her dress. Esme, the beauty of the family ... a very pale beauty, pale gold hair, pale pink lips, pale forget-me-not eyes ... was so much paler than usual that she looked as if she were going to faint. Pringle, ordinarily a fat, cheerful urchin of fourteen, with round eyes and glasses and hair so fair it looked almost white, looked like a tied dog, and Trix had the air of a terrified school-girl.

Dr. Carter, who was undeniably handsome and distinguished-looking, with crisp dark hair, brilliant dark eyes and silver-rimmed glasses, but whom Anne, in the days of his Assistant Professorship at Redmond, had thought a rather pompous young bore, looked ill at ease. Evidently he felt that something was wrong somewhere ... a reasonable conclusion when your host simply stalks to the head of the table and drops into his chair without a word to you or anybody.

Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, "For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch.

Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus, when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She couldn't eat any of it after that ... and she was so fond of it. She didn't believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn't eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix and Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she MUST talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head ... things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn't have believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him ... rap his knuckles ... stand him in a corner ... treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.

Above all she wanted to make him SPEAK. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.

Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, hideous, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner ... an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was most difficult to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.

Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do ... perhaps he was afraid of saying something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady.

”Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?" said Mrs. Taylor faintly.

Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles ... and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,

”Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?”

Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had NOT told a falsehood ... she had NOT said Cyrus Taylor WAS deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.

But Anne's remark had an effect on Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless ... Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now ... it didn't matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and then promptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrus forget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed.

”Such an affliction for poor papa," said Trix, addressing Dr.

Carter across the table. "And him only sixty-eight.”

Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his age advanced six years. But he remained silent.

”It's such a treat to have a decent meal," said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. "What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs ... nothing but fruit and eggs ... just for a fad?”

”Does your father ... ?" began Dr. Carter bewilderedly.

”What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like ... deliberately bit her?" demanded Trix.

”Till the blood came," added Pringle solemnly.

”Do you mean to say your father ... ?”

”What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the way it was made didn't suit him?" said Trix.

”What would you think," said Pringle, "of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?”

”When she would so love to have one," sighed Trix.

”What would you think of a man," continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely, "who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present ... nothing but a pair of goloshes?”

”Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart," admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne's and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What WAS Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?

”Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinks nothing ... NOTHING of picking up the roast, if it isn't perfectly done, and hurling it at the maid?”

Dr. Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor, as if he feared Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf.

”What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?” asked Pringle.

Anne thought Cyrus WOULD speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant.

”What would you think of a man who let his aunt ... his only aunt ... go to the poorhouse?" asked Trix.

”And pastured his cow in the graveyard?" said Pringle. "Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet.”

”What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?" asked Trix.

”The great Pepys did that," said Dr. Carter with another smile.

His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne ... only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of these things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, "I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for INFORMATION.”

”What would you think," kept on Trix, "of a man who opens and reads his wife's letters?”

”What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral ... his father's funeral ... in overalls?" asked Pringle.

What WOULD they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing mattered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing.

”What," she asked quietly, "would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn't bear to think of them starving to death?”

A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme's unexpected defense of her father.

”And he can crochet so beautifully ... he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago.”

Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus, his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last.

”I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn't know what I was doing. And I'm deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I'm deaf?”

”She didn't SAY you were, Papa," cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal.

”Oh, no, she didn't say it. None of you said anything! YOU didn't say I was sixty-eight when I'm only sixty-two, did you? YOU didn't say I wouldn't let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted ... when?”

”Never, Poppa, never," sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. "And I never wanted a dog. I never even THOUGHT of wanting a dog, Poppa.”

”When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody's funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?”

”Never, Poppa, never," wept Mrs. Cyrus. "You've always been a good provider ... the best.”

”Didn't you tell me you WANTED goloshes last Christmas?”

”Yes, oh, yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter.”

”Well, then!" Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room.

His eyes encountered Anne's. Suddenly the unexpected happened.

Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down.

”I've got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit ... that's mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won't forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess ... I know you're all glad the darn thing is smashed ... and bring on the pudding.”

Anne could never have believed that an evening which began so terribly could end up so pleasantly. Nobody could have been more genial or better company than Cyrus: and there was evidently no aftermath of reckoning, for when Trix came down a few evenings later it was to tell Anne that she had at last scraped up enough courage to tell her father about Johnny.

”Was he very dreadful, Trix?”

”He ... he wasn't dreadful at all," admitted Trix sheepishly.

"He just snorted and said it was about time Johnny came to the point after hanging around for two years and keeping every one else away. I think he felt he couldn't go into another spell of sulks so soon after the last one. And you know, Anne, between sulks Papa really is an old duck.”

”I think he is a great deal better father to you than you deserve,” said Anne, quite in Rebecca Dew's manner. "You were simply outrageous at that dinner, Trix.”

”Well, you know you started it," said Trix. "And good old Pringle helped a bit. All's well that ends well ... and thank goodness I'll never have to dust that vase again.”

11

(Extract from letter to Gilbert two weeks later.)

”Esme Taylor's engagement to Dr. Lennox Carter is announced. By all I can gather from various bits of local gossip I think he decided that fatal Friday night that he wanted to protect her, and save her from her father and her family ... and perhaps from her friends! Her plight evidently appealed to his sense of chivalry.

Trix persists in thinking I was the means of bringing it about and perhaps I did take a hand, but I don't think I'll ever try an experiment like that again. It's too much like picking up a lightning flash by the tail.

”I really don't know what got into me, Gilbert. It must have been a hangover from my old detestation of anything savoring of Pringleism. It DOES seem old now. I've almost forgotten it. But other folks are still wondering. I hear Miss Valentine Courtaloe says she isn't at all surprised I have won the Pringles over, because I have 'such a way with me'; and the minister's wife thinks it is an answer to the prayer she put up. Well, who knows but that it was?

”Jen Pringle and I walked part of the way home from school yesterday and talked of 'ships and shoes and sealing wax' ... of almost everything but geometry. We avoid that subject. Jen knows I don't know too much about geometry, but my own wee bit of knowledge about Captain Myrom balances that. I lent Jen my Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

I hate to lend a book I LOVE ... it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me ... but I love Foxe's Martyrs only because dear Mrs. Allan gave it to me for a Sunday-school prize years ago. I don't like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed ... ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!

”Well, I'm glad Esme and Trix are both happy. Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people's. A NICE interest, you know. Not curious or malicious but just glad there's such a lot of happiness spread about.

”It's still February and 'on the convent roof the snows are sparkling to the moon' ... only it isn't a convent ... just the roof of Mr. Hamilton's barn. But I'm beginning to think, 'Only a few more weeks till spring ... and a few more weeks then till summer ... and holidays ... and Green Gables ... and golden sunlight on Avonlea meadows ... and a gulf that will be silver at dawn and sapphire at noon and crimson at sunset ... and YOU.'

”Little Elizabeth and I have no end of plans for spring. We are such good friends. I take her milk every evening and once in so long she is allowed to go for a walk with me. We have discovered that our birthdays are on the same day and Elizabeth flushed 'divinest rosy red' with the excitement of it. She is so sweet when she blushes. Ordinarily she is far too pale and doesn't get any pinker because of the new milk. Only when we come back from our twilight trysts with evening winds does she have a lovely rose color in her little cheeks. Once she asked me gravely, 'Will I have a lovely creamy skin like yours when I grow up, Miss Shirley, if I put buttermilk on my face every night?' Buttermilk seems to be the preferred cosmetic in Spook's Lane. I have discovered that Rebecca Dew uses it. She has bound me over to keep it secret from the widows because they would think it too frivolous for her age.

The number of secrets I have to keep at Windy Poplars is aging me before my time. I wonder if I buttermilked my nose if it would banish those seven freckles. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that I had a 'lovely creamy skin'? If it did, you never told me so. And have you realized to the full that I am 'comparatively beautiful'? Because I have discovered that I am.

”'What is it like to be beautiful, Miss Shirley?' asked Rebecca Dew gravely the other day ... when I was wearing my new biscuit- colored voile.

”'I've often wondered,' said I.

”'But you ARE beautiful,' said Rebecca Dew.

”'I never thought you could be sarcastic, Rebecca,' I said reproachfully.

”'I did not mean to be sarcastic, Miss Shirley. You are beautiful ... comparatively.'

”'Oh! Comparatively!' said I.

”'Look in the sideboard glass,' said Rebecca Dew, pointing.

'Compared to ME, you are.'

”Well, I was!

”But I hadn't finished with Elizabeth. One stormy evening when the wind was howling along Spook's Lane, we couldn't go for a walk, so we came up to my room and drew a map of fairyland. Elizabeth sat on my blue doughnut cushion to make her higher, and looked like a serious little gnome as she bent over the map. (By the way, no phonetic spelling for me! 'Gnome' is far eerier and fairy-er than 'nome.')

”Our map isn't completed yet ... every day we think of something more to go in it. Last night we located the house of the Witch of the Snow and drew a triple hill, covered completely with wild cherry trees in bloom, behind it. (By the way, I want some wild cherry trees near our house of dreams, Gilbert.) Of course we have a Tomorrow on the map ... located east of Today and west of Yesterday ... and we have no end of 'times' in fairyland.

Spring-time, long time, short time, new-moon time, good-night time, next time ... but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland; old time, young time ... because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time, too; mountain time ... because that has such a fascinating sound; night-time and day-time ... but no bed-time or school-time; Christmas-time; no only time, because that also is too sad ... but lost time, because it is so nice to find it; some time, good time, fast time, slow time, half- past kissing-time, going-home time, and time immemorial ... which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. And we have cunning little red arrows everywhere, pointing to the different 'times.' I know Rebecca Dew thinks I'm quite childish. But, oh, Gilbert, don't let's ever grow too old and wise ... no, not too old and SILLY for fairyland.

”Rebecca Dew, I feel sure, is not quite certain that I am an influence for good in Elizabeth's life. She thinks I encourage her in being 'fanciful.' One evening when I was away Rebecca Dew took the milk to her and found her already at the gate, looking at the sky so intently that she never heard Rebecca's (anything but) fairy footfalls.

