Anne of Windy Poplars

1

”Windy Poplars,

”Spook's Lane,

”September 14th.

”I can hardly reconcile myself to the fact that our beautiful two months are over. They WERE beautiful, weren't they, dearest? And now it will be only two years before ...

(Several paragraphs omitted.)

”But there has been a good deal of pleasure in coming back to Windy Poplars ... to my own private tower and my own special chair and my own lofty bed ... and even Dusty Miller basking on the kitchen window-sill.

”The widows were glad to see me and Rebecca Dew said frankly, 'It's good to have you back.' Little Elizabeth felt the same way. We had a rapturous meeting at the green gate.

”'I was a little afraid you might have got into Tomorrow before me,' said little Elizabeth.

”'Isn't this a lovely evening?' I said.

”'Where you are it's always a lovely evening, Miss Shirley,' said little Elizabeth.

”Talk of compliments!

”'How have you put in the summer, darling?' I asked.

”'Thinking,' said little Elizabeth softly, 'of all the lovely things that will happen in Tomorrow.'

”Then we went up to the tower room and read a story about elephants.

Little Elizabeth is very much interested in elephants at present.

”'There is something bewitching about the very name of elephant, isn't there?' she said gravely, holding her chin in her small hands after a fashion she has. 'I expect to meet lots of elephants in Tomorrow.'

”We put an elephant park in our map of fairyland. It is no use looking superior and disdainful, my Gilbert, as I know you will be looking when you read this. Not a bit of use. The world always WILL have fairies. It can't get along without them. And somebody has to supply them.

”It's rather nice to be back in school, too. Katherine Brooke isn't any more companionable but my pupils seemed glad to see me and Jen Pringle wants me to help her make the tin halos for the angels' heads in a Sunday-school concert.

”I think the course of study this year will be much more interesting than last year. Canadian History has been added to the curriculum.

I have to give a little 'lecturette' tomorrow on the War of 1812.

It seems so strange to read over the stories of those old wars ... things that can never happen again. I don't suppose any of us will ever have more than an academic interest in 'battles long ago.' It's impossible to think of Canada ever being at war again. I am so thankful that phase of history is over.

”We are going to reorganize the Dramatic Club at once and canvass every family connected with the school for a subscription. Lewis Allen and I are going to take the Dawlish Road as our territory and canvass it next Saturday afternoon. Lewis will try to kill two birds with one stone, as he is competing for a prize offered by Country Homes for the best photograph of an attractive farmhouse.

The prize is twenty-five dollars and that will mean a badly needed new suit and overcoat for Lewis. He worked on a farm all summer and is doing housework and waiting on the table at his boarding- house again this year. He must hate it, but he never says a word about it. I do like Lewis ... he is so plucky and ambitious, with a charming grin in place of a smile. And he really isn't over-strong. I was afraid last year he would break down. But his summer on the farm seems to have built him up a bit. This is his last year in High and then he hopes to achieve a year at Queen's.

The widows are going to ask him to Sunday-night supper as often as possible this winter. Aunt Kate and I have had a conference on ways and means and I persuaded her to let me put up the extras. Of course we didn't try to persuade Rebecca Dew. I merely asked Aunt Kate in Rebecca's hearing if I could have Lewis Allen in on Sunday nights at least twice a month. Aunt Kate said coldly she was afraid they couldn't afford it, in addition to their usual lonely girl.

”Rebecca Dew uttered a cry of anguish.

”'This IS the last straw. Getting so poor we can't afford a bite now and again to a poor, hard-working, sober boy who is trying to get an education! You pay more for liver for That Cat and him ready to burst. Well, take a dollar off my wages and have him.'

”The gospel according to Rebecca was accepted. Lewis Allen is coming and neither Dusty Miller's liver nor Rebecca Dew's wages will be less. Dear Rebecca Dew!

”Aunt Chatty crept into my room last night to tell me she wanted to get a beaded cape but that Aunt Kate thought she was too old for it and her feelings had been hurt.

”'Do you think I am, Miss Shirley? I don't want to be undignified ... but I've always wanted a beaded cape so much. I always thought they were what you might call jaunty ... and now they're in again.”

”'Too old! Of course you're not too old, dearest,' I assured her.

'Nobody is ever too old to wear just what she wants to wear. You wouldn't WANT to wear it if you were too old.' 'I shall get it and defy Kate,' said Aunt Chatty, anything but defiantly. But I think she will ... and I think I know how to reconcile Aunt Kate.

”I'm alone in my tower. Outside there is a still, still night and the silence is velvety. Not even the poplars are stirring. I have just leaned out of my window and blown a kiss in the direction of somebody not a hundred miles away from Kingsport.”

2

The Dawlish Road was a meandering sort of road, and the afternoon was made for wanderers ... or so Anne and Lewis thought as they prowled along it, now and then pausing to enjoy a sudden sapphire glimpse of the strait through the trees or to snap a particularly lovely bit of scenery or picturesque little house in a leafy hollow. It was not, perhaps, quite so pleasant to call at the houses themselves and ask for subscriptions for the benefit of the Dramatic Club, but Anne and Lewis took turns doing the talking ... he taking on the women while Anne manipulated the men.

”Take the men if you're going in that dress and hat," Rebecca Dew had advised. "I've had a good bit of experience in canvassing in my day and it all went to show that the better-dressed and better- looking you are the more money ... or promise of it ... you'll get, if it's the men you have to tackle. But if it's the women, put on the oldest and ugliest things you have.”

”Isn't a road an interesting thing, Lewis?" said Anne dreamily.

"Not a straight road, but one with ends and kinks around which anything of beauty and surprise may be lurking. I've always loved bends in roads.”

”Where does this Dawlish Road go to?" asked Lewis practically ... though at the same moment he was reflecting that Miss Shirley's voice always made him think of spring.

”I might be horrid and school-teacherish, Lewis, and say that it doesn't go anywhere ... it stays right here. But I won't. As to where it goes or where it leads to ... who cares? To the end of the world and back, perhaps. Remember what Emerson says ... 'Oh, what have I to do with time?' That's our motto for today. I expect the universe will muddle on if we let it alone for a while.

Look at those cloud shadows ... and that tranquillity of green valleys ... and that house with an apple tree at each of its corners. Imagine it in spring. This is one of the days people FEEL alive and every wind of the world is a sister. I'm glad there are so many clumps of spice ferns along this road ... spice ferns with gossamer webs on them. It brings back the days when I pretended ... or believed ... I think I really did believe ... that gossamer webs were fairies' tablecloths.”

They found a wayside spring in a golden hollow and sat down on a moss that seemed made of tiny ferns, to drink from a cup that Lewis twisted out of birch bark.

”You never know the real joy of drinking till you're dry with thirst and find water," he said. "That summer I worked out west on the railroad they were building, I got lost on the prairie one hot day and wandered for hours. I thought I'd die of thirst and then I came to a settler's shack, and he had a little spring like this in a clump of willows. How I drank! I've understood the Bible and its love of good water better ever since.”

”We're going to get some water from another quarter," said Anne rather anxiously. "There's a shower coming up and ... Lewis, I love showers, but I've got on my best hat and my second-best dress.

And there isn't a house within half a mile.”

”There's an old deserted blacksmith's forge over there," said Lewis, "but we'll have to run for it.”

Run they did and from its shelter enjoyed the shower as they had enjoyed everything else on that carefree, gypsying afternoon. A veiled hush had fallen over the world. All the young breezes that had been whispering and rustling so importantly along the Dawlish Road had folded their wings and become motionless and soundless.

Not a leaf stirred, not a shadow flickered. The maple leaves at the bend of the road turned wrong side out until the trees looked as if they were turning pale from fear. A huge cool shadow seemed to engulf them like a green wave ... the cloud had reached them.

Then the rain, with a rush and sweep of wind. The shower pattered sharply down on the leaves, danced along the smoking red road and pelted the roof of the old forge right merrily.

”If this lasts ..." said Lewis.

But it didn't. As suddenly as it had come up, it was over and the sun was shining on the wet, glistening trees. Dazzling glimpses of blue sky appeared between the torn white clouds. Far away they could see a hill still dim with rain, but below them the cup of the valley seemed to brim over with peach-tinted mists. The woods around were pranked out with a sparkle and glitter as of springtime, and a bird began to sing in the big maple over the forge as if he were cheated into believing it really was springtime, so amazingly fresh and sweet did the world seem all at once.

”Let's explore this," said Anne, when they resumed their tramp, looking along a little side road running between old rail fences smothered in goldenrod.

”I don't think there's anybody living along that road," said Lewis doubtfully. "I think it's only a road running down to the harbor.”

”Never mind ... let's go along it. I've always had a weakness for side roads ... something off the beaten track, lost and green and lonely. Smell the wet grass, Lewis. Besides, I feel in my bones that there IS a house on it ... a certain kind of house ... a very snappable house.”

Anne's bones did not deceive her. Soon there was a house ... and a snappable house to boot. It was a quaint, old-fashioned one, low in the eaves, with square, small-paned windows. Big willows stretched patriarchal arms over it and an apparent wilderness of perennials and shrubs crowded all about it. It was weather-gray and shabby, but the big barns beyond it were snug and prosperous- looking, up-to-date in every respect. "I've always heard, Miss Shirley, that when a man's barns are better than his house, it's a sign that his income exceeds his expenditure," said Lewis, as they sauntered up the deep-rutted grassy lane.

”I should think it was a sign that he thought more of his horses than of his family," laughed Anne. "I'm not expecting a subscription to our club here, but that's the most likely house for a prize contest we've encountered yet. It's grayness won't matter in a photograph.”

”This lane doesn't look as if it were much traveled," said Lewis with a shrug. "Evidently the folks who live here aren't strongly sociable. I'm afraid we'll find they don't even know what a dramatic club is. Anyhow, I'm going to secure my picture before we rouse any of them from their lair.”

The house seemed deserted, but after the picture was taken they opened a little white gate, crossed the yard and knocked on a faded blue kitchen door, the front door evidently being like that of Windy Poplars, more for show than for use ... if a door literally hidden in Virginia creeper could be said to be for show.

They expected at least the civility which they had hitherto met in their calls, whether backed up with generosity or not. Consequently they were decidedly taken aback when the door was jerked open and on the threshold appeared, not the smiling farmer's wife or daughter they had expected to see, but a tall, broad-shouldered man of fifty, with grizzled hair and bushy eyebrows, who demanded unceremoniously,

”What do you want?”

”We have called, hoping to interest you in our High School Dramatic Club," began Anne, rather lamely. But she was spared further effort.

”Never heard of it. Don't want to hear about it. Nothing to do with it," was the uncompromising interruption, and the door was promptly shut in their faces.

”I believe we've been snubbed," said Anne as they walked away.

”Nice amiable gentleman, that," grinned Lewis. "I'm sorry for his wife, if he has one.”

”I don't think he can have, or she would civilize him a trifle,” said Anne, trying to recover her shattered poise. "I wish Rebecca Dew had the handling of him. But we've got his house, at least, and I've a premonition that it's going to win the prize. Bother!

I've just got a pebble in my shoe and I'm going to sit down on my gentleman's stone dyke, with or without his permission, and remove it.”

”Luckily it's out of sight of the house," said Lewis.

Anne had just retied her shoe-lace when they heard something pushing softly through the jungle of shrubbery on their right.

Then a small boy about eight years of age came into view and stood surveying them bashfully, with a big apple turnover clasped tightly in his chubby hands. He was a pretty child, with glossy brown curls, big trustful brown eyes and delicately modeled features.

There was an air of refinement about him, in spite of the fact that he was bare-headed and bare-legged, with only a faded blue cotton shirt and a pair of threadbare velvet knickerbockers between head and legs. But he looked like a small prince in disguise.

Just behind him was a big black Newfoundland dog whose head was almost on a level with the lad's shoulder.

Anne looked at him with a smile that always won children's hearts.

”Hello, sonny," said Lewis. "Who belongs to you?”

The boy came forward with an answering smile, holding out his turnover.

”This is for you to eat," he said shyly. "Dad made it for me, but I'd rather give it to you. I've lots to eat.”

Lewis, rather tactlessly, was on the point of refusing to take the little chap's snack, but Anne gave him a quick nudge. Taking the hint, he accepted it gravely and handed it to Anne, who, quite as gravely, broke it in two and gave half of it back to him. They knew they must eat it and they had painful doubts as to "Dad's” ability in the cooking line, but the first mouthful reassured them.

"Dad" might not be strong on courtesy but he could certainly make turnovers.

”This is delicious," said Anne. "What is your name, dear?”

”Teddy Armstrong," said the small benefactor. "But Dad always calls me Little Fellow. I'm all he has, you know. Dad is awful fond of me and I'm awful fond of Dad. I'm afraid you think my dad is impolite 'cause he shut that door so quick, but he doesn't mean to be. I heard you asking for something to eat." ("We didn't but it doesn't matter," thought Anne.)

”I was in the garden behind the hollyhocks, so I just thought I'd bring you my turnover 'cause I'm always so sorry for poor people who haven't plenty to eat. I have, always. My dad is a splendid cook. You ought to see the rice puddings he can make.”

”Does he put raisins in them?" asked Lewis with a twinkle.

”Lots and lots. There's nothing mean about my dad.”

”Haven't you any mother, darling?" asked Anne.

”No. My mother is dead. Mrs. Merrill told me once she'd gone to heaven, but my dad says there's no such place and I guess he ought to know. My dad is an awful wise man. He's read thousands of books. I mean to be just 'zackly like him when I grow up ... only I'll always give people things to eat when they want them. My dad isn't very fond of people, you know, but he's awful good to me.”

”Do you go to school?" asked Lewis.

”No. My dad teaches me at home. The trustees told him I'd have to go next year, though. I think I'd like to go to school and have some other boys to play with. 'Course I've got Carlo and Dad himself is splendid to play with when he has time. My dad is pretty busy, you know. He has to run the farm and keep the house clean, too. That's why he can't be bothered having people around, you see. When I get bigger I'll be able to help him lots and then he'll have more time to be polite to folks.”

”That turnover was just about right, Little Fellow," said Lewis, swallowing the last crumb.

The Little Fellow's eyes beamed.

”I'm so glad you liked it," he said.

”Would you like to have your picture taken?" said Anne, feeling that it would never do to offer this generous small soul money.

"If you would, Lewis will take it.”

”Oh, wouldn't I!" said the Little Fellow eagerly. "Carlo, too?”

”Certainly Carlo, too.”

Anne posed the two prettily before a background of shrubs, the little lad standing with his arm about his big, curly playmate's neck, both dog and boy seeming equally well pleased, and Lewis took the picture with his last remaining plate.

”If it comes out well I'll send you one by mail," he promised.

"How shall I address it?”

”Teddy Armstrong, care of Mr. James Armstrong, Glencove Road," said the Little Fellow. "Oh, won't it be fun to have something coming to me mineself through the post-office! I tell you I'll feel awful proud. I won't say a word to Dad about it so that it'll be a splendid surprise for him.”

”Well, look out for your parcel in two or three weeks," said Lewis, as they bade him good-by. But Anne suddenly stooped and kissed the little sunburned face. There was something about it that tugged at her heart. He was so sweet ... so gallant ... so motherless!

They looked back at him before a curve in the lane and saw him standing on the dyke, with his dog, waving his hand to them.

Of course Rebecca Dew knew all about the Armstrongs.

”James Armstrong has never got over his wife's death five years ago," she said. "He wasn't so bad before that ... agreeable enough, though a bit of a hermit. Kind of built that way. He was just wrapped up in his bit of a wife ... she was twenty years younger than he was. Her death was an awful shock to him I've heard ... just seemed to change his nature completely. He got sour and cranky. Wouldn't even get a housekeeper ... looked after his house and child himself. He kept bachelor's hall for years before he was married, so he ain't a bad hand at it.”

”But it's no life for the child," said Aunt Chatty. "His father never takes him to church or anywhere he'd see people.”

”He worships the boy, I've heard," said Aunt Kate.

”'Thou shalt have no other gods before me,'" quoted Rebecca Dew suddenly.

3

It was almost three weeks before Lewis found time to develop his pictures. He brought them up to Windy Poplars the first Sunday night he came to supper. Both the house and the Little Fellow came out splendidly. The Little Fellow smiled up from the picture "as real as life," said Rebecca Dew.

”Why, he looks like you, Lewis!" exclaimed Anne.

”He does that," agreed Rebecca Dew, squinting at it judicially.

"The minute I saw it, his face reminded me of somebody but I couldn't think who.”

”Why, the eyes ... the forehead ... the whole expression ... are yours, Lewis," said Anne.

”It's hard to believe I was ever such a good-looking little chap,”

shrugged Lewis. "I've got a picture of myself somewhere, taken when I was eight. I must hunt it out and compare it. You'd laugh to see it, Miss Shirley. I'm the most sober-eyed kid, with long curls and a lace collar, looking stiff as a ramrod. I suppose I had my head clamped in one of those three-clawed contraptions they used to use. If this picture really resembles me, it must be only a coincidence. The Little Fellow can't be any relation of mine. I haven't an relative on the Island ... now.”

”Where were you born?" asked Aunt Kate.

”N. B. Father and Mother died when I was ten and I came over here to live with a cousin of mother's ... I called her Aunt Ida. She died too, you know ... three years ago.”

”Jim Armstrong came from New Brunswick," said Rebecca Dew. "HE ain't a real islander ... wouldn't be such a crank if he was. We have our peculiarities but we're CIVILIZED.”

”I'm not sure that I want to discover a relation in the amiable Mr. Armstrong," grinned Lewis, attacking Aunt Chatty's cinnamon toast.

"However, I think when I get the photograph finished and mounted I'll take it out to Glencove Road myself and investigate a little.

He may be a distant cousin or something. I really know nothing about my mother's people, if she had any living. I've always been under the impression that she hadn't. Father hadn't, I know.”

”If you take the picture out in person, won't the Little Fellow be a bit disappointed over losing his thrill of getting something through the post-office?" said Anne.

”I'll make it up to him ... I'll send him something else by mail.”

The next Saturday afternoon Lewis came driving along Spook's Lane in an antiquated buggy behind a still more antiquated mare.

”I'm going out to Glencove to take little Teddy Armstrong his picture, Miss Shirley. If my dashing turn-out doesn't give you heart-failure I'd like to have you come, too. I don't THINK any of the wheels will fall off.”

”Where on earth did you pick up that relic, Lewis?" demanded Rebecca Dew.

”Don't poke fun at my gallant steed, Miss Dew. Have some respect for age. Mr. Bender lent me both mare and buggy on condition I'd do an errand for him along the Dawlish Road. I hadn't time to walk out to Glencove today and back.”

”Time!" said Rebecca Dew. "I could walk there and back myself faster than that animal.”

”And carry a bag of potatoes back for Mr. Bender? You wonderful woman!”

Rebecca Dew's red cheeks grew even redder.

”It ain't nice to make fun of your elders," she said rebukingly.

Then, by way of coals of fire ... "Could you do with a few doughnuts afore you start out?”

The white mare, however, developed surprising powers of locomotion when they were once more out in the open. Anne giggled to herself as they jogged along the road. What would Mrs. Gardiner or even Aunt Jamesina say if they could see her now? Well, she didn't care. It was a wonderful day for a drive through a land that was keeping its old lovely ritual of autumn, and Lewis was a good companion. Lewis would attain his ambitions. Nobody else of her acquaintance, she reflected, would dream of asking her to go driving in the Bender buggy behind the Bender mare. But it never occurred to Lewis that there was anything odd about it. What difference HOW you traveled as long as you got there? The calm rims of the upland hills were as blue, the roads as red, the maples as gorgeous, no matter what vehicle you rode in. Lewis was a philosopher and cared as little what people might say as he did when some of the High School pupils called him "Sissy" because he did housework for his board. Let them call! Some day the laugh would be on the other side. His pockets might be empty but his head wasn't. Meanwhile the afternoon was an idyl and they were going to see the Little Fellow again. They told Mr. Bender's brother-in-law about their errand when he put the bag of potatoes in the back of the buggy.

”Do you mean to say you've got a photo of little Teddy Armstrong?”

exclaimed Mr. Merrill.

”That I have and a good one." Lewis unwrapped it and held it proudly out. "I don't believe a professional photographer could have taken a better.”

Mr. Merrill slapped his leg resoundingly.

”Well, if that don't beat all! Why, little Teddy Armstrong is dead ...”

”Dead!" exclaimed Anne in horror. "Oh, Mr. Merrill ... no ... don't tell me ... that dear little boy ...”

”Sorry, miss, but it's a fact. And his father is just about wild and all the worse that he hasn't got any kind of a picture of him at all. And now you've got a good one. Well, well!”

”It ... it seems impossible," said Anne, her eyes full of tears.

She was seeing the slender little figure waving his farewell from the dyke.

”Sorry to say it's only too true. He died nearly three weeks ago.

Pneumonia. Suffered awful but he was just as brave and patient as any one could be, they say. I dunno what'll become of Jim Armstrong now. They say he's like a crazy man--just moping and muttering to himself all the time. 'If I only had a picture of my Little Fellow,' he keeps saying.”

”I'm sorry for that man," said Mrs. Merrill suddenly. She had not hitherto spoken, standing by her husband, a gaunt, square-built gray woman in wind-whipped calico and check apron. "He's well-to- do and I've always felt he looked down on us because we were poor.

But we have our boy ... and it don't never matter how poor you are as long as you've got something to love.”

Anne looked at Mrs. Merrill with a new respect. Mrs. Merrill was not beautiful, but as her sunken gray eyes met Anne's, something of spirit kinship was acknowledged between them. Anne had never seen Mrs. Merrill before and never saw her again, but she always remembered her as a woman who had attained to the ultimate secret of life. You were never poor as long as you had something to love.

The golden day was spoiled for Anne. Somehow, the Little Fellow had won her heart in their brief meeting. She and Lewis drove in silence down the Glencove Road and up the grassy lane. Carlo was lying on the stone before the blue door. He got up and came down over to them, as they descended from the buggy, licking Anne's hand and looking up at her with big wistful eyes as if asking for news of his little playmate. The door was open and in the dim room beyond they saw a man with his head bowed on the table.

At Anne's knock he started up and came to the door. She was shocked at the change in him. He was hollow-cheeked, haggard and unshaven, and his deep-set eyes flashed with a fitful fire.

She expected a repulse at first, but he seemed to recognize her, for he said listlessly,

”So you're back? The Little Fellow said you talked to him and kissed him. He liked you. I was sorry I'd been so churlish to you. What is it you want?”

”We want to show you something," said Anne gently.

”Will you come in and sit down?" he said drearily.

Without a word Lewis took the Little Fellow's picture from its wrappings and held it out to him. He snatched it up, gave it one amazed, hungry look, then dropped on his chair and burst into tears and sobs. Anne had never seen a man weep so before. She and Lewis stood in mute sympathy until he had regained his self-control.

”Oh, you don't know what this means to me," he said brokenly at last.

"I hadn't any picture of him. And I'm not like other folks ... I can't recall a face ... I can't see faces as most folks can in their mind. It's been awful since the Little Fellow died.... I couldn't even remember what he looked like. And now you've brought me this ... after I was so rude to you. Sit down ... sit down.

I wish I could express my thanks in some way. I guess you've saved my reason ... maybe my life. Oh, miss, isn't it like him? You'd think he was going to speak. My dear Little Fellow! How am I going to live without him? I've nothing to live for now. First his mother ... now him.”

”He was a dear little lad," said Anne tenderly.

”That he was. Little Teddy ... Theodore, his mother named him ... her 'gift of Gods' she said he was. And he was so patient and never complained. Once he smiled up in my face and said, 'Dad, I think you've been mistaken in one thing ... just one. I guess there is a heaven, isn't there? Isn't there, Dad?' I said to him, yes, there was.... God forgive me for ever trying to teach him anything else. He smiled again, contented like, and said, 'Well, Dad, I'm going there and Mother and God are there, so I'll be pretty well off. But I'm worried about you, Dad. You'll be so awful lonesome without me. But just do the best you can and be polite to folks and come to us by and by.' He made me promise I'd try, but when he was gone I couldn't stand the blankness of it.

I'd have gone mad if you hadn't brought me this. It won't be so hard now.”

He talked about his Little Fellow for some time, as if he found relief and pleasure in it. His reserve and gruffness seemed to have fallen from him like a garment. Finally Lewis produced the small faded photograph of himself and showed it to him.

”Have you ever seen anybody who looked like that, Mr. Armstrong?” asked Anne.

Mr. Armstrong peered at it in perplexity.

”It's awful like the Little Fellow," he said at last. "Whose might it be?”

”Mine," said Lewis, "when I was seven years old. It was because of the strange resemblance to Teddy that Miss Shirley made me bring it to show you. I thought it possible that you and I or the Little Fellow might be some distant relation. My name is Lewis Allen and my father was George Allen. I was born in New Brunswick.”

James Armstrong shook his head. Then he said, ”What was your mother's name?”

”Mary Gardiner.”

James Armstrong looked at him for a moment in silence.

”She was my half-sister," he said at last. "I hardly knew her ... never saw her but once. I was brought up in an uncle's family after my father's death. My mother married again and moved away.

She came to see me once and brought her little daughter. She died soon after and I never saw my half-sister again. When I came over to the Island to live, I lost all trace of her. You are my nephew and the Little Fellow's cousin.”