”'I was LISTENING, Rebecca,' she explained.

”'You do too much listening,' said Rebecca disapprovingly.

”Elizabeth smiled, remotely, austerely. (Rebecca Dew didn't use those words but I know exactly how Elizabeth smiled.)

”'You would be surprised, Rebecca, if you knew what I hear sometimes,' she said, in a way that made Rebecca Dew's flesh creep on her bones ... or so she avers.

”But Elizabeth is always touched with faery and what can be done about it?

”Your Very Anne-est ANNE.

”P.S.1. Never, never, never shall I forget Cyrus Taylor's face when his wife accused him of crocheting. But I shall always like him because he hunted for those kittens. And I like Esme for standing up for her father under the supposed wreck of all her hopes.

”P.S.2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren't pompous like Dr. Carter ... and I love you because you haven't got sticky-out ears like Johnny. And ... the very best reason of all ... I love you for just being Gilbert!”

12

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”May 30th.

”DEAREST-AND-THEN-MORE-DEAR:

”It's spring!

”Perhaps you, up to your eyes in a welter of exams in Kingsport, don't know it. But I am aware of it from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Summerside is aware of it. Even the most unlovely streets are transfigured by arms of bloom reaching over old board fences and a ribbon of dandelions in the grass that borders the sidewalks. Even the china lady on my shelf is aware of it and I know if I could only wake up suddenly enough some night I'd catch her dancing a pas seul in her pink, gilt-heeled shoes.

”Everything is calling 'spring' to me ... the little laughing brooks, the blue hazes on the Storm King, the maples in the grove when I go to read your letters, the white cherry trees along Spook's Lane, the sleek and saucy robins hopping defiance to Dusty Miller in the back yard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir trees preening in new tassel tips around the old graveyard ... even the old graveyard itself, where all sorts of flowers planted at the heads of the graves are budding into leaf and bloom, as if to say, 'Even here life is triumphant over death.' I had a really lovely prowl about the graveyard the other night. (I'm sure Rebecca Dew thinks my taste in walks frightfully morbid. 'I can't think why you have such a hankering after that unchancy place,' she says.) I roamed over it in the scented green cat's light and wondered if Nathan Pringle's wife really had tried to poison him. Her grave looked so innocent with its new grass and its June lilies that I concluded she had been entirely maligned.

”Just another month and I'll be home for vacation! I keep thinking of the old orchard at Green Gables with its trees now in full snow ... the old bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters ... the murmur of the sea in your ears ... a summer afternoon in Lover's Lane ... and YOU!

”I have just the right kind of pen tonight, Gilbert, and so ...

(Two pages omitted.)

”I was around at the Gibsons' this evening for a call. Marilla asked me some time ago to look them up because she once knew them when they lived in White Sands. Accordingly I looked them up and have been looking them up weekly ever since because Pauline seems to enjoy my visits and I'm so sorry for her. She is simply a slave to her mother ... who is a terrible old woman.

”Mrs. Adoniram Gibson is eighty and spends her days in a wheel- chair. They moved to Summerside fifteen years ago. Pauline, who is forty-five, is the youngest of the family, all her brothers and sisters being married and all of them determined not to have Mrs. Adoniram in their homes. She keeps the house and waits on her mother hand and foot. She is a little pale, fawn-eyed thing with golden-brown hair that is still glossy and pretty. They are quite comfortably off and if it were not for her mother Pauline could have a very pleasant easy life. She just loves church work and would be perfectly happy attending Ladies' Aids and Missionary Societies, planning for church suppers and Welcome socials, not to speak of exulting proudly in being the possessor of the finest wandering-jew in town. But she can hardly ever get away from the house, even to go to church on Sundays. I can't see any way of escape for her, for old Mrs. Gibson will probably live to be a hundred. And, while she may not have the use of her legs, there is certainly nothing the matter with her tongue. It always fills me with helpless rage to sit there and hear her making poor Pauline the target for her sarcasm. And yet Pauline has told me that her mother 'thinks quite highly' of me and is much nicer to her when I am around. If this be so I shiver to think what she must be when I am not around.

”Pauline dares not do ANYTHING without asking her mother. She can't even buy her own clothes ... not so much as a pair of stockings. Everything has to be sent up for Mrs. Gibson's approval; everything has to be worn until it has been turned twice.

Pauline has worn the same hat for four years.

”Mrs. Gibson can't bear any noise in the house or a breath of fresh air. It is said she never smiled in her life.... I've never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can't even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother and be up almost every hour of the night rubbing Mrs. Gibson's back or giving her a pill or getting a hot- water bottle for her ... HOT, not lukewarm! ... or changing her pillows or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the back yard.

Mrs. Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline.

”Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient and I am glad she has a dog to love. The only thing she has ever had her own way about is keeping that dog ... and then only because there was a burglary somewhere in town and Mrs. Gibson thought it would be a protection. Pauline never dares to let her mother see how much she loves the dog. Mrs. Gibson hates him and complains of his bringing bones in but she never actually says he must go, for her own selfish reason.

”But at last I have a chance to give Pauline something and I'm going to do it. I'm going to give her a DAY, though it will mean giving up my next week-end at Green Gables.

”Tonight when I went in I could see that Pauline had been crying.

Mrs. Gibson did not long leave me in doubt why.

”'Pauline wants to go and leave me, Miss Shirley,' she said.

'Nice, grateful daughter I've got, haven't I?'

”'Only for a day, Ma,' said Pauline, swallowing a sob and trying to smile.

”'Only for a day,' says she! 'Well, YOU know what my days are like, Miss Shirley ... every one knows what my days are like.

But you don't know ... YET ... Miss Shirley, and I hope you never will, how long a day can be when you are suffering.'

”I knew Mrs. Gibson didn't suffer at all now, so I didn't try to be sympathetic.

”'I'd get some one to stay with you, of course, Ma,' said Pauline.

'You see,' she explained to me, 'my cousin Louisa is going to celebrate her silver wedding at White Sands next Saturday week and she wants me to go. I was her bridesmaid when she was married to Maurice Hilton. I WOULD like to go so much if Ma would give her consent.'

”'If I must die alone I must,' said Mrs. Gibson. 'I leave it to your conscience, Pauline.'

”I knew Pauline's battle was lost the moment Mrs. Gibson left it to her conscience. Mrs. Gibson has got her way all her life by leaving things to people's consciences. I've heard that years ago somebody wanted to marry Pauline and Mrs. Gibson prevented it by leaving it to her conscience.

”Pauline wiped her eyes, summoned up a piteous smile and picked up a dress she was making over ... a hideous green and black plaid.

”'Now don't sulk, Pauline,' said Mrs. Gibson. 'I can't abide people who sulk. And mind you put a collar on that dress. Would you believe it, Miss Shirley, she actually wanted to make the dress without a collar? She'd wear a low-necked dress, that one, if I'd let her.'

”I looked at poor Pauline with her slender little throat ... which is rather plump and pretty yet ... enclosed in a high, stiff-boned net collar.

”'Collarless dresses are coming in,' I said.

”'Collarless dresses,' said Mrs. Gibson, 'are indecent.'

”(Item: I was wearing a collarless dress.)

”'Moreover,' went on Mrs. Gibson, as if it were all of a piece. 'I never liked Maurice Hilton. His mother was a Crockett. He never had any sense of decorum ... always kissing his wife in the most unsuitable places!'

”(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I'm afraid Mrs. Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)

”'But, Ma, you know that was the day she nearly escaped being trampled by Harvey Wither's horse running amuck on the church green. It was only natural Maurice should feel a little excited.'

”'Pauline, please don't contradict me. I STILL think the church steps were an unsuitable place for any one to be kissed. But of course MY opinions don't matter to ANY ONE any longer. Of course every one wishes I was dead. Well, there'll be room for me in the grave. I know what a burden I am to you. I might as well die.

Nobody wants me.'

”'Don't say that, Ma,' begged Pauline.

”'I WILL say it. Here you are, determined to go to that silver wedding although you know I'm not willing.'

”'Ma dear. I'm not going ... I'd never think of going if you weren't willing. Don't excite yourself so....'

”'Oh, I can't even have a little excitement, can't I, to brighten my dull life? Surely you're not going so soon, Miss Shirley?'

”I felt that if I stayed any longer I'd either go crazy or slap Mrs. Gibson's nut-cracker face. So I said I had exam papers to correct.

”'Ah well, I suppose two old women like us are very poor company for a young girl,' sighed Mrs. Gibson. 'Pauline isn't very cheerful ... are you, Pauline? Not very cheerful. I don't wonder Miss Shirley doesn't want to stay long.'

”Pauline came out to the porch with me. The moon was shining down on her little garden and sparkling on the harbor. A soft, delightful wind was talking to a white apple tree. It was spring ... spring ... spring! Even Mrs. Gibson can't stop plum trees from blooming. And Pauline's soft gray-blue eyes were full of tears.

”'I WOULD like to go to Louie's wedding so much,' she said, with a long sigh of despairing resignation.

”'You are going,' I said.

”'Oh, no, dear, I can't go. Poor Ma will never consent. I'll just put it out of my mind. Isn't the moon beautiful tonight?' she added, in a loud, cheerful tone.

”'I've never heard of any good that came from moon gazing,' called out Mrs. Gibson from the sitting-room. 'Stop chirruping there, Pauline, and come in and get my red bedroom slippers with the fur round the tops for me. These shoes pinch my feet something terrible. But nobody cares how I suffer.'

”I felt that I didn't care how much she suffered. Poor darling Pauline! But a day off is certainly coming to Pauline and she is going to have her silver wedding. I, Anne Shirley, have spoken it.

”I told Rebecca Dew and the widows all about it when I came home and we had such fun, thinking up all the lovely, insulting things I might have said to Mrs. Gibson. Aunt Kate does not think I will succeed in getting Mrs. Gibson to let Pauline go but Rebecca Dew has faith in me. 'Anyhow, if YOU can't, nobody can,' she said.