This was surprising news to a lad who had fancied himself alone in the world. Lewis and Anne spent the whole evening with Mr. Armstrong and found him to be a well-read and intelligent man.

Somehow, they both took a liking to him. His former inhospitable reception was quite forgotten and they saw only the real worth of the character and temperament below the unpromising shell that had hitherto concealed them.

”Of course the Little Fellow couldn't have loved his father so much if it hadn't been so," said Anne, as she and Lewis drove back to Windy Poplars through the sunset.

When Lewis Allen went the next week-end to see his uncle, the latter said to him,

”Lad, come and live with me. You are my nephew and I can do well for you ... what I'd have done for my Little Fellow if he'd lived. You're alone in the world and so am I. I need you. I'll grow hard and bitter again if I live here alone. I want you to help me keep my promise to the Little Fellow. His place is empty.

Come you and fill it.”

”Thank you, Uncle; I'll try," said Lewis, holding out his hand.

”And bring that teacher of yours here once in a while. I like that girl. The Little Fellow liked her. 'Dad,' he said to me, 'I didn't think I'd ever like anybody but you to kiss me, but I liked it when she did. There was something in her eyes, Dad.'“

4

”The old porch thermometer says it's zero and the new side-door one says it's ten above," remarked Anne, one frosty December night.

"So I don't know whether to take my muff or not.”

”Better go by the old thermometer," said Rebecca Dew cautiously.

"It's probably more used to our climate. Where are you going this cold night, anyway?”

”I'm going round to Temple Street to ask Katherine Brooke to spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables.”

”You'll spoil your holidays, then," said Rebecca Dew solemnly.

"She'd go about snubbing the angels, that one ... that is, if she ever condescended to enter heaven. And the worst of it is, she's proud of her bad manners ... thinks it shows her strength of mind no doubt!”

”My brain agrees with every word you say but my heart simply won't," said Anne. "I feel, in spite of everything, that Katherine Brooke is only a shy, unhappy girl under her disagreeable rind. I can never make any headway with her in Summerside, but if I can get her to Green Gables I believe it will thaw her out.”

”You won't get her. She won't go," predicted Rebecca Dew.

"Probably she'll take it as an insult to be asked ... think you're offering her charity. WE asked her here once to Christmas dinner ... the year afore you came ... you remember, Mrs. MacComber, the year we had two turkeys give us and didn't know how we was to get 'em et ... and all she said was, 'No, thank you.

If there's anything I hate, it's the word Christmas!'“

”But that is so dreadful ... hating Christmas! Something HAS to be done, Rebecca Dew. I'm going to ask her and I've a queer feeling in my thumbs that tells me she will come.”

”Somehow," said Rebecca Dew reluctantly, "when you say a thing is going to happen, a body believes it will. You haven't got a second sight, have you? Captain MacComber's mother had it. Useter give me the creeps.”

”I don't think I have anything that need give you creeps. It's only just ... I've had a feeling for some time that Katherine Brooke is almost crazy with loneliness under her bitter outside and that my invitation will come pat to the psychological moment, Rebecca Dew.”

”I am not a B.A.," said Rebecca with awful humility, "and I do not deny your right to use words I cannot always understand. Neither do I deny that you can wind people round your little finger. Look how you managed the Pringles. But I do say I pity you if you take that iceberg and nutmeg grater combined home with you for Christmas.”

Anne was by no means as confident as she pretended to be during her walk to Temple Street. Katherine Brooke had really been unbearable of late. Again and again Anne, rebuffed, had said, as grimly as Poe's raven, "Nevermore." Only yesterday Katherine had been positively insulting at a staff meeting. But in an unguarded moment Anne had seen something looking out of the older girl's eyes ... a passionate, half-frantic something like a caged creature mad with discontent. Anne spent the first half of the night trying to decide whether to invite Katherine Brooke to Green Gables or not. Finally she fell asleep with her mind irrevocably made up.

Katherine's landlady showed Anne into the parlor and shrugged a fat shoulder when she asked for Miss Brooke.

”I'll tell her you're here but I dunno if she'll come down. She's sulking. I told her at dinner tonight that Mrs. Rawlins says its scandalous the way she dresses, for a teacher in Summerside High, and she took it high and mighty as usual.”

”I don't think you should have told Miss Brooke that," said Anne reproachfully.

”But I thought she ought to know," said Mrs. Dennis somewhat waspishly.

”Did you also think she ought to know that the Inspector said she was one of the best teachers in the Maritimes?" asked Anne. "Or didn't you know it?”

”Oh, I heard it. But she's stuck-up enough now without making her any worse. Proud's no name for it ... though what she's got to be proud of, I dunno. Of course she was mad anyhow tonight because I'd said she couldn't have a dog. She's took a notion into her head she'd like to have a dog. Said she'd pay for his rations and see he was no bother. But what'd I do with him when she was in school? I put my foot down. 'I'm boarding no dogs,' sez I.”

”Oh, Mrs. Dennis, won't you let her have a dog? He wouldn't bother you ... much. You could keep him in the basement while she was in school. And a dog really is such a protection at night. I wish you would ... PLEASE.”

There was always something about Anne Shirley's eyes when she said

”please" that people found hard to resist. Mrs. Dennis, in spite of fat shoulders and a meddlesome tongue, was not unkind at heart.

Katherine Brooke simply got under her skin at times with her ungracious ways.

”I dunno why you should worry as to her having a dog or not. I didn't know you were such friends. She hasn't ANY friends. I never had such an unsociable boarder.”

”I think that is why she wants a dog, Mrs. Dennis. None of us can live without some kind of companionship.”

”Well, it's the first human thing I've noticed about her," said Mrs. Dennis. "I dunno's I have any awful objection to a dog, but she sort of vexed me with her sarcastic way of asking ... 'I s'pose you wouldn't consent if I asked you if I might have a dog, Mrs. Dennis,' she sez, haughty like. Set her up with it! 'You're s'posing right,' sez I, as haughty as herself. I don't like eating my words any more than most people, but you can tell her she can have a dog if she'll guarantee he won't misbehave in the parlor.”

Anne did not think the parlor could be much worse if the dog did misbehave. She eyed the dingy lace curtains and the hideous purple roses on the carpet with a shiver.

”I'm sorry for any one who has to spend Christmas in a boarding- house like this," she thought. "I don't wonder Katherine hates the word. I'd like to give this place a good airing ... it smells of a thousand meals. WHY does Katherine go on boarding here when she has a good salary?”

”She says you can come up," was the message Mrs. Dennis brought back, rather dubiously, for Miss Brooke had run true to form.

The narrow, steep stair was repellent. It didn't want you. Nobody would go up who didn't have to. The linoleum in the hall was worn to shreds. The little back hall-bedroom where Anne presently found herself was even more cheerless than the parlor. It was lighted by one glaring unshaded gas jet. There was an iron bed with a valley in the middle of it and a narrow, sparsely draped window looking out on a backyard garden where a large crop of tin cans flourished.

But beyond it was a marvelous sky and a row of lombardies standing out against long, purple, distant hills.

”Oh, Miss Brooke, look at that sunset," said Anne rapturously from the squeaky, cushionless rocker to which Katherine had ungraciously pointed her.

”I've seen a good many sunsets," said the latter coldly, without moving. ("Condescending to me with your sunsets!" she thought bitterly.)

”You haven't seen this one. No two sunsets are alike. Just sit down here and let us let it sink into our souls," SAID Anne.

THOUGHT Anne, "Do you EVER say anything pleasant?”

”Don't be ridiculous, please.”

The most insulting words in the world! With an added edge of insult in Katherine's contemptuous tones. Anne turned from her sunset and looked at Katherine, much more than half inclined to get up and walk out. But Katherine's eyes looked a trifle strange. HAD she been crying? Surely not ... you couldn't imagine Katherine Brooke crying.

”You don't make me feel very welcome," Anne said slowly.

”I can't pretend things. I haven't YOUR notable gift for doing the queen act ... saying exactly the right thing to every one.

You're NOT welcome. What sort of room is this to welcome any one to?”

Katherine made a scornful gesture at the faded walls, the shabby bare chairs and the wobbly dressing-table with its petticoat of limp muslin.

”It isn't a nice room, but why do you stay here if you don't like it?”

”Oh ... why ... Why? YOU wouldn't understand. It doesn't matter. I don't care what anybody thinks. What brought you here tonight? I don't suppose you came just to soak in the sunset.”

”I came to ask if you would spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables.”

("Now," thought Anne, "for another broadside of sarcasm! I do wish she'd sit down at least. She just stands there as if waiting for me to go.") But there was silence for a moment. Then Katherine said slowly,

”Why do you ask me? It isn't because you like me ... even you couldn't pretend THAT.”

”It's because I can't bear to think of any human being spending Christmas in a place like THIS," said Anne candidly.

The sarcasm came then.

”Oh, I see. A seasonable outburst of charity. I'm hardly a candidate for that YET, Miss Shirley.”

Anne got up. She was out of patience with this strange, aloof creature. She walked across the room and looked Katherine squarely in the eye. "Katherine Brooke, whether you know it or not, what YOU want is a good spanking.”

They gazed at each other for a moment.

”It must have relieved you to say that," said Katherine. But somehow the insulting tone had gone out of her voice. There was even a faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.

”It has," said Anne. "I've been wanting to tell you just that for some time. I didn't ask you to Green Gables out of charity ... you know that perfectly well. I told you my true reason. NOBODY ought to spend Christmas here ... the very idea is indecent.”

”You asked me to Green Gables just because you are sorry for me.”

”I AM sorry for you. Because you've shut out life ... and now life is shutting you out. Stop, it, Katherine. Open your doors to life ... and life will come in.”

”The Anne Shirley version of the old bromide, 'If you bring a smiling visage to the glass you meet a smile,'" said Katherine with a shrug.

”Like all bromides, that's absolutely true. Now, are you coming to Green Gables or are you not?”

”What would you say if I accepted ... to yourself, not to me?”

”I'd say you were showing the first faint glimmer of common sense I'd ever detected in you," retorted Anne.

Katherine laughed ... surprisingly. She walked across to the window, scowled at the fiery streak which was all that was left of the scorned sunset and then turned.

”Very well ... I'll go. Now you can go through the motions of telling me you're delighted and that we'll have a jolly time.”

”I AM delighted. But I don't know if you'll have a jolly time or not. That will depend a good deal on yourself, Miss Brooke.”

”Oh, I'll behave myself decently. You'll be surprised. You won't find me a very exhilarating guest, I suppose, but I promise you I won't eat with my knife or insult people when they tell me it's a fine day. I tell you frankly that the only reason I'm going is because even I can't stick the thought of spending the holidays here alone. Mrs. Dennis is going to spend Christmas week with her daughter in Charlottetown. It's a bore to think of getting my own meals. I'm a rotten cook. So much for the triumph of matter over mind. But will you give me your word of honor that you won't wish me a merry Christmas? I just don't want to be merry at Christmas.”

”I won't. But I can't answer for the twins.”

”I'm not going to ask you to sit down here ... you'd freeze ... but I see that there's a very fine moon in place of your sunset and I'll walk home with you and help you to admire it if you like.”

”I do like," said Anne, "but I want to impress on your mind that we have MUCH finer moons in Avonlea.”

”So she's going?" said Rebecca Dew as she filled Anne's hot-water bottle. "Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you'll never try to induce me to turn Mohammedan ... because you'd likely succeed. Where IS That Cat? Out frisking round Summerside and the weather at zero.”

”Not by the new thermometer. And Dusty Miller is curled up on the rocking-chair by my stove in the tower, snoring with happiness.”

”Ah well," said Rebecca Dew with a little shiver as she shut the kitchen door, "I wish every one in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight.”

5

Anne did not know that a wistful little Elizabeth was watching out of one of the mansard windows of The Evergreens as she drove away from Windy Poplars ... an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight around the corner of Spook's Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.

”Dear God," she whispered, "I know it isn't any use to ask You for a merry Christmas for me because Grandmother and The Woman couldn't be merry, but please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas and bring her back safe to me when it's over.

”Now," said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, "I've done all that I can.”

Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her ... she was going home ... home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god, as the train sped on.

Katherine was silent but did not seem ungracious.

”Don't expect me to talk," she had warned Anne curtly.

”I won't. I hope you don't think I'm one of those terrible people who make you feel that you HAVE to talk to them all the time.

We'll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I'm likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you're under no obligation to take any notice of what I'm saying.”

Davy met them at Bright River with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes ... and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne's week-ends home.

She always recalled her first drive home from Bright River with Matthew. That had been in spring and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, "Do you remember?”

The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great gulf, white and mystical under the moon but not yet ice-bound.

”There's just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly ... 'I'm HOME,'" said Anne. "It's the top of the next hill, where we'll see the lights of Green Gables. I'm just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it's good ... good ... good to be home again!”

At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back ... every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla's kitchen smelled as they opened the door. There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlor lamp on the supper-table and lighted it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm rosy becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows! How pretty Dora was growing! And Davy really seemed almost a man.

There was news to tell. Diana had a small daughter ... Josie Pye actually had a young man ... and Charlie Sloane was said to be engaged. It was all just as exciting as news of empire could have been. Mrs. Lynde's new patchwork quilt, just completed, containing five thousand pieces, was on display and received its meed of praise.

”When you come home, Anne," said Davy, "everything seems to come alive.”

”Ah, this is how life should be," purred Dora's kitten.

”I've always found it hard to resist the lure of a moonlight night," said Anne after supper. "How about a snow-shoe tramp, Miss Brooke? I think that I've heard that you snowshoe.”

”Yes ... it's the only thing I CAN do ... but I haven't done it for six years," said Katherine with a shrug.

Anne rooted out her snow-shoes from the garret and Davy shot over to Orchard Slope to borrow an old pair of Diana's for Katherine.

They went through Lover's Lane, full of lovely tree shadows, and across fields where little fir trees fringed the fences and through woods which were full of secrets they seemed always on the point of whispering to you but never did ... and through open glades that were like pools of silver.

They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so NEAR Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together ... ALMOST together but not quite.

When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh.

It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning ... a world where time was not ... which was young with immortal youth ... where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.

”It's been wonderful," said Katherine so obviously to herself that Anne made no response.

They went down the road and up the long Green Gables lane but just before they reached the yard gate, they both paused as by a common impulse and stood in silence, leaning against the old mossy fence and looked at the brooding, motherly old house seen dimly through its veil of trees. How beautiful Green Gables was on a winter night!

Below it the Lake of Shining Waters was locked in ice, patterned around its edges with tree shadows. Silence was everywhere, save for the staccato clip of a horse trotting over the bridge. Anne smiled to recall how often she had heard that sound as she lay in her gable room and pretended to herself that it was the gallop of fairy horses passing in the night.

Suddenly another sound broke the stillness.

”Katherine ... you're ... why, you're not crying!”

Somehow, it seemed impossible to think of Katherine crying. But she was. And her tears suddenly humanized her. Anne no longer felt afraid of her.

”Katherine ... dear Katherine ... what is the matter? Can I help?”

”Oh ... you can't understand!" gasped Katherine. "Things have always been made easy for YOU. You ... you seem to live in a little enchanted circle of beauty and romance. 'I wonder what delightful discovery I'll make today' ... that seems to be your attitude to life, Anne. As for me, I've forgotten how to live ... no, I never knew how. I'm ... I'm like a creature caught in a trap. I can never get out ... and it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the bars. And you ... you have more happiness than you know what to do with ... friends everywhere, a lover! Not that I want a lover ... I hate men ... but if I died tonight, not one living soul would miss me. How would you like to be absolutely friendless in the world?”

Katherine's voice broke in another sob.

”Katherine, you say you like frankness. I'm going to be frank.

If you are as friendless as you say, it is your own fault. I've wanted to be friends with you. But you've been all prickles and stings.”

”Oh, I know ... I know. How I hated you when you came first!

Flaunting your circlet of pearls ...”

”Katherine, I didn't 'flaunt' it!”

”Oh, I suppose not. That's just my natural hatefulness. But it seemed to flaunt itself ... not that I envied you your beau ... I've never wanted to be married ... I saw enough of that with father and mother ... but I hated your being over me when you were younger than I ... I was glad when the Pringles made trouble for you. You seemed to have everything I hadn't ... charm ... friendship ... youth. Youth! I never had anything but starved youth. You know nothing about it. You don't know ... you haven't the least idea what it is like not to be wanted by any one ... any one!”

”Oh, haven't I?" cried Anne.

In a few poignant sentences she sketched her childhood before coming to Green Gables.

”I wish I'd known that," said Katherine. "It would have made a difference. To me you seemed one of the favorites of fortune.

I've been eating my heart out with envy of you. You got the position I wanted ... oh, I know you're better qualified than I am, but there it was. You're pretty ... at least you make people believe you're pretty. MY earliest recollection is of some one saying, 'What an ugly child!' You come into a room delightfully ... oh, I remember how you came into school that first morning.

But I think the real reason I've hated you so is that you always seemed to have some secret delight ... as if every day of life was an adventure. In spite of my hatred there were times when I acknowledged to myself that you might just have come from some far- off star.”

”Really, Katherine, you take my breath with all these compliments.

But you don't hate me any longer, do you? We can be friends now.”

”I don't know ... I've never had a friend of any kind, much less one of anything like my own age. I don't belong anywhere ... never have belonged. I don't think I know how to BE a friend. No, I don't hate you any longer ... I don't know how I feel about you ... oh, I suppose it's your noted charm beginning to work on me.

I only know that I feel I'd like to tell you what my life has been like. I could never have told you if you hadn't told me about your life before you came to Green Gables. I want you to understand what has made me as I am. I don't know why I should want you to understand ... but I do.”

”Tell me, Katherine dear. I do want to understand you.”

”You DO know what it is like not to be wanted, I admit ... but not what it is like to know that your father and mother don't want you. Mine didn't. They hated me from the moment I was born ... and before ... and they hated each other. Yes, they did. They quarreled continually ... just mean, nagging, petty quarrels. My childhood was a nightmare. They died when I was seven and I went to live with Uncle Henry's family. THEY didn't want me either.

They all looked down on me because I was 'living on their charity.' I remember all the snubs I got ... every one. I can't remember a single kind word. I had to wear my cousins' castoff clothes. I remember one hat in particular ... it made me look like a mushroom. And they made fun of me whenever I put it on. One day I tore it off and threw it on the fire. I had to wear the most awful old tam to church all the rest of the winter. I never even had a dog ... and I wanted one so. I had some brains ... I longed so for a B.A. course ... but naturally I might just as well have yearned for the moon. However, Uncle Henry agreed to put me through Queen's if I would pay him back when I got a school. He paid my board in a miserable third-rate boarding-house where I had a room over the kitchen that was ice cold in winter and boiling hot in summer, and full of stale cooking smells in all seasons. And the clothes I had to wear to Queen's! But I got my license and I got the second room in Summerside High ... the only bit of luck I've ever had. Even since then I've been pinching and scrimping to pay Uncle Henry ... not only what he spent putting me through Queen's, but what my board through all the years I lived there cost him. I was determined I would not owe him one cent. That is why I've boarded with Mrs. Dennis and dressed shabbily. And I've just finished paying him. For the first time in my life I feel FREE.

But meanwhile I've developed the wrong way. I know I'm unsocial ... I know I can never think of the right thing to say. I know it's my own fault that I'm always neglected and overlooked at social functions. I know I've made being disagreeable into a fine art. I know I'm sarcastic. I know I'm regarded as a tyrant by my pupils. I know they hate me. Do you think it doesn't hurt me to know it? They always look afraid of me ... I hate people who look as if they were afraid of me. Oh, Anne ... hate's got to be a disease with me. I do want to be like other people ... and I never can now. THAT is what makes me so bitter.”

”Oh, but you can!" Anne put her arm about Katherine. "You can put hate out of your mind ... cure yourself of it. Life is only beginning for you now ... since at last you're quite free and independent. And you never know what may be around the next bend in the road.”

”I've heard you say that before ... I've laughed at your 'bend in the road.' But the trouble is there aren't any bends in my road.

I can see it stretching straight out before me to the sky-line ... endless monotony. Oh, does life ever FRIGHTEN you, Anne, with its BLANKNESS ... its swarms of cold, uninteresting people? No, of course it doesn't. YOU don't have to go on teaching all the rest of your life. And you seem to find EVERYBODY interesting, even that little round red being you call Rebecca Dew. The truth is, I hate teaching ... and there's nothing else I can do. A school-teacher is simply a slave of time. Oh, I know you like it ... I don't see how you can. Anne, I want to travel. It's the one thing I've always longed for. I remember the one and only picture that hung on the wall of my attic room at Uncle Henry's ... a faded old print that had been discarded from the other rooms with scorn. It was a picture of palms around a spring in the desert, with a string of camels marching away in the distance. It literally fascinated me. I've always wanted to go and find it ... I want to see the Southern Cross and the Taj Mahal and the pillars of Karnak. I want to KNOW ... not just BELIEVE ... that the world is round. And I can never do it on a teacher's salary. I'll just have to go on forever, prating of King Henry the Eighth's wives and the inexhaustible resources of the Dominion.”

Anne laughed. It was safe to laugh now, for the bitterness had gone out of Katherine's voice. It sounded merely rueful and impatient.

”Anyhow, we're going to be friends ... and we're going to have a jolly ten days here to begin our friendship. I've always wanted to be friends with you, Katherine ... spelled with a K! I've always felt that underneath all your prickles was something that would make you worth while as a friend.”

”So that is what you've really thought of me? I've often wondered.

Well, the leopard will have a go at changing its spots if it's at all possible. Perhaps it is. I can believe almost anything at this Green Gables of yours. It's the first place I've ever been in that felt like a HOME. I should like to be more like other people ... if it isn't too late. I'll even practice a sunny smile for that Gilbert of yours when he arrives tomorrow night. Of course I've forgotten how to talk to young men ... if I ever knew.

He'll just think me an old-maid gooseberry. I wonder if, when I go to bed tonight, I'll feel furious with myself for pulling off my mask and letting you see into my shivering soul like this.”

”No, you won't. You'll think, 'I'm glad she's found out I'm human.' We're going to snuggle down among the warm fluffy blankets, probably with two hot-water bottles, for likely Marilla and Mrs. Lynde will each put one in for us for fear the other has forgotten it. And you'll feel deliciously sleepy after this walk in the frosty moonshine ... and first thing you'll know, it will be morning and you'll feel as if you were the first person to discover that the sky is blue. And you'll grow learned in lore of plum puddings because you're going to help me make one for Tuesday ... a great big plummy one.”

Anne was amazed at Katherine's good looks when they went in. Her complexion was radiant after her long walk in the keen air and color made all the difference in the world to her.

”Why, Katherine would be handsome if she wore the right kind of hats and dresses," reflected Anne, trying to imagine Katherine with a certain dark, richly red velvet hat she had seen in a Summerside shop, on her black hair and pulled over her amber eyes. "I've simply got to see what can be done about it.”

6

Saturday and Monday were full of gay doings at Green Gables. The plum pudding was concocted and the Christmas tree brought home.

Katherine and Anne and Davy and Dora went to the woods for it ... a beautiful little fir to whose cutting down Anne was only reconciled by the fact that it was in a little clearing of Mr. Harrison's which was going to be stumped and plowed in the spring anyhow.

They wandered about, gathering creeping spruce and ground pine for wreaths ... even some ferns that kept green in a certain deep hollow of the woods all winter ... until day smiled back at night over white-bosomed hills and they came back to Green Gables in triumph ... to meet a tall young man with hazel eyes and the beginnings of a mustache which made him look so much older and maturer that Anne had one awful moment of wondering if it were really Gilbert or a stranger.

Katherine, with a little smile that tried to be sarcastic but couldn't quite succeed, left them in the parlor and played games with the twins in the kitchen all the evening. To her amazement she found she was enjoying it. And what fun it was to go down cellar with Davy and find that there were really such things as sweet apples still left in the world.

Katherine had never been in a country cellar before and had no idea what a delightful, spooky, shadowy place it could be by candle- light. Life already seemed WARMER. For the first time it came home to Katherine that life might be beautiful, even for her.

Davy made enough noise to wake the Seven Sleepers, at an unearthly hour Christmas morning, ringing an old cowbell up and down the stairs. Marilla was horrified at his doing such a thing when there was a guest in the house, but Katherine came down laughing.

Somehow, an odd camaraderie had sprung up between her and Davy.

She told Anne candidly that she had no use for the impeccable Dora but that Davy was somehow tarred with her own brush.

They opened the parlor and distributed the gifts before breakfast because the twins, even Dora, couldn't have eaten anything if they hadn't. Katherine, who had not expected anything except, perhaps, a duty gift from Anne, found herself getting presents from every one. A gay, crocheted afghan from Mrs. Lynde ... a sachet of orris root from Dora ... a paper-knife from Davy ... a basketful of tiny jars of jam and jelly from Marilla ... even a little bronze chessy cat for a paper-weight from Gilbert.

And, tied under the tree, curled up on a bit of warm and woolly blanket, a dear little brown-eyed puppy, with alert, silken ears and an ingratiating tail. A card tied to his neck bore the legend,

”From Anne, who dares, after all, to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

Katherine gathered his wriggling little body up in her arms and spoke shakily.

”Anne ... he's a darling! But Mrs. Dennis won't let me keep him.

I asked her if I might get a dog and she refused.”

”I've arranged it all with Mrs. Dennis. You'll find she won't object. And, anyway, Katherine, you're not going to be there long.