”I was at supper recently with Mrs. Tom Pringle who wouldn't take me to board. (Rebecca says I am the best paying boarder she ever heard of because I am invited out to supper so often.) I'm very glad she didn't. She's nice and purry and her pies praise her in the gates, but her home isn't Windy Poplars and she doesn't live in Spook's Lane and she isn't Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew. I love them all three and I'm going to board here next year and the year after. My chair is always called 'Miss Shirley's chair' and Aunt Chatty tells me that when I'm not here Rebecca Dew sets my place at the table just the same, so it won't seem so lonesome.' Sometimes Aunt Chatty's feelings have complicated matters a bit but she says she understands me now and knows I would never hurt her intentionally.

”Little Elizabeth and I go out for a walk twice a week now. Mrs. Campbell has agreed to that, but it must not be oftener and NEVER on Sundays. Things are better for little Elizabeth in spring.

Some sunshine gets into even that grim old house and outwardly it is even beautiful because of the dancing shadows of tree tops.

Still, Elizabeth likes to escape from it whenever she can. Once in a while we go up-town so that Elizabeth can see the lighted shop windows. But mostly we go as far as we dare down the Road that Leads to the End of the World, rounding every corner adventurously and expectantly, as if we were going to find Tomorrow behind it, while all the little green evening hills neatly nestle together in the distance. One of the things Elizabeth is going to do in Tomorrow is 'go to Philadelphia and see the angel in the church.' I haven't told her ... I never will tell her ... that the Philadelphia St. John was writing about was NOT Phila., Pa. We lose our illusions soon enough. And anyhow, if we COULD get into Tomorrow, who knows what we might find there? Angels everywhere, perhaps.

”Sometimes we watch the ships coming up the harbor before a fair wind, over a glistening pathway, through the transparent spring air, and Elizabeth wonders if her father may be on board one of them. She clings to the hope that he may come some day. I can't imagine why he doesn't. I'm sure he would if he knew what a darling little daughter he has here longing for him. I suppose he never realizes she is quite a girl now .... I suppose he still thinks of her as the little baby who cost his wife her life.

”I'll soon have finished my first year in Summerside High. The first term was a nightmare, but the last two have been very pleasant. The Pringles are DELIGHTFUL PEOPLE. How could I ever have compared them to the Pyes? Sid Pringle brought me a bunch of trilliums today. Jen is going to lead her class and Miss Ellen is reported to have said that I am the only teacher who ever REALLY UNDERSTOOD the child! The only fly in my ointment is Katherine Brooke, who continues unfriendly and distant. I'm going to give up trying to be friends with her. After all, as Rebecca Dew says, there ARE limits.

”Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you.... Sally Nelson has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. She is going to be married the last of June at Bonnyview, Dr. Nelson's summer home down at the jumping- off place. She is marrying Gordon Hill. Then Nora Nelson will be the only one of Dr. Nelson's six girls left unmarried. Jim Wilcox has been going with her for years ... 'off and on' as Rebecca Dew says ... but it never seems to come to anything and nobody thinks it will now. I'm very fond of Sally, but I've never made much headway getting acquainted with Nora. She's a good deal older than I am, of course, and rather reserved and proud. Yet I'd like to be friends with her. She isn't pretty or clever or charming but somehow she's got a TANG. I've a feeling she'd be worth while.

”Speaking of weddings, Esme Taylor was married to her Ph.D. last month. As it was on Wednesday afternoon I couldn't go to the church to see her, but every one says she looked very beautiful and happy and Lennox looked as if he knew he had done the right thing and had the approval of his conscience. Cyrus Taylor and I are great friends. He often refers to the dinner which he has come to consider a great joke on everybody. 'I've never dared sulk since,' he told me. 'Momma might accuse me of sewing patchwork next time.' And then he tells me to be sure and give his love to 'the widows.' Gilbert, people are delicious and life is delicious and I am

”Forevermore

”YOURS!

”P.S. Our old red cow down at Mr. Hamilton's has a spotted calf.

We've been buying our milk for three months from Lew Hunt. Rebecca says we'll have cream again now ... and that she has always heard the Hunt well was inexhaustible and now she believes it. Rebecca didn't want that calf to be born at all. Aunt Kate had to get Mr. Hamilton to tell her that the cow was really too old to have a calf before she would consent.”

13

”Ah, when you've been old and bed-rid as long as me you'll have more sympathy," whined Mrs. Gibson.

”Please don't think I'm lacking in sympathy, Mrs. Gibson," said Anne, who, after half an hour's vain effort, felt like wringing Mrs. Gibson's neck. Nothing but poor Pauline's pleading eyes in the background kept her from giving up in despair and going home.

"I assure you, you won't be lonely and neglected. I will be here all day and see that you lack nothing in any way.”

”Oh, I know I'm of no use to any one," said Mrs. Gibson, apropos of nothing that had been said. "You don't need to rub that in, Miss Shirley. I'm ready to go any time ... any time. Pauline can gad round all she wants to then. I won't be here to feel neglected.

None of the young people of today have any sense. Giddy ... very giddy.”

Anne didn't know whether it was Pauline or herself who was the giddy young person without sense, but she tried the last shot in her locker.

”Well, you know, Mrs. Gibson, people will talk so terribly if Pauline doesn't go to her cousin's silver wedding.”

”Talk!" said Mrs. Gibson sharply. "What will they talk about?”

”Dear Mrs. Gibson ..." ('May I be forgiven the adjective!' thought Anne) "in your long life you have learned, I know, just what idle tongues can say.”

”You needn't be casting my age up to me," snapped Mrs. Gibson.

"And I don't need to be told it's a censorious world. Too well ... too well I know it. And I don't need to be told that this town is full of tattling toads neither. But I dunno's I fancy them jabbering about me ... saying, I s'pose, that I'm an old tyrant.

I ain't stopping Pauline from going. Didn't I leave it to her conscience?”

”So few people will believe that," said Anne, carefully sorrowful.

Mrs. Gibson sucked a peppermint lozenge fiercely for a minute or two. Then she said,

”I hear there's mumps at White Sands.”

”Ma, dear, you know I've had the mumps.”

”There's folks as takes them twice. You'd be just the one to take them twice, Pauline. You always took everything that come round.

The nights I've set up with you, not expecting you'd see the morning! Ah me, a mother's sacrifices ain't long remembered.

Besides, how would you get to White Sands? You ain't been on a train for years. And there ain't any train back Saturday night.”

”She could go on the Saturday morning train," said Anne. "And I'm sure Mr. James Gregor will bring her back.”

”I never liked Jim Gregor. His mother was a Tarbush.”

”He is taking his double-seated buggy and going down Friday, or else he would take her down, too. But she'll be quite safe on the train, Mrs. Gibson. Just step on at Summerside ... step off at White Sands ... no changing.”

”There's something behind all this," said Mrs. Gibson suspiciously.

"Why are you so set on her going, Miss Shirley? Just tell me that.”

Anne smiled into the beady-eyed face.

”Because I think Pauline is a good, kind daughter to you, Mrs. Gibson, and needs a day off now and then, just as everybody does.”

Most people found it hard to resist Anne's smile. Either that, or the fear of gossip vanquished Mrs. Gibson.

”I s'pose it never occurs to any one I'D like a day off from this wheel-chair if I could get it. But I can't ... I just have to bear my affliction patiently. Well, if she must go she must.

She's always been one to get her own way. If she catches mumps or gets poisoned by strange mosquitoes, don't blame me for it. I'll have to get along as best I can. Oh, I s'pose you'll be here, but you ain't used to my ways as Pauline is. I s'pose I can stand it for one day. If I can't ... well, I've been living on borrowed time many's the year now so what's the difference?" Not a gracious assent by any means but still an assent. Anne in her relief and gratitude found herself doing something she could never have imagined herself doing ... she bent over and kissed Mrs. Gibson's leathery cheek. "Thank you," she said.

”Never mind your wheedling ways," said Mrs. Gibson. "Have a peppermint.”

”How can I ever thank you, Miss Shirley?" said Pauline, as she went a little way down the street with Anne.

”By going to White Sands with a light heart and enjoying every minute of the time.”

”Oh, I'll do that. You don't know what this means to me, Miss Shirley. It's not only Louisa I want to see. The old Luckley place next to her home is going to be sold and I did so want to see it once more before it passed into the hands of strangers. Mary Luckley ... she's Mrs. Howard Flemming now and lives out west ... was my dearest friend when I was a girl. We were like sisters.

I used to be at the Luckley place so much and I loved it so. I've often dreamed of going back. Ma says I'm getting too old to dream.

Do you think I am, Miss Shirley?”

”Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old.”

”I'm so glad to hear you say that. Oh, Miss Shirley, to think of seeing the gulf again. I haven't seen it for fifteen years. The harbor is beautiful, but it isn't the gulf. I feel as if I was walking on air. And I owe it all to you. It was just because Ma likes you she let me go. You've made me happy ... you are always making people happy. Why, whenever you come into a room, Miss Shirley, the people in it feel happier.”

”That's the very nicest compliment I've ever had paid me, Pauline.”

”There's just one thing, Miss Shirley ... I've nothing to wear but my old black taffeta. It's too gloomy for a wedding, isn't it?

And it's too big for me since I got thin. You see it's six years since I got it.”

”We must try to induce your mother to let you have a new dress,” said Anne hopefully.

But that proved to be beyond her powers. Mrs. Gibson was adamant.

Pauline's black taffeta was plenty good for Louisa Hilton's wedding.

”I paid two dollars a yard for it six years ago and three to Jane Sharp for making it. Jane was a good dressmaker. Her mother was a Smiley. The idea of you wanting something 'light,' Pauline Gibson!

She'd go dressed in scarlet from head to foot, that one, if she was let, Miss Shirley. She's just waiting till I'm dead to do it. Ah, well, you'll soon be shet of all the trouble I am to you, Pauline.

Then you can dress as gay and giddy as you like, but as long as I'm alive you'll be decent. And what's the matter with your hat? It's time you wore a bonnet, anyhow.”

Poor Pauline had a lively horror of having to wear a bonnet. She would wear her old hat for the rest of her life before she would do that.