You MUST find a decent place to live, now that you've paid off what you thought were your obligations. Look at the lovely box of stationery Diana sent me. Isn't it fascinating to look at the blank pages and wonder what will be written on them?”

Mrs. Lynde was thankful it was a white Christmas ... there would be no fat graveyards when Christmas was white ... but to Katherine it seemed a purple and crimson and golden Christmas. And the week that followed was just as beautiful. Katherine had often wondered bitterly just what it would be like to be happy and now she found out. She bloomed out in the most astonishing way. Anne found herself enjoying their companionship.

”To think I was afraid she would spoil my Christmas holiday!" she reflected in amazement.

”To think," said Katherine to herself, "that I was on the verge of refusing to come here when Anne invited me!”

They went for long walks ... through Lover's Lane and the Haunted Wood, where the very silence seemed friendly ... over hills where the light snow whirled in a winter dance of goblins ... through old orchards full of violet shadows ... through the glory of sunset woods. There were no birds to chirp or sing, no brooks to gurgle, no squirrels to gossip. But the wind made occasional music that had in quality what it lacked in quantity.

”One can always find something lovely to look at or listen to,” said Anne.

They talked of "cabbages and kings," and hitched their wagons to stars, and came home with appetites that taxed even the Green Gables pantry. One day it stormed and they couldn't go out. The east wind was beating around the eaves and the gray gulf was roaring. But even a storm at Green Gables had charms of its own.

It was cozy to sit by the stove and dreamily watch the firelight flickering over the ceiling while you munched apples and candy.

How jolly supper was with the storm wailing outside!

One night Gilbert took them to see Diana and her new baby daughter.

”I never held a baby in my life before," said Katherine as they drove home. "For one thing, I didn't want to, and for another I'd have been afraid of it going to pieces in my grasp. You can't imagine how I felt ... so big and clumsy with that tiny, exquisite thing in my arms. I know Mrs. Wright thought I was going to drop it every minute. I could see her striving heroically to conceal her terror. But it did something to me ... the baby I mean ... I haven't decided just what.”

”Babies are such fascinating creatures," said Anne dreamily. "They are what I heard somebody at Redmond call 'terrific bundles of potentialities.' Think of it, Katherine ... Homer must have been a baby once ... a baby with dimples and great eyes full of light ... he couldn't have been blind then, of course.”

”What a pity his mother didn't know he was to be Homer," said Katherine.

”But I think I'm glad Judas' mother didn't know he was to be Judas," said Anne softly. "I hope she never did know.”

There was a concert in the hall one night, with a party at Abner Sloane's after it, and Anne persuaded Katherine to go to both.

”I want you to give us a reading for our program, Katherine. I've heard you read beautifully.”

”I used to recite ... I think I rather liked doing it. But the summer before last I recited at a shore concert which a party of summer resorters got up ... and I heard them laughing at me afterwards.”

”How do you know they were laughing at you?”

”They must have been. There wasn't anything else to laugh at.”

Anne hid a smile and persisted in asking for the reading.

”Give Genevra for an encore. I'm told you do that splendidly.

Mrs. Stephen Pringle told me she never slept a wink the night after she heard you give it.”

”No; I've never liked Genevra. It's in the reading, so I try occasionally to show the class how to read it. I really have no patience with Genevra. Why didn't she scream when she found herself locked in? When they were hunting everywhere for her, surely somebody would have heard her.”

Katherine finally promised the reading but was dubious about the party. "I'll go, of course. But nobody will ask me to dance and I'll feel sarcastic and prejudiced and ashamed. I'm always miserable at parties ... the few I've ever gone to. Nobody seems to think I can dance ... and you know I can fairly well, Anne. I picked it up at Uncle Henry's, because a poor bit of a maid they had wanted to learn, too, and she and I used to dance together in the kitchen at night to the music that went on in the parlor. I think I'd like it ... with the right kind of partner.”

”You won't be miserable at this party, Katherine. You won't be outside looking in. There's all the difference in the world, you know, between being inside looking out and outside looking in. You have such lovely hair, Katherine. Do you mind if I try a new way of doing it?”

Katherine shrugged.

”Oh, go ahead. I suppose my hair does look dreadful ... but I've no time to be always primping. I haven't a party dress. Will my green taffeta do?”

”It will have to do ... though green is the one color above all others that you should never wear, my Katherine. But you're going to wear a red, pin-tucked chiffon collar I've made for you. Yes, you ARE. You ought to have a red dress, Katherine.”

”I've always hated red. When I went to live with Uncle Henry, Aunt Gertrude always made me wear aprons of bright Turkey-red. The other children in school used to call out 'Fire,' when I came in with one of those aprons on. Anyway, I can't be bothered with clothes.”

”Heaven grant me patience! Clothes are VERY important," said Anne severely, as she braided and coiled. Then she looked at her work and saw that it was good. She put her arm about Katherine's shoulders and turned her to the mirror.

”Don't you truly think we are a pair of quite good-looking girls?” she laughed. "And isn't it really nice to think people will find some pleasure in looking at us? There are so many homely people who would actually look quite attractive if they took a little pains with themselves. Three Sundays ago in church ... you remember the day poor old Mr. Milvain preached and had such a terrible cold in his head that nobody could make out what he was saying? ... well, I passed the time making the people around me beautiful. I gave Mrs. Brent a new nose, I waved Mary Addison's hair and gave Jane Marden's a lemon rinse ... I dressed Emma Dill in blue instead of brown ... I dressed Charlotte Blair in stripes instead of checks ... I removed several moles ... and I shaved off Thomas Anderson's long, sandy Piccadilly weepers. You couldn't have known them when I got through with them. And, except perhaps for Mrs. Brent's nose, they could have done everything I did, themselves. Why, Katherine, your eyes are just the color of tea ... amber tea. Now, live up to your name this evening ... a brook should be sparkling ... limpid ... merry.”

”Everything I'm not.”

”Everything you've been this past week. So you CAN be it.”

”That's only the magic of Green Gables. When I go back to Summerside, twelve o'clock will have struck for Cinderella.”

”You'll take the magic back with you. Look at yourself ... looking for once as you ought to look all the time.”

Katherine gazed at her reflection in the mirror as if rather doubting her identity.

”I do look years younger," she admitted. "You were right ... clothes DO do things to you. Oh, I know I've been looking older than my age. I didn't care. Why should I? Nobody else cared.

And I'm not like you, Anne. Apparently you were born knowing how to live. And I don't know anything about it ... not even the A B C. I wonder if it's too late to learn. I've been sarcastic so long, I don't know if I can be anything else. Sarcasm seemed to me to be the only way I could make any impression on people. And it seems to me, too, that I've always been afraid when I was in the company of other people ... afraid of saying something stupid ... afraid of being laughed at.”

”Katherine Brooke, look at yourself in that mirror; carry that picture of yourself with you ... magnificent hair framing your face instead of trying to pull it backward ... eyes sparkling like dark stars ... a little flush of excitement on your cheeks ... and you won't feel afraid. Come, now. We're going to be late, but fortunately all the performers have what I heard Dora referring to as 'preserved' seats.”

Gilbert drove them to the hall. How like old times it was ... only Katherine was with her in place of Diana. Anne sighed. Diana had so many other interests now. No more running round to concerts and parties for her.

But what an evening it was! What silvery satin roads with a pale green sky in the west after a light snowfall! Orion was treading his stately march across the heavens, and hills and fields and woods lay around them in a pearly silence.

Katherine's reading captured her audience from the first line, and at the party she could not find dances for all her would-be partners. She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness.

Then home to Green Gables, warming their toes at the sitting-room fire by the light of two friendly candles on the mantel; and Mrs. Lynde tiptoeing into their room, late as it was, to ask them if they'd like another blanket and assure Katherine that her little dog was snug and warm in a basket behind the kitchen stove.

”I've got a new outlook on life," thought Katherine as she drifted off to slumber. "I didn't know there were people like this.”

”Come again," said Marilla when she left.

Marilla never said that to any one unless she meant it.

”Of course she's coming again," said Anne. "For weekends ... and for WEEKS in the summer. We'll build bonfires and hoe in the garden ... and pick apples and go for the cows ... and row on the pond and get lost in the woods. I want to show you Little Hester Gray's garden, Katherine, and Echo Lodge and Violet Vale when it's full of violets.”

7

”Windy Poplars,

”January 5th,

”The street where ghosts (should) walk.

”MY ESTEEMED FRIEND:

”That isn't anything Aunt Chatty's grandmother wrote. It's only something she would have written if she'd thought of it.

”I've made a New Year resolution to write sensible love-letters.

Do you suppose such a thing is possible?

”I have left dear Green Gables but I have returned to dear Windy Poplars. Rebecca Dew had a fire lighted in the tower room for me and a hot-water bottle in the bed.

”I'm so glad I like Windy Poplars. It would be dreadful to live in a place I didn't like ... that didn't seem friendly to me ... that didn't say, 'I'm glad you're back.' Windy Poplars does. It's a bit old-fashioned and a bit prim, but it likes me.

”And I was glad to see Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew again. I can't help seeing their funny sides but I love them well for all that.

”Rebecca Dew said such a nice thing to me yesterday.

”'Spook's Lane has been a different place since you came here, Miss Shirley.'

”I'm glad you liked Katherine, Gilbert. She was surprisingly nice to you. It's amazing to find how nice she can be when she tries.

And I think she is just as much amazed at it herself as any one else. She had no idea it would be so easy.

”It's going to make so much difference in school, having a Vice you can really work with. She is going to change her boarding-house, and I have already persuaded her to get that velvet hat and have not yet given up hope of persuading her to sing in the choir.

”Mr. Hamilton's dog came down yesterday and chivied Dusty Miller.

'This IS the last straw,' said Rebecca Dew. And with her red cheeks redder still, her chubby back shaking with anger, and in such a hurry that she put her hat on hindside before and never knew it, she toddled up the road and gave Mr. Hamilton quite a large piece of her mind. I can just see his foolish, amiable face while he was listening to her.

”'I do not like That Cat,' she told me, 'but he is OURS and no Hamilton dog is going to come here and give him impudence in his own back yard. "He only chased your cat in fun," said Jabez Hamilton. "The Hamilton ideas of fun are different from the MacComber ideas of fun or the MacLean ideas of fun or, if it comes to that, the Dew ideas of fun," I told him. "Tut, tut, you must have had cabbage for dinner, Miss Dew," said he. "No," I said,

”but I COULD have had. Mrs. Captain MacComber didn't sell all her cabbages last fall and leave her family without any because the price was so good. There are some people," sez I, "that can't hear anything because of the jingle in their pocket." And I left that to sink in. But what could you expect from a Hamilton? Low scum!'

”There is a crimson star hanging low over the white Storm King. I wish you were here to watch it with me. If you were, I really think it would be more than a moment of esteem and friendship.”

”January 12th.

”Little Elizabeth came over two nights ago to find out if I could tell her what peculiar kind of terrible animals Papal bulls were, and to tell me tearfully that her teacher had asked her to sing at a concert the public school is getting up but that Mrs. Campbell put her foot down and said 'no' most decidedly. When Elizabeth attempted to plead, Mrs. Campbell said,

”'Have the goodness not to talk back to me, Elizabeth, if you please.'

”Little Elizabeth wept a few bitter tears in the tower room that night and said she felt it would make her Lizzie forever. She could never be any of her other names again.

”'Last week I loved God, this week I don't,' she said defiantly.

”All her class were taking part in the program and she felt 'like a leopard.' I think the sweet thing meant she felt like a leper and that was sufficiently dreadful. Darling Elizabeth must not feel like a leper.

”So I manufactured an errand to The Evergreens next evening. The Woman ... who might really have lived before the flood, she looks so ancient ... gazed at me coldly out of great gray, expressionless eyes, showed me grimly into the drawing-room and went to tell Mrs. Campbell that I had asked for her.

”I don't think there has been any sunshine in that drawing-room since the house was built. There was a piano, but I'm sure it could never have been played on. Stiff chairs, covered with silk brocade, stood against the wall ... ALL the furniture stood against the wall except a central marble-topped table, and none of it seemed to be acquainted with the rest.

”Mrs. Campbell came in. I had never seen her before. She has a fine, sculptured old face that might have been a man's, with black eyes and black bushy brows under frosty hair. She has not quite eschewed ALL vain adornment of the body, for she wore large black onyx earrings that reached to her shoulders. She was painfully polite to me and I was painlessly polite to her. We sat and exchanged civilities about the weather for a few moments ... both, as Tacitus remarked a few thousand years ago, 'with countenances adjusted to the occasion.' I told her, truthfully, that I had come to see if she would lend me the Rev. James Wallace Campbell's Memoirs for a short time, because I understood there was a good deal about the early history of Prince County in them which I wished to make use of in school.