”I'm just going to be glad inside and forget all about my clothes,”

she told Anne, when they went out to the garden to pick a bouquet of June lilies and bleeding-heart for the widows.

”I've a plan," said Anne, with a cautious glance to make sure Mrs. Gibson couldn't hear her, though she was watching from the sitting- room window. "You know that silver-gray poplin of mine? I'm going to lend you that for the wedding.”

Pauline dropped the basket of flowers in her agitation, making a pool of pink and white sweetness at Anne's feet.

”Oh, my dear, I couldn't.... Ma wouldn't let me.”

”She won't know a thing about it. Listen. Saturday morning you'll put it on under your black taffeta. I know it will fit you. It's a little long, but I'll run some tucks in it tomorrow ... tucks are fashionable now. It's collarless, with elbow sleeves so no one will suspect. As soon as you get to Gull Cove, take off the taffeta. When the day is over you can leave the poplin at Gull Cove and I can get it the next week-end I'm home.”

”But wouldn't it be too young for me?”

”Not a bit of it. Any age can wear gray.”

”Do you think it would be ... right ... to deceive Ma?” faltered Pauline.

”In this case entirely right," said Anne shamelessly. "You know, Pauline, it would never do to wear a black dress to a wedding. It might bring the bride bad luck.”

”Oh, I wouldn't do that for anything. And of course it won't hurt Ma. I do hope she'll get through Saturday all right. I'm afraid she won't eat a bite when I'm away ... she didn't the time I went to Cousin Matilda's funeral. Miss Prouty told me she didn't.... Miss Prouty stayed with her. She was so provoked at Cousin Matilda for dying ... Ma was, I mean.”

”She'll eat.... I'll see to that.”

”I know you've a great knack of managing her," conceded Pauline.

"And you won't forget to give her her medicine at the regular times, will you, dear? Oh, perhaps I oughtn't to go after all.”

”You've been out there long enough to pick forty bokays," called Mrs. Gibson irately. "I dunno what the widows want of your flowers. They've plenty of their own. I'd go a long time without flowers if I waited for Rebecca Dew to send me any. I'm dying for a drink of water. But then I'm of no consequence.”

Friday night Pauline telephoned Anne in terrible agitation. She had a sore throat and did Miss Shirley think it could possibly be the mumps? Anne ran down to reassure her, taking the gray poplin in a brown paper parcel. She hid it in the lilac bush and late that night Pauline, in a cold perspiration, managed to smuggle it upstairs to the little room where she kept her clothes and dressed, though she was never permitted to sleep there. Pauline was not quite easy about the dress. Perhaps her sore throat was a judgment on her for deception. But she couldn't go to Louisa's silver wedding in that dreadful old black taffeta ... she simply couldn't.

Saturday morning Anne was at the Gibson house bright and early.

Anne always looked her best on a sparkling summer morning such as this. She seemed to sparkle with it and she moved through the golden air like a slender figure on a Grecian urn. The dullest room sparkled, too ... LIVED ... when she came into it.

”Walking as if you owned the earth," commented Mrs. Gibson sarcastically.

”So I do," said Anne gayly.

”Ah, you're very young," said Mrs. Gibson maddeningly.

”'I withhold not my heart from any joy,'" quoted Anne. "That is Bible authority for you, Mrs. Gibson.”

”'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.' That's in the Bible, too," retorted Mrs. Gibson. The fact that she had so neatly countered Miss Shirley, B.A., put her in comparatively good humor.

"I never was one to flatter, Miss Shirley, but that chip hat of yours with the blue flower kind of sets you. Your hair don't look so red under it, seems to me. Don't you admire a fresh young girl like this, Pauline? Wouldn't you like to be a fresh young girl yourself, Pauline?”

Pauline was too happy and excited to want to be any one but herself just then. Anne went to the upstairs room with her to help her dress.

”It's so lovely to think of all the pleasant things that must happen today, Miss Shirley. My throat is quite well and Ma is in such a good humor. You mightn't think so, but I know she is because she is talking, even if she is sarcastic. If she was mad or riled she'd be sulking. I've peeled the potatoes and the steak is in the ice-box and Ma's blanc mange is down cellar. There's canned chicken for supper and a sponge cake in the pantry. I'm just on tenterhooks Ma'll change her mind yet. I couldn't bear it if she did. Oh, Miss Shirley, do you think I'd better wear that gray dress ... really?”

”Put it on," said Anne in her best school-teacherish manner.

Pauline obeyed and emerged a transformed Pauline. The gray dress fitted her beautifully. It was collarless and had dainty lace ruffles in the elbow sleeves. When Anne had done her hair Pauline hardly knew herself.

”I hate to cover it up with that horrid old black taffeta, Miss Shirley.”

But it had to be. The taffeta covered it very securely. The old hat went on ... but it would be taken off, too, when she got to Louisa's ... and Pauline had a new pair of shoes. Mrs. Gibson had actually allowed her to get a new pair of shoes, though she thought the heels "scandalous high." "I'll make quite a sensation going away on the train ALONE. I hope people won't think it's a death. I wouldn't want Louisa's silver wedding to be connected in any way with the thought of death. Oh, perfume, Miss Shirley!

Apple-blossom! Isn't that lovely? Just a whiff ... so lady- like, I always think. Ma won't let me buy any. Oh, Miss Shirley, you won't forget to feed my dog, will you? I've left his bones in the pantry in the covered dish. I do hope" ... dropping her voice to a shamed whisper ... "that he won't ... misbehave ... in the house while you're here.”

Pauline had to pass her mother's inspection before leaving.

Excitement over her outing and guilt in regard to the hidden poplin combined to give her a very unusual flush. Mrs. Gibson gazed at her discontentedly.

”Oh me, oh my! Going to London to look at the Queen, are we? You've got too much color. People will think you're painted. Are you sure you ain't?”

”Oh, no, Ma ... NO," in shocked tones.

”Mind your manners now and when you set down, cross your ankles decently. Mind you don't set in a draught or talk too much.”

”I won't, Ma," promised Pauline earnestly, with a nervous glance at the clock.

”I'm sending Louisa a bottle of my sarsaparilla wine to drink the toasts in. I never cared for Louisa, but her mother was a Tackaberry. Mind you bring back the bottle and don't let her give you a kitten. Louisa's always giving people kittens.”

”I won't, Ma.”

”You're sure you didn't leave the soap in the water?”

”Quite sure, Ma," with another anguished glance at the clock.

”Are your shoe-laces tied?”

”Yes, Ma.”

”You don't smell respectable ... drenched with scent.”

”Oh, no, Ma dear ... just a little ... the tiniest bit ...”

”I said drenched and I mean drenched. There isn't, a rip under your arm, is there?”

”Oh, no, Ma.”

”Let me see ..." inexorably.

Pauline quaked. Suppose the skirt of the gray dress showed when she lifted her arms!

”Well, go, then." With a long sigh. "If I ain't here when you come back, remember that I want to be laid out in my lace shawl and my black satin slippers. And see that my hair is crimped.”

”Do you feel any worse, Ma?" The poplin dress had made Pauline's conscience very sensitive. "If you do ... I'll not go ...”

”And waste the money for them shoes! 'Course you're going. And mind you don't slide down the banister.”

But at this the worm turned.

”Ma! Do you think I would?”

”You did at Nancy Parker's wedding.”

”Thirty-five years ago! Do you think I would do it now?”

”It's time you were off. What are you jabbering here for? Do you want to miss your train?”

Pauline hurried away and Anne sighed with relief. She had been afraid that old Mrs. Gibson had, at the last moment, been taken with a fiendish impulse to detain Pauline until the train was gone.

”Now for a little peace," said Mrs. Gibson. "This house is in an awful condition of untidiness, Miss Shirley. I hope you realize it ain't always so. Pauline hasn't known which end of her was up these last few days. Will you please set that vase an inch to the left? No, move it back again. That lamp shade is crooked. Well, that's a LITTLE straighter. But that blind is an inch lower than the other. I wish you'd fix it.”

Anne unluckily gave the blind too energetic a twist; it escaped her fingers and went whizzing to the top.

”Ah, now you see," said Mrs. Gibson.

Anne didn't see but she adjusted the blind meticulously.

”And now wouldn't you like me to make you a nice cup of tea, Mrs. Gibson?”

”I DO need something.... I'm clean wore out with all this worry and fuss. My stomach seems to be dropping out of me," said Mrs. Gibson pathetically. "Kin you make a decent cup of tea? I'd as soon drink mud as the tea some folks make.”

”Marilla Cuthbert taught me how to make tea. You'll see. But first I'm going to wheel you out to the porch so that you can enjoy the sunshine.”

”I ain't been out on the porch for years," objected Mrs. Gibson.

”Oh, it's so lovely today, it can't hurt you. I want you to see the crab tree in bloom. You can't see it unless you go out. And the wind is south today, so you'll get the clover scent from Norman Johnson's field. I'll bring you your tea and we'll drink it together and then I'll get my embroidery and we'll sit there and criticize everybody who passes.”

”I don't hold with criticizing people," said Mrs. Gibson virtuously.

"It ain't Christian. Would you mind telling me if that is all your own hair?”

”Every bit," laughed Anne.

”Pity it's red. Though red hair seems to be gitting popular now.

I sort of like your laugh. That nervous giggle of poor Pauline's always gits on my nerves. Well, if I've got to git out, I s'pose I've got to. I'll likely ketch my death of cold, but the responsibility is yours, Miss Shirley. Remember I'm eighty ... every day of it, though I hear old Davy Ackham has been telling all around Summerside I'm only seventy-nine. His mother was a Watt.

The Watts were always jealous.”

Anne moved the wheel-chair deftly out, and proved that she had a knack of arranging pillows. Soon after she brought out the tea and Mrs. Gibson deigned approval.

”Yes, this is drinkable, Miss Shirley. Ah me, for one year I had to live entirely on liquids. They never thought I'd pull through.

I often think it might have been better if I hadn't. Is that the crab tree you was raving about?”

”Yes ... isn't it lovely ... so white against that deep blue sky?”

”It ain't poetical," was Mrs. Gibson's sole comment. But she became rather mellow after two cups of tea and the forenoon wore away until it was time to think of dinner.

”I'll go and get it ready and then I'll bring it out here on a little table.”

”No, you won't, miss. No crazy monkey-shines like that for me!

People would think it awful queer, us eating out here in public. I ain't denying it's kind of nice out here ... though the smell of clover always makes me kind of squalmish ... and the forenoon's passed awful quick to what it mostly does, but I ain't eating my dinner out-of-doors for any one. I ain't a gypsy. Mind you wash your hands clean before you cook the dinner. My, Mrs. Storey must be expecting more company. She's got all the spare-room bed- clothes airing on the line. It ain't real hospitality ... just a desire for sensation. Her mother was a Carey.”

The dinner Anne produced pleased even Mrs. Gibson.

”I didn't think any one who wrote for the papers could cook. But of course Marilla Cuthbert brought you up. Her mother was a Johnson. I s'pose Pauline will eat herself sick at that wedding.

She don't know when she's had enough ... just like her father.

I've seen him gorge on strawberries when he knew he'd be doubled up with pain an hour afterwards. Did I ever show you his picture, Miss Shirley? Well, go to the spare-room and bring it down.

You'll find it under the bed. Mind you don't go prying into the drawers while you're up there. But take a peep and see if there's any dust curls under the bureau. I don't trust Pauline.... Ah, yes, that's him. His mother was a Walker. There's no men like that nowadays. This is a degenerate age, Miss Shirley.”

”Homer said the same thing eight hundred years, B.C.," smiled Anne.

”Some of them Old Testament writers was always croaking," said Mrs. Gibson. "I daresay you're shocked to hear me say so, Miss Shirley, but my husband was very broad in his views. I hear you're engaged ... to a medical student. Medical students mostly drink, I believe ... have to, to stand the dissecting-room. Never marry a man who drinks, Miss Shirley. Nor one who ain't a good provider.

Thistledown and moonshine ain't much to live on, I kin tell you.

Mind you clean the sink and rinse the dish-towels. I can't abide greasy dish-towels. I s'pose you'll have to feed the dog. He's too fat now, but Pauline just stuffs him. Sometimes I think I'll have to get rid of him.”

”Oh, I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Gibson. There are always burglaries, you know ... and your house is lonely, off here by itself. You really do need protection.”

”Oh, well, have it your own way. I'd ruther do anything than argue with people, 'specially when I've such a queer throbbing in the back of my neck. I s'pose it means I'm going to have a stroke.”

”You need your nap. When you've had it you'll feel better. I'll tuck you up and lower your chair. Would you like to go out on the porch for your nap?”

”Sleeping in public! That'd be worse than eating. You do have the queerest ideas. You just fix me up right here in the sitting-room and draw the blinds down and shut the door to keep the flies out.

I daresay you'd like a quiet spell yourself ... your tongue's been going pretty steady.”

Mrs. Gibson had a good long nap, but woke up in a bad humor. She would not let Anne wheel her out to the porch again.

”Want me to ketch my death in the night air, I s'pose," she grumbled, although it was only five o'clock. Nothing suited her.

The drink Anne brought her was too cold ... the next one wasn't cold enough ... of course ANYTHING would do for HER. Where was the dog? Misbehaving, no doubt. Her back ached ... her knees ached ... her head ached ... her breastbone ached. Nobody sympathized with her ... nobody knew what she went through. Her chair was too high ... her chair was too low.... She wanted a shawl for her shoulders and an afghan for her knees and a cushion for her feet. And WOULD Miss Shirley see where that awful draught was coming from? She could do with a cup of tea, but she didn't want to be a trouble to any one and she would soon be at rest in her grave. Maybe they might appreciate her when she was gone.

”Be the day short or be the day long, at last it weareth to evening song." There were moments when Anne thought it never would, but it did. Sunset came and Mrs. Gibson began to wonder why Pauline wasn't coming. Twilight came ... still no Pauline. Night and moonshine and no Pauline.

”I knew it," said Mrs. Gibson cryptically.

”You know she can't come till Mr. Gregor comes and he's generally the last dog hung," soothed Anne. "Won't you let me put you to bed, Mrs. Gibson? You're tired ... I know it's a bit of a strain having a stranger round instead of some one you're accustomed to.”

The little puckery lines about Mrs. Gibson's mouth deepened obstinately.

”I'm not going to bed till that girl comes home. But if you're so anxious to be gone, GO. I can stay alone ... or die alone.”

At half past nine Mrs. Gibson decided that Jim Gregor was not coming home till Monday.

”Nobody could ever depend on Jim Gregor to stay in the same mind twenty-four hours. And he thinks it's wrong to travel on Sunday even to come home. He's on your school board, ain't he? What do you really think of him and his opinions on eddication?”

Anne went wicked. After all, she had endured a good deal at Mrs. Gibson's hands that day.

”I think he's a psychological anachronism," she answered gravely.

Mrs. Gibson did not bat an eyelash.

”I agree with you," she said. But she pretended to go to sleep after that.

14

It was ten o'clock when Pauline came at last ... a flushed, starry-eyed Pauline, looking ten years younger, in spite of the resumed taffeta and the old hat, and carrying a beautiful bouquet which she hurriedly presented to the grim lady in the wheel-chair.

”The bride sent you her bouquet, Ma. Isn't it lovely? Twenty-five white roses.”

”Cat's hindfoot! I don't s'pose any one thought of sending me a crumb of wedding-cake. People nowadays don't seem to have any family feeling. Ah, well, I've seen the day ...”

”But they did. I've a great big piece here in my bag. And everybody asked about you and sent you their love, Ma.”

”Did you have a nice time?" asked Anne.

Pauline sat down on a hard chair because she knew her mother would resent it if she sat on a soft one.

”Very nice," she said cautiously. "We had a lovely wedding-dinner and Mr. Freeman, the Gull Cove minister, married Louisa and Maurice over again....”

”I call that sacrilegious....”

”And then the photographer took all our pictures. The flowers were simply wonderful. The parlor was a bower ...”

”Like a funeral I s'pose ...”

”And, oh, Ma. Mary Luckley was there from the west ... Mrs. Flemming, you know. You remember what friends she and I always were. We used to call each other Polly and Molly....”

”Very silly names ...”

”And it was so nice to see her again and have a long talk over old times. Her sister Em was there, too, with such a delicious baby.”

”You talk as if it was something to eat," grunted Mrs. Gibson.

"Babies are common enough.”

”Oh, no, babies are never common," said Anne, bringing a bowl of water for Mrs. Gibson's roses. "Every one is a miracle.”

”Well, I had ten and I never saw much that was miraculous about any of them. Pauline, do sit still if you kin. You fidget me. I notice you ain't asking how I got along. But I s'pose I couldn't expect it.”

”I can tell how you got along without asking, Ma ... you look so bright and cheerful." Pauline was still so uplifted by the day that she could be a little arch even with her mother. "I'm sure you and Miss Shirley had a nice time together.”

”We got on well enough. I just let her have her own way. I admit it's the first time in years I've heard some interesting conversation. I ain't so near the grave as some people would like to make out. Thank heaven I've never got deaf or childish. Well, I s'pose the next thing you'll be off to the moon. And I s'pose they didn't care for my sarsaparilla wine by any chance?”

”Oh, they did. They thought it delicious.”

”You've taken your own time telling me that. Did you bring back the bottle ... or would it be too much to expect you'd remember that?”

”The ... the bottle got broke," faltered Pauline. "Some one knocked it over in the pantry. But Louisa gave me another just exactly the same, Ma, so you needn't worry.”

”I've had that bottle ever since I started housekeeping. Louisa's can't be exactly the same. They don't make such bottles nowadays.

I wish you'd bring me another shawl. I'm sneezing ... I expect I've got a terrible cold. You can't either of you seem to remember not to let the night air git at me. Likely it'll bring my neuritis back.”

An old neighbor up the street dropped in at this Juncture and Pauline snatched at the chance to go a little way with Anne.

”Good night, Miss Shirley," said Mrs. Gibson quite graciously.

"I'm much obliged to you. If there was more people like you in this town, it would be the better for it." She grinned toothlessly and pulled Anne down to her. "I don't care what people say ... I think you're real nice-looking," she whispered.

Pauline and Anne walked along the street, through the cool, green night, and Pauline let herself go, as she had not dared do before her mother.

”Oh, Miss Shirley, it was heavenly. How can I ever repay you? I've never spent such a wonderful day ... I'll live on it for years. It was such fun being a bridesmaid again. And Captain Isaac Kent was groomsman. He ... he used to be an old beau of mine ... well, no, hardly a beau .... I don't think he ever had any real intentions but we drove round together ... and he paid me two compliments. He said, 'I remember how pretty you looked at Louisa's wedding in that wine-colored dress.' Wasn't it wonderful his remembering the dress? And he said, 'Your hair looks just as much like molasses taffy as it ever did.' There wasn't anything improper in his saying that, was there, Miss Shirley?”

”Nothing whatever.”

”Lou and Molly and I had such a nice supper together after everybody had gone. I was so hungry ... I don't think I've been so hungry for years. It was so nice to eat just what I wanted and nobody to warn me about things that wouldn't agree with my stomach.

After supper Mary and I went over to her old home and wandered around the garden, talking over old times. We saw the lilac bushes we planted years ago. We had some beautiful summers together when we were girls. Then when it came sunset we went down to the dear old shore and sat there on a rock in silence. There was a bell ringing down at the harbor and it was lovely to feel the wind from the sea again and see the stars trembling in the water. I had forgotten night on the gulf could be so beautiful. When it got quite dark we went back and Mr. Gregor was ready to start ... and so," concluded Pauline with a laugh, "The Old Woman Got Home That Night.”

”I wish ... I wish you didn't have such a hard time at home, Pauline....”

”Oh, dear Miss Shirley, I won't mind it now," said Pauline quickly.

"After all, poor Ma needs me. And it's nice to be needed, my dear.”

Yes, it was nice to be needed. Anne thought of this in her tower room, where Dusty Miller, having evaded both Rebecca Dew and the widows, was curled up on her bed. She thought of Pauline trotting back to her bondage but companied by "the immortal spirit of one happy day.”