”Mrs. Campbell thawed quite markedly and summoning Elizabeth, told her to go up to her room and bring down the Memoirs. Elizabeth's face showed signs of tears and Mrs. Campbell condescended to explain that it was because little Elizabeth's teacher had sent another note begging that she be allowed to sing at the concert, and that she, Mrs. Campbell, had written a very stinging reply which little Elizabeth would have to carry to her teacher the next morning.

”'I do not approve of children of Elizabeth's age singing in public,' said Mrs. Campbell. 'It tends to make them bold and forward.'

”As if anything could make little Elizabeth bold and forward!

”'I think perhaps you are wise, Mrs. Campbell,' I remarked in my most patronizing tone. 'In any event Mabel Phillips is going to sing, and I am told that her voice is really so wonderful that she will make all the others seem as nothing. No doubt it is MUCH better that Elizabeth should not appear in competition with her.'

”Mrs. Campbell's face was a study. She may be Campbell outside but she is Pringle at the core. She said nothing, however, and I knew the psychological moment for stopping. I thanked her for the Memoirs and came away.

”The next evening when little Elizabeth came to the garden gate for her milk, her pale, flower-like face was literally a-star. She told me that Mrs. Campbell had told her she might sing after all, if she were careful not to let herself get puffed up about it.

”You see, Rebecca Dew had told me that the Phillips and the Campbell clans have always been rivals in the matter of good voices!

”I gave Elizabeth a bit of a picture for Christmas to hang above her bed ... just a light-dappled woodland path leading up a hill to a quaint little house among some trees. Little Elizabeth says she is not so frightened now to go to sleep in the dark, because as soon as she gets into bed she pretends that she is walking up the path to the house and that she goes inside and it is all lighted and her father is there.

”Poor darling! I can't help detesting that father of hers!”

”January 19th.

”There was a dance at Carry Pringle's last night. Katherine was there in a dark red silk with the new side flounces and her hair had been done by a hairdresser. Would you believe it, people who had known her ever since she came to teach in Summerside actually asked one another who she was when she came into the room. But I think it was less the dress and hair that made the difference than some indefinable change in herself.

”Always before, when she was out with people, her attitude seemed to be, 'These people bore me. I expect I bore them and I hope I do.' But last night it was as if she had set lighted candles in all the windows of her house of life.

”I've had a hard time winning Katherine's friendship. But nothing worth while is ever easy come by and I have always felt that her friendship would be worth while.

”Aunt Chatty has been in bed for two days with a feverish cold and thinks she may have the doctor tomorrow, in case she is taking pneumonia. So Rebecca Dew, her head tied up in a towel, has been cleaning the house madly all day to get it in perfect order before the doctor's possible visit. Now she is in the kitchen ironing Aunt Chatty's white cotton nighty with the crochet yoke, so that it will be ready for her to slip over her flannel one. It was spotlessly clean before, but Rebecca Dew thought it was not quite a good color from lying in the bureau drawer.”

”January 28th.

”January so far has been a month of cold gray days, with an occasional storm whirling across the harbor and filling Spook's Lane with drifts. But last night we had a silver thaw and today the sun shone. My maple grove was a place of unimaginable splendors. Even the commonplaces had been made lovely. Every bit of wire fencing was a wonder of crystal lace.

”Rebecca Dew has been poring this evening over one of my magazines containing an article on 'Types of Fair Women,' illustrated by photographs.

”'Wouldn't it be lovely, Miss Shirley, if some one could just wave a wand and make everybody beautiful?' she said wistfully. 'Just fancy my feelings, Miss Shirley, if I suddenly found myself beautiful! But then' ... with a sigh ... 'if we were all beauties who would do the work?'“

8

”I'm so tired," sighed Cousin Ernestine Bugle, dropping into her chair at the Windy Poplars supper-table. "I'm afraid sometimes to sit down for fear I'll never be able to git up again.”

Cousin Ernestine, a cousin three times removed of the late Captain MacComber, but still, as Aunt Kate used to reflect, much too close, had walked in from Lowvale that afternoon for a visit to Windy Poplars. It cannot be said that either of the widows had welcomed her very heartily, in spite of the sacred ties of family. Cousin Ernestine was not an exhilarating person, being one of those unfortunates who are constantly worrying not only about their own affairs but everybody else's as well and will not give themselves or others any rest at all. The very look of her, Rebecca Dew declared, made you feel that life was a vale of tears.

Certainly Cousin Ernestine was not beautiful and it was extremely doubtful if she ever had been. She had a dry, pinched little face, faded, pale blue eyes, several badly placed moles and a whining voice. She wore a rusty black dress and a decrepit neck-piece of Hudson seal which she would not remove even at the table, because she was afraid of draughts.

Rebecca Dew might have sat at the table with them had she wished, for the widows did not regard Cousin Ernestine as any particular

”company." But Rebecca always declared she couldn't "savor her victuals" in that old kill-joy's society. She preferred to "eat her morsel" in the kitchen, but that did not prevent her from saying her say as she waited on the table.

”Likely it's the spring getting into your bones," she remarked unsympathetically.

”Ah, I hope it's only that, Miss Dew. But I'm afraid I'm like poor Mrs. Oliver Gage. She et mushrooms last summer but there must-a been a toadstool among them, for she's never felt the same since.

”But you can't have been eating mushrooms as early as this," said Aunt Chatty.

”No, but I'm afraid I've et something else. Don't try to cheer me up, Charlotte. You mean well, but it ain't no use. I've been through too much. Are you sure there ain't a spider in that cream jug, Kate? I'm afraid I saw one when you poured my cup.”

”We never have spiders in OUR cream jugs," said Rebecca Dew ominously, and slammed the kitchen door.

”Mebbe it was only a shadder," said Cousin Ernestine meekly. "My eyes ain't what they were. I'm afraid I'll soon be blind. That reminds me ... I dropped in to see Martha MacKay this afternoon and she was feeling feverish and all out in some kind of a rash.

'Looks to me as though you had the measles,' I told her. 'Likely they'll leave you almost blind. Your family all have weak eyes.' I thought she ought to be prepared. Her mother isn't well either.

The doctor says it's indigestion, but I'm afraid it's a GROWTH.

'And if you have to have an operation and take chloroform,' I told her, 'I'm afraid you'll never come out of it. Remember you're a Hillis and the Hillises all had weak hearts. Your father died of heart-failure, you know.'“

”At eighty-seven!" said Rebecca Dew, whisking away a plate.

”And you know three score and ten is the Bible limit," said Aunt Chatty cheerfully.

Cousin Ernestine helped herself to a third teaspoonful of sugar and stirred her tea sadly.

”So King David said, Charlotte, but I'm afraid David wasn't a very nice man in some respects.”

Anne caught Aunt Chatty's eye and laughed before she could help herself.

Cousin Ernestine looked at her disapprovingly.

”I've heerd you was a great girl to laugh. Well, I hope it'll last, but I'm afraid it won't. I'm afraid you'll find out all too soon that life's a melancholy business. Ah well, I was young myself once.”

”Was you really?" inquired Rebecca Dew sarcastically, bringing in the muffins. "Seems to me you must always have been afraid to be young. It takes courage, I can tell you that, Miss Bugle.”

”Rebecca Dew has such an odd way of putting things," complained Cousin Ernestine. "Not that I mind her of course. And it's well to laugh when you can, Miss Shirley, but I'm afraid you're tempting Providence by being so happy. You're awful like our last minister's wife's aunt ... she was always laughing and she died of a parralattic stroke. The third one kills you. I'm afraid our new minister out at Lowvale is inclined to be frivolous. The minute I saw him I sez to Louisy, 'I'm afraid a man with legs like that must be addicted to dancing.' I s'pose he's give it up since he turned minister, but I'm afraid the strain will come out in his family.

He's got a young wife and they say she's scandalously in love with him. I can't seem to git over the thought of any one marrying a minister for love. I'm afraid it's awful irreverent. He preaches pretty fair sermons, but I'm afraid from what he said of Elijah the Tidbit last Sunday that he's far too liberal in his views of the Bible.”

”I see by the papers that Peter Ellis and Fanny Bugle were married last week," said Aunt Chatty.

”Ah, yes. I'm afraid that'll be a case of marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. They've only known each other three years.

I'm afraid Peter'll find out that fine feathers don't always make fine birds. I'm afraid Fanny's very shiftless. She irons her table napkins on the right side first and only. Not much like her sainted mother. Ah, SHE was a thorough woman if ever there was one. When she was in mourning she always wore black nightgowns. said she felt as bad in the night as in the day. I was down at Andy Bugle's, helping them with the cooking, and when I come downstairs on the wedding morning if there wasn't Fanny eating an egg for her breakfast ... and her gitting married that day. I don't s'pose you'll believe that ... I wouldn't if I hadn't a- seen it with my own eyes. My poor dead sister never et a thing for three days afore she was married. And after her husband died we was all afraid she was never going to eat again. There are times when I feel I can't understand the Bugles any longer. There was a time when you knew where you was with your own connection, but it ain't that way now.”

”Is it true that Jean Young is going to be married again?" asked Aunt Kate.

”I'm afraid it is. Of course Fred Young is supposed to be dead, but I'm dreadful afraid he'll turn up yet. You could never trust that man. She's going to marry Ira Roberts. I'm afraid he's only marrying her to make her happy. His Uncle Philip once wanted to marry me, but I sez to him, sez I, 'Bugle I was born and Bugle I will die. Marriage is a leap in the dark,' sez I, 'and I ain't going to be drug into it.' There's been an awful lot of weddings in Lowvale this winter. I'm afraid there'll be funerals all summer to make up for it. Annie Edwards and Chris Hunter were married last month. I'm afraid they won't be as fond of each other in a few years' time as they are now. I'm afraid she was just swept off her feet by his dashing ways. His Uncle Hiram was crazy ... he belieft he was a dog for years.”

”If he did his own barking nobody need have grudged him the fun of it," said Rebecca Dew, bringing in the pear preserves and the layer cake.

”I never heerd that he barked," said Cousin Ernestine. "He just gnawed bones and buried them when nobody was looking. His wife felt it.”

”Where is Mrs. Lily Hunter this winter?" asked Aunt Chatty.

”She's been spending it with her son in San Francisco and I'm awful afraid there'll be another earthquake afore she gits out of it. If she does, she'll likely try to smuggle and have trouble at the border. If it ain't one thing, it's another when you're traveling.

But folks seem to be crazy for it. My cousin Jim Bugle spent the winter in Florida. I'm afraid he's gitting rich and worldly. I said to him afore he went, sez I ... I remember it was the night afore the Colemans' dog died ... or was it? ... yes, it was ...

'Pride goeth afore destruction and a haughty spirit afore a fall,' sez I. His daughter is teaching over in the Bugle Road school and she can't make up her mind which of her beaus to take. 'There's one thing I can assure you of, Mary Annetta,' sez I, 'and that is you'll never git the one you love best. So you'd better take the one as loves you ... if you kin be sure he does.' I hope she'll make a better choice than Jessie Chipman did. I'm afraid SHE'S just going to marry Oscar Green because he was always round. 'Is THAT what you've picked out?' I sez to her. His brother died of galloping consumption. 'And don't be married in May,' sez I, 'for May's awful unlucky for a wedding.'“

”How encouraging you always are!" said Rebecca Dew, bringing in a plate of macaroons.

”Can you tell me," said Cousin Ernestine, ignoring Rebecca Dew and taking a second helping of pears, "if a calceolaria is a flower or a disease?”

”A flower," said Aunt Chatty.

Cousin Ernestine looked a little disappointed.

”Well, whatever it is, Sandy Bugle's widow's got it. I heerd her telling her sister in church last Sunday that she had a calceolaria at last. Your geraniums are dreadful scraggy, Charlotte. I'm afraid you don't fertilize them properly. Mrs. Sandy's gone out of mourning and poor Sandy only dead four years. Ah well, the dead are soon forgot nowadays. My sister wore crape for her husband twenty-five years.”

”Did you know your placket was open?" said Rebecca, setting a coconut pie before Aunt Kate.

”I haven't time to be always staring at my face in the glass," said Cousin Ernestine acidly. "What if my placket is open? I've got three petticoats on, haven't I? They tell me the girls nowadays only wear one. I'm afraid the world is gitting dreadful gay and giddy. I wonder if they ever think of the judgment day.”

”Do you s'pose they'll ask us at the judgment day how many petticoats we've got on?" asked Rebecca Dew, escaping to the kitchen before any one could register horror. Even Aunt Chatty thought Rebecca Dew really had gone a little too far.

”I s'pose you saw old Alec Crowdy's death last week in the paper,” sighed Cousin Ernestine. "His wife died two years ago, lit'rally harried into her grave, poor creetur. They say he's been awful lonely since she died, but I'm afraid that's too good to be true.