”I hope some one will always need me," said Anne to Dusty Miller.

"And it's wonderful, Dusty Miller, to be able to give happiness to somebody. It has made me feel so rich, giving Pauline this day.

But, oh, Dusty Miller, you don't think I'll ever be like Mrs. Adoniram Gibson, even if I live to be eighty? Do you, Dusty Miller?”

Dusty Miller, with rich, throaty purrs, assured her he didn't.

15

Anne went down to Bonnyview on the Friday night before the wedding.

The Nelsons were giving a dinner for some family friends and wedding-guests arriving by the boat train. The big, rambling house which was Dr. Nelson's "summer home" was built among spruces on a long point with the bay on both sides and a stretch of golden- breasted dunes beyond that knew all there was to be known about winds.

Anne liked it the moment she saw it. An old stone house always looks reposeful and dignified. It fears not what rain or wind or changing fashion can do. And on this June evening it was bubbling over with young life and excitement, the laughter of girls, the greetings of old friends, buggies coming and going, children running everywhere, gifts arriving, every one in the delightful turmoil of a wedding, while Dr. Nelson's two black cats, who rejoiced in the names of Barnabas and Saul, sat on the railing of the veranda and watched everything like two imperturbable sable sphinxes.

Sally detached herself from a mob and whisked Anne upstairs.

”We've saved the north gable room for you. Of course you'll have to share it with at least three others. There's a perfect riot here. Father's having a tent put up for the boys down among the spruces and later on we can have cots in the glassed-in porch at the back. And we can pack most of the children in the hay-loft of course. Oh, Anne, I'm so excited. It's really no end of fun getting married. My wedding-dress just came from Montreal today.

It's a DREAM ... cream corded silk with a lace bertha and pearl embroidery. The loveliest gifts have come. This is your bed.

Mamie Gray and Dot Fraser and Sis Palmer have the others. Mother wanted to put Amy Stewart here but I wouldn't let her. Amy hates you because she wanted to be my bridesmaid. But I couldn't have any one so fat and dumpy, could I now? Besides, she looks like somebody seasick in Nile green. Oh, Anne, Aunt Mouser is here.

She came just a few minutes ago and we're simply horror-stricken.

Of course we had to invite her, but we never thought of her coming before tomorrow.”

”Who in the world is Aunt Mouser?”

”Dad's aunt, Mrs. James Kennedy. Oh, of course she's really Aunt Grace, but Tommy nicknamed her Aunt Mouser because she's always mousing round pouncing on things we don't want her to find out.

There's no escaping her. She even gets up early in the morning for fear of missing something and she's the last to go to bed at night.

But that isn't the worst. If there's a wrong thing to say she's certain to say it and she's never learned that there are questions that mustn't be asked. Dad calls her speeches 'Aunt Mouser's felicities.' I know she'll spoil the dinner. Here she comes now.”

The door opened and Aunt Mouser came in ... a fat, brown, pop- eyed little woman, moving in an atmosphere of moth-balls and wearing a chronically worried expression. Except for the expression she really did look a good deal like a hunting pussy- cat.

”So you're the Miss Shirley I've always heard so much of. You ain't a bit like a Miss Shirley I once knew. SHE had such beautiful eyes. Well, Sally, so you're to be married at last.

Poor Nora is the only one left. Well, your mother is lucky to be rid of five of you. Eight years ago I said to her, 'Jane,' sez I, 'do you think you'll EVER get all those girls married off?' Well, a man is nothing but trouble as I sees it and of all the uncertain things marriage is the uncertainest, but what else is there for a woman in this world? That's what I've just been saying to poor Nora. 'Mark my words, Nora,' I said to her, 'there isn't much fun in being an old maid. What's Jim Wilcox thinking of?' I said to her.”

”Oh, Aunt Grace, I wish you hadn't! Jim and Nora had some sort of a quarrel last January and he's never been round since.”

”I believe in saying what I think. Things is better said. I'd heard of that quarrel. That's why I asked her about him. 'It's only right,' I told her, 'that you should know they say he's driving Eleanor Pringle.' She got red and mad and flounced off.

What's Vera Johnson doing here? She ain't any relation.”

”Vera's always been a great friend of mine, Aunt Grace. She's going to play the wedding-march.”

”Oh, she is, is she? Well, all I hope is she won't make a mistake and play the Dead March like Mrs. Tom Scott did at Dora Best's wedding. Such a bad omen. I don't know where you're going to put the mob you've got here for the night. Some of us will have to sleep on the clothes-line I reckon.”

”Oh, we'll find a place for every one, Aunt Grace.”

”Well, Sally, all I hope is you won't change your mind at the last moment like Helen Summers did. It clutters things up so. Your father is in terrible high spirits. I never was one to go looking for trouble but all I hope is it ain't the forerunner of a stroke.

I've seen it happen that way.”

”Oh, Dad's fine, Aunt Mouser. He's just a bit excited.”

”Ah, you're too young, Sally, to know all that can happen. Your mother tells me the ceremony is at high noon tomorrow. The fashions in weddings are changing like everything else and not for the better. When I was married it was in the evening and my father laid in twenty gallons of liquor for the wedding. Ah, dear me, times ain't what they used to be. What's the matter with Mercy Daniels? I met her on the stairs and her complexion has got terrible muddy.”

”'The quality of mercy is not strained,'" giggled Sally, wriggling into her dinner-dress.

”Don't quote the Bible flippantly," rebuked Aunt Mouser. "You must excuse her, Miss Shirley. She just ain't used to getting married.

Well, all I hope is the groom won't have a hunted look like so many of them do. I s'pose they do feel that way, but they needn't show it so plain. And I hope he won't forget the ring. Upton Hardy did. Him and Flora had to be married with a ring off one of the curtain poles. Well, I'll be taking another look at the wedding- presents. You've got a lot of nice things, Sally. All I hope is it won't be as hard to keep the handles of them spoons polished as I think likely.”

Dinner that night in the big, glassed-in porch was a gay affair.

Chinese lanterns had been hung all about it, shedding mellow-tinted lights on the pretty dresses and glossy hair and white, unlined brows of girls. Barnabas and Saul sat like ebony statues on the broad arms of the Doctor's chair, where he fed them tidbits alternately.

”Just about as bad as Parker Pringle," said Aunt Mouser. "HE has his dog sit at the table with a chair and napkin of his own. Well, sooner or later there'll be a judgment.”

It was a large party, for all the married Nelson girls and their husbands were there, besides ushers and bridesmaids; and it was a merry one, in spite of Aunt Mouser's "felicities" ... or perhaps because of them. Nobody took Aunt Mouser very seriously; she was evidently a joke among the young fry. When she said, on being introduced to Gordon Hill, "Well, well, you ain't a bit like I expected. I always thought Sally would pick out a tall handsome man," ripples of laughter ran through the porch. Gordon Hill, who was on the short side and called no more than "pleasant-faced" by his best friends, knew he would never hear the last of it. When she said to Dot Fraser, "Well, well, a new dress every time I see you! All I hope is your father's purse will be able to stand it for a few years yet," Dot could, of course, have boiled her in oil, but some of the other girls found it amusing. And when Aunt Mouser mournfully remarked, apropos of the preparations of the wedding- dinner, "All I hope is everybody will get her teaspoons afterwards.

Five were missing after Gertie Paul's wedding. They never turned up," Mrs. Nelson, who had borrowed three dozen and the sisters-in- law she had borrowed them from all looked harried. But Dr. Nelson haw-hawed cheerfully.

”We'll make everyone turn out their pockets before they go, Aunt Grace.”

”Ah, you may laugh, Samuel. It is no joking-matter to have anything like that happen in the family. SOME ONE must have those teaspoons. I never go anywhere but I keep my eyes open for them.

I'd know them wherever I saw them, though it was twenty-eight years ago. Poor Nora was just a baby then. You remember you had her there, Jane, in a little white embroidered dress? Twenty-eight years! Ah, Nora, you're getting on, though in this light you don't show your age so much.”

Nora did not join in the laugh that followed. She looked as if she might flash lightning at any moment. In spite of her daffodil-hued dress and the pearls in her dark hair, she made Anne think of a black moth. In direct contrast with Sally, who was a cool, snowy blonde, Nora Nelson had magnificent black hair, dusky eyes, heavy black brows and velvety red cheeks. Her nose was beginning to look a trifle hawk-like and she had never been accounted pretty, but Anne felt an odd attraction to her in spite of her sulky, smoldering expression. She felt that she would prefer Nora as a friend to the popular Sally.

They had a dance after dinner and music and laughter came tumbling out of the broad low windows of the old stone house in a flood. At ten Nora had disappeared. Anne was a little tired of the noise and merriment. She slipped through the hall to a back door that opened almost on the bay, and flitted down a flight of rocky steps to the shore, past a little grove of pointed firs. How divine the cool salt air was after the sultry evening! How exquisite the silver patterns of moonlight on the bay! How dream-like that ship which had sailed at the rising of the moon and was now approaching the harbor bar! It was a night when you might expect to stray into a dance of mermaids.

Nora was hunched up in the grim black shadow of a rock by the water's edge, looking more like a thunderstorm than ever.

”May I sit with you for a while?" asked Anne. "I'm a little tired of dancing and it's a shame to miss this wonderful night. I envy you with the whole harbor for a back yard like this.”

”What would you feel like at a time like this if you had no beau?” asked Nora abruptly and sullenly. "Or any likelihood of one," she added still more sullenly.

”I think it must be your own fault if you haven't," said Anne, sitting down beside her. Nora found herself telling Anne her troubles. There was always something about Anne that made people tell her their troubles.

”You're saying that to be polite of course. You needn't. You know as well as I do that I'm not a girl men are likely to fall in love with ... I'm 'the plain Miss Nelson.' It ISN'T my fault that I haven't anybody. I couldn't stand it in there any longer. I had to come down here and just let myself be unhappy. I'm tired of smiling and being agreeable to every one and pretending not to care when they give me digs about not being married. I'm not going to pretend any longer. I DO care ... I care horribly. I'm the only one of the Nelson girls left. Five of us are married or will be tomorrow. You heard Aunt Mouser casting my age up to me at the dinnertable. And I heard her telling Mother before dinner that I had 'aged quite a bit' since last summer. Of course I have. I'm twenty-eight. In twelve more years I'll be forty. How will I endure life at forty, Anne, if I haven't got any roots of my own by that time?”

”I wouldn't mind what a foolish old woman said.”

”Oh, wouldn't you? You haven't a nose like mine. I'll be as beaky as Father in ten more years. And I suppose you wouldn't care, either, if you'd waited years for a man to propose ... and he just wouldn't?”

”Oh, yes, I think I would care about THAT.”

”Well, that's my predicament exactly. Oh, I know you've heard of Jim Wilcox and me. It's such an old story. He's been hanging around me for years ... but he's never said anything about getting married.”

”Do you care for him?”

”Of course I care. I've always pretended I didn't but, as I've told you, I'm through with pretending. And he's never been near me since last January. We had a fight ... but we've had hundreds of fights. He always came back before ... but he hasn't come this time ... and he never will. He doesn't want to. Look at his house across the bay, shining in the moonlight. I suppose he's there ... and I'm here ... and all the harbor between us.

That's the way it always will be. It ... it's terrible! And I can't do a thing.”

”If you sent for him, wouldn't he come back?”

”Send for him! Do you think I'd do THAT? I'd die first. If he wants to come, there's nothing to prevent him coming. If he doesn't, I don't want him to. Yes, I do ... I do! I love Jim ... and I want to get married. I want to have a home of my own and be 'Mrs.' and shut Aunt Mouser's mouth. Oh, I wish I could be Barnabas or Saul for a few moments just to swear at her! If she calls me 'poor Nora' again I'll throw a scuttle at her. But after all, she only says what everybody thinks. Mother has despaired long ago of my ever marrying, so she leaves me alone, but the rest rag me. I hate Sally ... of course I'm dreadful ... but I hate her. She's getting a nice husband and a lovely home. It isn't fair she should have everything and I nothing. She isn't better or cleverer or much prettier than me ... only luckier. I suppose you think I'm awful ... not that I care what you think.”

”I think you're very, very tired, after all these weeks of preparation and strain, and that things which were always hard have become TOO hard all at once.”

”You understand ... oh, yes, I always knew you would. I've wanted to be friends with you, Anne Shirley. I like the way you laugh. I've always wished I could laugh like that. I'm not as sulky as I look ... it's these eyebrows. I really think they're what scare the men away. I never had a real girl friend in my life. But of course I always had Jim. We've been ... friends ... ever since we were kids. Why, I used to put a light up in that little window in the attic whenever I wanted him over particularly and he'd sail across at once. We went everywhere together. No other boy ever had a chance ... not that any one wanted it, I suppose. And now it's all over. He was just tired of me and was glad of the excuse of a quarrel to get free. Oh, won't I hate you tomorrow because I've told you this!”

”Why?”

”We always hate people who surprise our secrets, I suppose," said Nora drearily. "But there's something gets into you at a wedding ... and I just don't care ... I don't care for anything. Oh, Anne Shirley, I'm so miserable! Just let me have a good cry on your shoulder. I've GOT to smile and look happy all day tomorrow. Sally thinks it's because I'm superstitious that I wouldn't be her bridesmaid.... 'Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride,' you know. 'Tisn't! I just couldn't endure to stand there and hear her saying, 'I will,' and know I'd never have a chance to say it for Jim. I'd have flung back my head and howled. I want to be a bride ... and have a trousseau ... and monogrammed linen ... and lovely presents. Even Aunt Mouser's silver butter-dish. She always gives a butter-dish to every bride ... awful things with tops like the dome of St. Peter's. We could have had it on the breakfast table just for Jim to make fun of. Anne, I think I'm going crazy.”

The dance was over when the girls went back to the house, hand in hand. People were being stowed away for the night. Tommy Nelson was taking Barnabas and Saul to the barn. Aunt Mouser was still sitting on a sofa, thinking of all the dreadful things she hoped wouldn't happen on the morrow.

”I hope nobody will get up and give a reason why they shouldn't be joined together. THAT happened at Tillie Hatfield's wedding.”

”No such good luck for Gordon as that," said the groomsman. Aunt Mouser fixed him with a stony brown eye.

”Young man, marriage isn't exactly a joke.”

”You bet it isn't," said the unrepentant. "Hello, Nora, when are we going to have a chance to dance at your wedding?”

Nora did not answer in words. She went closer up to him and deliberately slapped him, first on one side of his face and then on the other. The slaps were not make-believe ones. Then she went upstairs without looking behind her.

”That girl," said Aunt Mouser, "is overwrought.”

16

The forenoon of Saturday passed in a whirl of last-minute things.

Anne, shrouded in one of Mrs. Nelson's aprons, spent it in the kitchen helping Nora with the salads. Nora was all prickles, evidently repenting, as she had foretold, her confidences of the night before.

”We'll be all tired out for a month," she snapped, "and Father can't really afford all this splurge. But Sally was set on having what she calls a 'pretty wedding' and Father gave in. He's always spoiled her.”

”Spite and jealousy," said Aunt Mouser, suddenly popping her head out of the pantry, where she was driving Mrs. Nelson frantic with her hopings against hope.

”She's right," said Nora bitterly to Anne. "Quite right. I AM spiteful and jealous ... I hate the very look of happy people.

But all the same I'm not sorry I slapped Jud Taylor's face last night. I'm only sorry I didn't tweak his nose into the bargain.

Well, that finishes the salads. They do look pretty. I love fussing things up when I'm normal. Oh, after all, I hope everything will go off nicely for Sally's sake. I suppose I do love her underneath everything, though just now I feel as if I hated every one and Jim Wilcox worst of all.”

”Well, all I hope is the groom won't be missing just before the ceremony," floated out from the pantry in Aunt Mouser's lugubrious tones. "Austin Creed was. He just forgot he was to be married that day. The Creeds were always forgetful, but I call that carrying things too far.”

The two girls looked at each other and laughed. Nora's whole face changed when she laughed ... lightened ... glowed ... rippled. And then some one came out to tell her that Barnabas had been sick on the stairs ... too many chicken livers probably.

Nora rushed off to repair the damage and Aunt Mouser came out of the pantry to hope that the wedding-cake wouldn't disappear as had happened at Alma Clark's wedding ten years before.

By noon everything was in immaculate readiness ... the table laid, the beds beautifully dressed, baskets of flowers everywhere; and in the big north room upstairs Sally and her three bridesmaids were in quivering splendor. Anne, in her Nile green dress and hat, looked at herself in the mirror, and wished that Gilbert could see her.

”You're wonderful," said Nora half enviously.

”You're looking wonderful yourself, Nora. That smoke-blue chiffon and that picture hat bring out the gloss of your hair and the blue of your eyes.”

”There's nobody to care how I look," said Nora bitterly. "Well, watch me grin, Anne. I mustn't be the death's head at the feast, I suppose. I have to play the wedding-march after all ... Vera's got a terrible headache. I feel more like playing the Dead March, as Aunt Mouser foreboded.”

Aunt Mouser, who had wandered round all the morning, getting in everybody's way, in a none too clean old kimono and a wilted

”boudoir cap," now appeared resplendent in maroon grosgrain and told Sally one of her sleeves didn't fit and she hoped nobody's petticoat would show below her dress as had happened at Annie Crewson's wedding. Mrs. Nelson came in and cried because Sally looked so lovely in her wedding-dress.

”Now, now, don't be sentimental, Jane," soothed Aunt Mouser.

"You've still got one daughter left ... and likely to have her by all accounts. Tears ain't lucky at weddings. Well, all I hope is nobody'll drop dead like old Uncle Cromwell at Roberta Pringle's wedding, right in the middle of the ceremony. The bride spent two weeks in bed from shock.”

With this inspiring send-off the bridal party went downstairs, to the strains of Nora's wedding-march somewhat stormily played, and Sally and Gordon were married without anybody dropping dead or forgetting the ring. It WAS a pretty wedding group and even Aunt Mouser gave up worrying about the universe for a few moments.

"After all," she told Sally hopefully later on, "even if you ain't very happy married, it's likely you'd be more unhappy not." Nora alone continued to glower from the piano stool, but she went up to Sally and gave her a fierce hug, wedding-veil and all.

”So that's finished," said Nora drearily, when the dinner was over and the bridal party and most of the guests had gone. She glanced around at the room which looked as forlorn and disheveled as rooms always do in the aftermath ... a faded, trampled corsage lying on the floor ... chairs awry ... a torn piece of lace ... two dropped handkerchiefs ... crumbs the children had scattered ... a dark stain on the ceiling where the water from a jug Aunt Mouser had overturned in a guest-room had seeped through.

”I must clear up this mess," went on Nora savagely. "There's a lot of young fry waiting for the boat train and some staying over Sunday. They're going to wind up with a bonfire on the shore and a moonlit rock dance. You can imagine how much I feel like moonlight dancing. I want to go to bed and cry.”

”A house after a wedding is over does seem a rather forsaken place," said Anne. "But I'll help you clear up and then we'll have a cup of tea.”

”Anne Shirley, do you think a cup of tea is a panacea for everything?

It's you who ought to be the old maid, not me. Never mind. I don't want to be horrid, but I suppose it's my native disposition. I hate the thought of this shore dance more than the wedding. Jim always used to be at our shore dances. Anne, I've made up my mind to go and train for a nurse. I know I'll hate it ... and heaven help my future patients ... but I'm not going to hang around Summerside and be teased about being on the shelf any longer. Well, let's tackle this pile of greasy plates and look as if we liked it.”

”I do like it ... I've always liked washing dishes. It's fun to make dirty things clean and shining again.”

”Oh, you ought to be in a museum," snapped Nora.

By moonrise everything was ready for the shore dance. The boys had a huge bonfire of driftwood ablaze on the point, and the waters of the harbor were creaming and shimmering in the moonlight. Anne was expecting to enjoy herself hugely, but a glimpse of Nora's face, as the latter went down the steps carrying a basket of sandwiches, gave her pause.