And I'm afraid they're not through with their troubles with him yet, even if he is buried. I hear he wouldn't make a will and I'm afraid there'll be awful ructions over the estate. They say Annabel Crowdy is going to marry a jack-of-all-trades. Her mother's first husband was one, so mebbe it's heredit'ry.

Annabel's had a hard life of it, but I'm afraid she'll find it's out of the frying-pan into the fire, even if it don't turn out he's got a wife already.”

”What is Jane Goldwin doing with herself this winter?" asked Aunt Kate. "She hasn't been in to town for a long time.”

”Ah, poor Jane! She's just pining away mysteriously. They don't know what's the matter with her, but I'm afraid it'll turn out to be an alibi. What is Rebecca Dew laughing like a hyenus out in the kitchen for? I'm afraid you'll have her on your hands yet.

There's an awful lot of weak minds among the Dews.”

”I see Thyra Cooper has a baby," said Aunt Chatty.

”Ah, yes, poor little soul. Only one, thank mercy. I was afraid it would be twins. Twins run so in the Coopers.”

”Thyra and Ned are such a nice young couple," said Aunt Kate, as if determined to salvage something from the wreck of the universe.

But Cousin Ernestine would not admit that there was any balm in Gilead much less in Lowvale.

”Ah, she was real thankful to git him at last. There was a time she was afraid he wouldn't come back from the west. I warned her.

'You may be sure he'll disappoint you,' I told her. 'He's always disappointed people. Every one expected him to die afore he was a year old, but you see he's alive yet.' When he bought the Holly place I warned her again. 'I'm afraid that well is full of typhoid,' I told her. 'The Holly hired man died of typhoid there five years ago.' They can't blame ME if anything happens. Joseph Holly has some misery in his back. He calls it lumbago, but I'm afraid it's the beginning of spinal meningitis.”

”Old Uncle Joseph Holly is one of the best men in the world," said Rebecca Dew, bringing in a replenished teapot.

”Ah, he's good," said Cousin Ernestine lugubriously. "Too good!

I'm afraid his sons will all go to the bad. You see it like that so often. Seems as if an average has to be struck. No, thank you, Kate, I won't have any more tea ... well, mebbe a macaroon. They don't lie heavy on the stomach, but I'm afraid I've et far too much. I must be taking French leave, for I'm afraid it'll be dark afore I git home. I don't want to git my feet wet; I'm so afraid of ammonia. I've had something traveling from my arm to my lower limbs all winter. Night after night I've laid awake with it.

Ah, nobody knows what I've gone through, but I ain't one of the complaining sort. I was determined I'd git up to see you once more, for I may not be here another spring. But you've both failed terrible, so you may go afore me yet. Ah well, it's best to go while there's some one of your own left to lay you out. Dear me, how the wind is gitting up! I'm afraid our barn roof will blow off if it comes to a gale. We've had so much wind this spring I'm afraid the climate is changing. Thank you, Miss Shirley ..." as Anne helped her into her coat ... "Be careful of yourself. You look awful washed out. I'm afraid people with red hair never have real strong constitutions.”

”I think my constitution is all right," smiled Anne, handing Cousin Ernestine an indescribable bit of millinery with a stringy ostrich feather dripping from its back. "I have a touch of sore throat tonight, Miss Bugle, that's all.”

”Ah!" Another of Cousin Ernestine's dark forebodings came to her.

"You want to watch a sore throat. The symptoms of diptheria and tonsillitis are exactly the same till the third day. But there's one consolation ... you'll be spared an awful lot of trouble if you die young.”

9

”Tower Room,

”Windy Poplars,

”April 20th.

”POOR DEAR GILBERT:

”'I said of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what doeth it?' I'm afraid I'll turn gray young ... I'm afraid I'll end up in the poorhouse ... I'm afraid none of my pupils will pass their finals ... Mr. Hamilton's dog barked at me Saturday night and I'm afraid I'll have hydrophobia ... I'm afraid my umbrella will turn inside out when I keep a tryst with Katherine tonight ... I'm afraid Katherine likes me so much now that she can't always like me as much ... I'm afraid my hair isn't auburn after all ... I'm afraid I'll have a mole on the end of my nose when I'm fifty ... I'm afraid my school is a fire-trap ... I'm afraid I'll find a mouse in my bed tonight ... I'm afraid you got engaged to me just because I was always around ... I'm afraid I'll soon be picking at the counterpane.

”No, dearest, I'm not crazy ... not yet. It's only that Cousin Ernestine Bugle is catching.

”I know now why Rebecca Dew has always called her 'Miss Much- afraid.' The poor soul has borrowed so much trouble, she must be hopelessly in debt to fate.

”There are so many Bugles in the world ... not many quite so far gone in Buglism as Cousin Ernestine, perhaps, but so many kill- joys, afraid to enjoy today because of what tomorrow will bring.

”Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant.

Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!

”Today has been a day dropped out of June into April. The snow is all gone and the fawn meadows and golden hills just sing of spring.

I know I heard Pan piping in the little green hollow in my maple bush and my Storm King was bannered with the airiest of purple hazes. We've had a great deal of rain lately and I've loved sitting in my tower in the still, wet hours of the spring twilights. But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night ... even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.

”Suppose, Gilbert, we were walking hand in hand down one of the long roads in Avonlea tonight!

”Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you. You don't think it's irreverent, do you? But then, you're not a minister.”

10

”I'm SO different," sighed Hazel.

It was really dreadful to be so different from other people ... and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star. Hazel would not have been one of the common herd for ANYTHING ... no matter what she suffered by reason of her differentness.

”Everybody is different," said Anne amusedly.

”You are smiling." Hazel clasped a pair of very white, very dimpled hands and gazed adoringly at Anne. She emphasized at least one syllable in every word she uttered. "You have such a fascinating smile ... such a HAUNTING smile. I knew the moment I first saw you that you would understand EVERYTHING. We are on the SAME PLANE.

Sometimes I think I must be PSYCHIC, Miss Shirley. I always know so INSTINCTIVELY the moment I meet any one whether I'm going to like them or not. I felt at once that you were sympathetic ... that you would UNDERSTAND. It's so sweet to be understood. Nobody understands me, Miss Shirley ... NOBODY. But when I saw you, some inner voice whispered to me, 'SHE will understand ... with her you can be your REAL SELF.' Oh, Miss Shirley, let's be REAL ... let's ALWAYS be real. Oh, Miss Shirley, do you love me the leastest, tiniest bit?”

”I think you're a dear," said Anne, laughing a little and ruffling Hazel's golden curls with her slender fingers. It was quite easy to be fond of Hazel.

Hazel had been pouring out her soul to Anne in the tower room, from which they could see a young moon hanging over the harbor and the twilight of a late May evening filling the crimson cups of the tulips below the windows.

”Don't let's have any light yet," Hazel had begged, and Anne had responded,

”No ... it's lovely here when the dark is your friend, isn't it?

When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy ... and it glowers in at you resentfully.”

”I can THINK things like that but I can never express them so beautifully," moaned Hazel in an anguish of rapture. "You talk in the language of the violets, Miss Shirley.”

Hazel couldn't have explained in the least what she meant by that, but it didn't matter. It sounded SO poetic.

The tower room was the only peaceful room in the house. Rebecca Dew had said that morning, with a hunted look, "We MUST get the parlor and spare-room papered before the Ladies' Aid meets here,” and had forthwith removed all the furniture from both to make way for a paper-hanger who then refused to come until the next day.

Windy Poplars was a wilderness of confusion, with one sole oasis in the tower room.

Hazel Marr had a notorious "crush" on Anne. The Marrs were new- comers in Summerside, having moved there from Charlottetown during the winter. Hazel was an "October blonde," as she liked to describe herself, with hair of golden bronze and brown eyes, and, so Rebecca Dew declared, had never been much good in the world since she found out she was pretty. But Hazel was popular, especially among the boys, who found her eyes and curls a quite irresistible combination.

Anne liked her. Earlier in the evening she had been tired and a trifle pessimistic, with the fag that comes with late afternoon in a schoolroom, but she felt rested now; whether as a result of the May breeze, sweet with apple blossom, blowing in at the window, or of Hazel's chatter, she could not have told. Perhaps both.

Somehow, to Anne, Hazel recalled her own early youth, with all its raptures and ideals and romantic visions.

Hazel caught Anne's hand and pressed her lips to it reverently.

”I HATE all the people you have loved before me, Miss Shirley. I hate all the other people you love NOW. I want to possess you EXCLUSIVELY.”

”Aren't you a bit unreasonable, honey? YOU love other people besides me. How about Terry, for example?”

”Oh, Miss Shirley! It's that I want to talk to you about. I can't endure it in silence any longer ... I CANNOT. I MUST talk to some one about it ... some one who UNDERSTANDS. I went out the night before last and walked round and round the pond all night ... well, nearly ... till twelve, anyhow. I've suffered everything ... EVERYTHING.”

Hazel looked as tragic as a round, pink-and-white face, long-lashed eyes and a halo of curls would let her.

”Why, Hazel dear, I thought you and Terry were so happy ... that everything was settled.”

Anne could not be blamed for thinking so. During the preceding three weeks, Hazel had raved to her about Terry Garland, for Hazel's attitude was, what was the use of having a beau if you couldn't talk to some one about him?

”EVERYBODY thinks that," retorted Hazel with great bitterness.

"Oh, Miss Shirley, life seems so full of perplexing problems. I feel sometimes as if I wanted to lie down somewhere ... ANYWHERE ... and fold my hands and never THINK again.”

”My dear girl, what has gone wrong?”

”Nothing ... and EVERYTHING. Oh, Miss Shirley, CAN I tell you all about it ... CAN I pour out my whole soul to you?”

”Of course, dear.”

”I have really no place to pour out my soul," said Hazel pathetically. "Except in my journal, of course. Will you let me show you my journal some day, Miss Shirley? It is a self- revelation. And yet I cannot write out what burns in my soul. It ... it STIFLES me!" Hazel clutched dramatically at her throat.

”Of course I'd like to see it if you want me to. But what is this trouble between you and Terry?”

”Oh, Terry!! Miss Shirley, will you believe me when I tell you that Terry seems like a STRANGER to me? A stranger! Some one I'd never seen before," added Hazel, so that there might be no mistake.

”But, Hazel ... I thought you loved him ... you said ...”

”Oh, I know. I THOUGHT I loved him, too. But now I know it was all a terrible mistake. Oh, Miss Shirley, you can't dream how DIFFICULT my life is ... how IMPOSSIBLE.”

”I know something about it," said Anne sympathetically, remembering Roy Gardiner.

”Oh, Miss Shirley, I'm sure I don't love him enough to marry him.

I realize that now ... now that it is too late. I was just moonlighted into thinking I loved him. If it hadn't been for the moon I'm sure I would have asked for time to think it over. But I was swept off my feet ... I can see that now. Oh, I'll run away ... I'll do something desperate!”

”But, Hazel dear, if you feel you've made a mistake, why not just tell him ...”

”Oh, Miss Shirley, I couldn't! It would kill him. He simply adores me. There isn't any way out of it really. And Terry's beginning to talk of getting married. Think of it ... a child like me ... I'm only eighteen. All the friends I've told about my engagement as a secret are congratulating me ... and it's such a farce. They think Terry is a great catch because he comes into ten thousand dollars when he is twenty-five. His grandmother left it to him. As if I cared about such a sordid thing as MONEY! Oh, Miss Shirley, WHY is it such a mercenary world ... WHY?”

”I suppose it is mercenary in some respects, but not in all, Hazel.

And if you feel like this about Terry ... we all make mistakes ... it's very hard to know our own minds sometimes....”

”Oh, isn't it? I KNEW you'd understand. I DID think I cared for him, Miss Shirley. The first time I saw him I just sat and gazed at him the whole evening. WAVES went over me when I met his eyes.

He was SO handsome ... though I thought even then that his hair was TOO curly and his eyelashes too white. THAT should have warned me. But I always put my soul into everything, you know ... I'm so intense. I felt little shivers of ecstasy whenever he came near me. And now I feel nothing ... NOTHING! Oh, I've grown old these past few weeks, Miss Shirley ... OLD! I've hardly eaten anything since I got engaged. Mother could tell you. I'm SURE I don't love him enough to marry him. Whatever else I may be in doubt about, I know THAT.”

”Then you shouldn't ...”

”Even that moonlight night he proposed to me, I was thinking of what dress I'd wear to Joan Pringle's fancy dress party. I thought it would be lovely to go as Queen of the May in pale green, with a sash of darker green and a cluster of pale pink roses in my hair.

And a May-pole decked with tiny roses and hung with pink and green ribbons. Wouldn't it have been fetching? And then Joan's uncle had to go and die and Joan couldn't have the party after all, so it all went for nothing. But the point is ... I really couldn't have loved him when my thoughts were wandering like that, could I?”

”I don't know ... our thoughts play us curious tricks some times.”