”She's so unhappy. If there was anything I could do!”

An idea popped into Anne's head. She had always been a prey to impulse. Darting into the kitchen, she snatched up a little hand- lamp alight there, sped up the back stairs and up another flight to the attic. She set the light in the dormer-window that looked out across the harbor. The trees hid it from the dancers.

”He may see it and come. I suppose Nora will be furious with me, but that won't matter if he only comes. And now to wrap up a bit of wedding-cake for Rebecca Dew.”

Jim Wilcox did not come. Anne gave up looking for him after a while and forgot him in the merriment of the evening. Nora had disappeared and Aunt Mouser had for a wonder gone to bed. It was eleven o'clock when the revelry ceased and the tired moonlighters yawned their way upstairs. Anne was so sleepy, she never thought of the light in the attic. But at two o'clock Aunt Mouser crept into the room and flashed a candle in the girls' faces.

”Goodness, what's the matter?" gasped Dot Fraser, sitting up in bed.

”S-s-s-sh," warned Aunt Mouser, her eyes nearly popping out of her head, "I think there's some one in the house ... I KNOW there is.

What is that noise?”

”Sounds like a cat mewing or a dog barking," giggled Dot.

”Nothing of the sort," said Aunt Mouser severely. "I know there's a dog barking in the barn, but that is not what wakened me. It was a bump ... a loud, distinct bump.”

”'From ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us,'" murmured Anne.

”Miss Shirley, this ain't any laughing-matter. There's burglars in this house. I'm going to call Samuel.”

Aunt Mouser disappeared and the girls looked at each other.

”Do you suppose ... all the wedding-presents are down in the library ..." said Anne.

”I'm going to get up, anyhow," said Mamie. "Anne, did you ever see anything like Aunt Mouser's face when she held the candle low and the shadows fell upward ... and all those wisps of hair hanging about it? Talk of the Witch of Endor!”

Four girls in kimonos slipped out into the hall. Aunt Mouser was coming along it, followed by Dr. Nelson in dressing-gown and slippers. Mrs. Nelson, who couldn't find her kimono, was sticking a terrified face out of her door.

”Oh, Samuel ... don't take any risks ... if it's burglars they may shoot....”

”Nonsense! I don't believe there's anything," said the Doctor.

”I tell you I heard a bump," quavered Aunt Mouser.

A couple of boys joined the party. They crept cautiously down the stairs with the Doctor at the head and Aunt Mouser, candle in one hand and poker in the other, bringing up the rear.

There were undoubtedly noises in the library. The Doctor opened the door and walked in.

Barnabas, who had contrived to be overlooked in the library when Saul had been taken to the barn, was sitting on the back of the chesterfield, blinking amused eyes. Nora and a young man were standing in the middle of the room, which was dimly lighted by another flickering candle. The young man had his arms around Nora and was holding a large white handkerchief to her face.

”He's chloroforming her!" shrieked Aunt Mouser, letting the poker fall with a tremendous crash.

The young man turned, dropped the handkerchief and looked foolish.

Yet he was a rather nice-looking young man, with crinkly russet eyes and crinkly red-brown hair, not to mention a chin that gave the world assurance of a chin.

Nora snatched the handkerchief up and applied it to her face.

”Jim Wilcox, what does this mean?" said the Doctor, with exceeding sternness.

”I don't know what it means," said Jim Wilcox rather sulkily.

"All I know is Nora signaled for me. I didn't see the light till I got home at one from a Masonic banquet in Summerside. And I sailed right over.”

”I didn't signal for you," stormed Nora. "For pity's sake don't look like that, Father. I wasn't asleep ... I was sitting at my window ... I hadn't undressed ... and I saw a man coming up from the shore. When he got near the house I knew it was Jim, so I ran down. And I ... I ran into the library door and made my nose bleed. He's just been trying to stop it.”

”I jumped in at the window and knocked over that bench....”

”I told you I heard a bump," said Aunt Mouser.

”... and now Nora says she didn't signal for me, so I'll just relieve you of my unwelcome presence, with apologies to all concerned.”

”It's really too bad to have disturbed your night's rest and brought you all the way over the bay on a wild-goose chase," said Nora as icily as possible, consistent with hunting for a bloodless spot on Jim's handkerchief.

”Wild-GOOSE chase is right," said the Doctor.

”You'd better try a door-key down your back," said Aunt Mouser.

”It was I who put the light in the window," said Anne shamefacedly,

”and then I forgot ...”

”You dared!" cried Nora, "I'll never forgive you ...”

”Have you all gone crazy?" said the Doctor irritably. "What's all this fuss about, anyhow? For heaven's sake put that window down, Jim ... there's a wind blowing in fit to chill you to the bone.

Nora, hang your head back and your nose will be all right.”

Nora was shedding tears of rage and shame. Mingled with the blood on her face they made her a fearsome sight. Jim Wilcox looked as if he wished the floor would open and gently drop him in the cellar.

”Well," said Aunt Mouser belligerently, "all you can do now is marry her, Jim Wilcox. She'll never get a husband if it gets round that she was found here with you at two o'clock at night.”

”Marry her!" cried Jim in exasperation. "What have I wanted all my life but to marry her ... never wanted anything else!”

”Then why didn't you say so long ago?" demanded Nora, whirling about to face him.

”Say so? You've snubbed and frozen and jeered at me for years.

You've gone out of your way times without number to show me how you despised me. I didn't think it was the least use to ask you. And last January you said ...”

”You goaded me into saying it ...”

”I goaded you! I like that! You picked a quarrel with me just to get rid of me....”

”I didn't ... I ...”

”And yet I was fool enough to tear over here in the dead of night because I thought you'd put our old signal in the window and wanted me! Ask you to marry me! Well, I'll ask you now and have done with it and you can have the fun of turning me down before all this gang. Nora Edith Nelson, will you marry me?”

”Oh, won't I ... won't I!" cried Nora so shamelessly that even Barnabas blushed for her.

Jim gave her one incredulous look ... then sprang at her.

Perhaps her nose had stopped bleeding ... perhaps it hadn't.

It didn't matter.

”I think you've all forgotten that this is the Sabbath morn," said Aunt Mouser, who had just remembered it herself. "I could do with a cup of tea if any one would make it. I ain't used to demonstrations like this. All I hope is poor Nora has really landed him at last. At least, she has witnesses.”

They went to the kitchen and Mrs. Nelson came down and made tea for them ... all except Jim and Nora, who remained closeted in the library with Barnabas for chaperon. Anne did not see Nora until the morning ... such a different Nora, ten years younger, flushed with happiness.

”I owe this to you, Anne. If you hadn't set the light ... though just for two and a half minutes last night I could have chewed your ears off!”

”And to think I slept through it all," moaned Tommy Nelson heart- brokenly.

But the last word was with Aunt Mouser.

”Well, all I hope is it won't be a case of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.”

17

(Extract from letter to Gilbert.)

”School closed today. Two months of Green Gables and dew-wet, spicy ferns ankle-deep along the brook and lazy, dappling shadows in Lover's Lane and wild strawberries in Mr. Bell's pasture and the dark loveliness of firs in the Haunted Wood! My very soul has wings.

”Jen Pringle brought me a bouquet of lilies of the valley and wished me a happy vacation. She's coming down to spend a week-end with me some time. Talk of miracles!

”But little Elizabeth is heart-broken. I wanted her for a visit, too, but Mrs. Campbell did not 'deem it advisable.' Luckily, I hadn't said anything to Elizabeth about it, so she was spared that disappointment.

”'I believe I'll be Lizzie all the time you're away, Miss Shirley,' she told me. 'I'll FEEL like Lizzie anyway.'

”'But think of the fun we'll have when I come back,' I said. 'Of course you won't be Lizzie. There's no such person as Lizzie in you. And I'll write you every week, little Elizabeth.'

”'Oh, Miss Shirley, will you! I've never had a letter in my life.

Won't it be fun! And I'll write you if they'll let me have a stamp. If they don't, you'll know I'm thinking of you just the same. I've called the chipmunk in the back yard after you ... Shirley. You don't mind, do you? I thought at first of calling it Anne Shirley ... but then I thought that mightn't be respectful ... and, anyway, Anne doesn't sound chipmunky. Besides, it might be a gentleman chipmunk. Chipmunks are such darling things, aren't they? But the Woman says they eat the rosebush roots.'

”'She would!' I said.

”I asked Katherine Brooke where she was going to spend the summer and she briefly answered, 'Here. Where did you suppose?'

”I felt as if I ought to ask her to Green Gables, but I just couldn't. Of course I don't suppose she'd have come, anyway. And she's such a kill-joy. She'd spoil everything. But when I think of her alone in that cheap boarding-house all summer, my conscience gives me unpleasant jabs.

”Dusty Miller brought in a live snake the other day and dropped it on the floor of the kitchen. If Rebecca Dew could have turned pale she would have. 'This IS really the last straw!' she said. But Rebecca Dew is just a little peevish these days because she has to spend all her spare time picking big gray-green beetles off the rose trees and dropping them in a can of kerosene. She thinks there are entirely too many insects in the world.

”'It's just going to be eaten up by them some day,' she predicts mournfully.

”Nora Nelson is to be married to Jim Wilcox in September. Very quietly ... no fuss, no guests, no bridesmaids. Nora told me that was the only way to escape Aunt Mouser, and she will NOT have Aunt Mouser to see her married. I'm to be present, however, sort of unofficially. Nora says Jim would never have come back if I hadn't set that light in the window. He was going to sell his store and go west. Well, when I think of all the matches I'm supposed to have made ... ”Sally says they'll fight most of their time but that they'll be happier fighting with each other than agreeing with anybody else.

But I don't think they'll fight ... much. I think it is just misunderstanding that makes most of the trouble in the world. You and I for so long, now ...

”Good night, belovedest. Your sleep will be sweet if there is any influence in the wishes of

”YOUR OWN.

”P.S. The above sentence is quoted verbatim from a letter of Aunt Chatty's grandmother.”