”I really don't think I ever want to get married at all, Miss Shirley. Do you happen to have an orangewood stick handy? Thanks.

My half-moons are getting ragged. I might as well do them while I'm talking. Isn't it just lovely to be exchanging confidences like this? It's so seldom one gets the opportunity ... the world intrudes itself so. Well, what was I talking of ... oh, yes, Terry. What am I to do, Miss Shirley? I want your advice. Oh, I feel like a trapped creature!”

”But, Hazel, it's so very simple ...”

”Oh, it isn't simple at all, Miss Shirley! It's dreadfully complicated. Mamma is so outrageously pleased, but Aunt Jean isn't. SHE doesn't like Terry, and everybody says she has such good judgment. I don't want to marry anybody. I'm ambitious ... I want a career. Sometimes I think I'd like to be a nun. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be the bride of heaven? I think the Catholic church is SO picturesque, don't you? But of course I'm not a Catholic ... and anyway, I suppose you could hardly call it a career. I've always felt I'd love to be a nurse. It's such a romantic profession, don't you think? Smoothing fevered brows and all that ... and some handsome millionaire patient falling in love with you and carrying you off to spend a honeymoon in a villa on the Riviera, facing the morning sun and the blue Mediterranean.

I've SEEN myself in it. Foolish dreams, perhaps, but, oh, so sweet. I CAN'T give them up for the prosaic reality of marrying Terry Garland and settling down in SUMMERSIDE!”

Hazel shivered at the very idea and scrutinized a half-moon critically.

”I suppose ..." began Anne.

”We haven't ANYTHING in common, you know, Miss Shirley. He doesn't care for poetry and romance, and they're my very LIFE. Sometimes I think I must be a reincarnation of Cleopatra ... or would it be Helen of Troy? ... one of those languorous, seductive creatures, anyhow. I have such WONDERFUL thoughts and feelings ... I don't know where I get them if that isn't the explanation. And Terry is so terribly matter-of-fact ... he can't be a reincarnation of anybody. What he said when I told him about Vera Fry's quill pen proves that, doesn't it?”

”But I never heard of Vera Fry's quill pen," said Anne patiently.

”Oh, haven't you? I thought I'd told you. I've told you so much.

Vera's fiance gave her a quill pen he'd made out of a feather he'd picked up that had fallen from a crow's wing. He said to her, 'Let your spirit soar to heaven with it whenever you use it, like the bird who once bore it.' Wasn't that just WONDERFUL? But Terry said the pen would wear out very soon, especially if Vera wrote as much as she talked, and anyway he didn't think crows ever soared to heaven. He just missed the meaning of the whole thing completely ... it's very essence.”

”What WAS its meaning?”

”Oh ... why ... why ... SOARING, you know ... getting away from the clods of earth. Did you notice Vera's ring? A sapphire.

I think sapphires are too dark for engagement rings. I'd rather have your dear, romantic little hoop of pearls. Terry wanted to give me my ring right away ... but I said not yet a while ... it would seem like a fetter ... so IRREVOCABLE, you know. I wouldn't have felt like that if I'd really loved him, would I?”

”No, I'm afraid not ...”

”It's been so WONDERFUL to tell somebody what I really feel like.

Oh, Miss Shirley, if I could only find myself free again ... free to seek the deeper meaning of life! Terry wouldn't understand what I meant if I said THAT to him. And I know he has a temper ... all the Garlands have. Oh, Miss Shirley ... if you would just talk to him ... tell him what I feel like ... he thinks you're wonderful ... he'd be guided by what you say.”

”Hazel, my dear little girl, how could I do that?”

”I don't see why not." Hazel finished the last new moon and laid the orangewood stick down tragically. "If you can't, there isn't any help ANYWHERE. But I can never, Never, NEVER marry Terry Garland.”

”If you don't love Terry, you ought to go to him and tell him so ... no matter how badly it will make him feel. Some day you'll meet some one you can really love, Hazel dear ... you won't have any doubts then ... you'll KNOW.”

”I shall never love ANYBODY again," said Hazel, stonily calm.

"Love brings only sorrow. Young as I am I have learned THAT. This would make a wonderful plot for one of your stories, wouldn't it, Miss Shirley? I must be going ... I'd no idea it was so late. I feel SO much better since I've confided in you ... 'touched your soul in shadowland,' as Shakespeare says.”

”I think it was Pauline Johnson," said Anne gently.

”Well, I knew it was somebody ... somebody who had LIVED. I think I shall sleep tonight, Miss Shirley. I've hardly slept since I found myself engaged to Terry, without the LEAST notion how it had all come about.”

Hazel fluffed out her hair and put on her hat, a hat with a rosy lining to its brim and rosy blossoms around it. She looked so distractingly pretty in it that Anne kissed her impulsively.

"You're the prettiest thing, darling," she said admiringly.

Hazel stood very still.

Then she lifted her eyes and stared clear through the ceiling of the tower room, clear through the attic above it, and sought the stars.

”I shall never, NEVER forget this WONDERFUL moment, Miss Shirley,” she murmured rapturously. "I feel that my beauty ... if I have any ... has been CONSECRATED. Oh, Miss Shirley, you don't know how really terrible it is to have a reputation for beauty and to be always afraid that when people meet you they will not think you as pretty as you were reported to be. It's TORTURE. Sometimes I just DIE of mortification because I fancy I can see they're disappointed.

Perhaps it's only my imagination ... I'm SO imaginative ... too much so for my own good, I fear. I IMAGINED I was in love with Terry, you see. Oh, Miss Shirley, CAN you smell the apple-blossom fragrance?”

Having a nose, Anne could.

”Isn't it just DIVINE? I hope heaven will be ALL flowers. One could be good if one lived in a lily, couldn't one?”

”I'm afraid it might be a little confining," said Anne perversely.

”Oh, Miss Shirley, don't ... DON'T be sarcastic with your little adorer. Sarcasm just SHRIVELS me up like a leaf.”

”I see she hasn't talked you quite to death," said Rebecca Dew, when Anne had come back after seeing Hazel to the end of Spook's Lane. "I don't see how you put up with her.”

”I like her, Rebecca, I really do. I was a dreadful little chatterbox when I was a child. I wonder if I sounded as silly to the people who had to listen to me as Hazel does sometimes.”

”I didn't know you when you was a child but I'm sure you didn't,” said Rebecca. "Because you would MEAN what you said no matter how you expressed it and Hazel Marr doesn't. She's nothing but skim milk pretending to be cream.”

”Oh, of course she dramatizes herself a bit as most girls do, but I think she means some of the things she says," said Anne, thinking of Terry. Perhaps it was because she had a rather poor opinion of the said Terry that she believed Hazel was quite in earnest in all she said about him. Anne thought Hazel was throwing herself away on Terry in spite of the ten thousand he was "coming into." Anne considered Terry a good-looking, rather weak youth who would fall in love with the first pretty girl who made eyes at him and would, with equal facility, fall in love with the next one if Number One turned him down or left him alone too long.

Anne had seen a good deal of Terry that spring, for Hazel had insisted on her playing gooseberry frequently; and she was destined to see more of him, for Hazel went to visit friends in Kingsport and during her absence Terry rather attached himself to Anne, taking her out for rides and "seeing her home" from places. They called each other "Anne" and "Terry," for they were about the same age, although Anne felt quite motherly towards him. Terry felt immensely flattered that "the clever Miss Shirley" seemed to like his companionship and he became so sentimental the night of May Connelly's party, in a moonlit garden, where the shadows of the acacias blew crazily about, that Anne amusedly reminded him of the absent Hazel.

”Oh, Hazel!" said Terry. "That child!”

”You're engaged to 'that child,' aren't you?" said Anne severely.

”Not really engaged ... nothing but some boy-and-girl nonsense.

I ... I guess I was just swept off my feet by the moonlight.”

Anne did a bit of rapid thinking. If Terry really cared so little for Hazel as this, the child was far better freed from him.

Perhaps this was a heaven-sent opportunity to extricate them both from the silly tangle they had got themselves into and from which neither of them, taking things with all the deadly seriousness of youth, knew how to escape.

”Of course," went on Terry, misinterpreting her silence. "I'm in a bit of a predicament, I'll own. I'm afraid Hazel has taken me a little bit too seriously, and I don't just know the best way to open her eyes to her mistake.”

Impulsive Anne assumed her most maternal look.

”Terry, you are a couple of children playing at being grown up.

Hazel doesn't really care anything more for you than you do for her. Apparently the moonlight affected both of you. SHE wants to be free but is afraid to tell you so for fear of hurting your feelings. She's just a bewildered, romantic girl and you're a boy in love with love, and some day you'll both have a good laugh at yourselves.”

("I think I've put that very nicely," thought Anne complacently.) Terry drew a long breath.

”You've taken a weight off my mind, Anne. Hazel's a sweet little thing, of course, I hated to think of hurting her, but I've realized my ... our ... mistake for some weeks. When one meets a WOMAN ... THE woman ... you're not going in yet, Anne? Is all this good moonlight to be wasted? You look like a white rose in the moonlight ... Anne....”

But Anne had flown.

11

Anne, correcting examination papers in the tower room one mid-June evening, paused to wipe her nose. She had wiped it so often that evening that it was rosy-red and rather painful. The truth was that Anne was the victim of a very severe and very unromantic cold in the head. It would not allow her to enjoy the soft green sky behind the hemlocks of The Evergreens, the silver-white moon hanging over the Storm King, the haunting perfume of the lilacs below her window or the frosty, blue-penciled irises in the vase on her table. It darkened all her past and overshadowed all her future.

”A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing," she told Dusty Miller, who was meditating on the window-sill. "But in two weeks from today I'll be in dear Green Gables instead of stewing here over examination papers full of howlers and wiping a worn-out nose.

Think of it, Dusty Miller.”

Apparently Dusty Miller thought of it. He may also have thought that the young lady who was hurrying along Spook's Lane and down the road and along the perennial path looked angry and disturbed and un-June-like. It was Hazel Marr, only a day back from Kingsport, and evidently a much disturbed Hazel Marr, who, a few minutes later, burst stormily into the tower room without waiting for a reply to her sharp knock.

”Why, Hazel dear ..." (KERSHOO!) ... "are you back from Kingsport already? I didn't expect you till next week.”

”No, I suppose you didn't," said Hazel sarcastically. "Yes, Miss Shirley, I AM back. And what do I find? That you have been doing your best to lure Terry away from me ... and all but succeeding.”

”Hazel!" (KERSHOO!)

”Oh, I know it all! You told Terry I didn't love him ... that I wanted to break our engagement ... our SACRED engagement!”

”Hazel ... child!" (KERSHOO!)

”Oh, yes, sneer at me ... sneer at everything. But don't try to deny it. You did it ... and you did it DELIBERATELY.”

”Of course, I did. You asked me to.”

”I ... asked ... you ... to!”

”Here, in this very room. You told me you didn't love him and could never marry him.”

”Oh, just a mood, I suppose. I never dreamed you'd take me seriously. I thought YOU would understand the artistic temperament.

You're ages older than I am, of course, but even YOU can't have forgotten the crazy ways girls talk ... feel. YOU who pretended to be my friend!”

”This must be a nightmare," thought poor Anne, wiping her nose.

"Sit down, Hazel ... do.”

”Sit down!" Hazel flew wildly up and down the room. "How can I sit down ... how can ANYBODY sit down when her life is in ruins all about her? Oh, if that is what being old does to you ... jealous of younger people's happiness and determined to wreck it ... I shall pray never to grow old.”

Anne's hand suddenly tingled to box Hazel's ears with a strange horrible primitive tingle of desire. She slew it so instantly that she would never believe afterwards that she had really felt it.

But she did think a little gentle chastisement was indicated.

”If you can't sit down and talk sensibly, Hazel, I wish you would go away." (A very violent KERSHOO.) "I have work to do." (Sniff ... sniff ... snuffle!)

”I am not going away till I have told you just what I think of you.

Oh, I know I've only myself to blame ... I should have known ... I DID know. I felt instinctively the first time I saw you that you were DANGEROUS. That red hair and those green eyes! But I never DREAMED you'd go so far as to make trouble between me and Terry. I thought you were a CHRISTIAN at least. I never HEARD of any one doing such a thing. Well, you've broken my heart, if that is any satisfaction to you.”

”You little goose ...”

”I won't talk to you! Oh, Terry and I were so happy before you spoiled everything. I was so happy ... the first girl of my set to be engaged. I even had my wedding all planned out ... four bridesmaids in lovely pale blue silk dresses with black velvet ribbon on the flounces. So chic! Oh, I don't know if I hate you the most or pity you the most! Oh, how COULD you treat me like this ... after I've LOVED you so ... TRUSTED you so ... BELIEVED in you so!”

Hazel's voice broke ... her eyes filled with tears ... she collapsed on a rocking-chair.

”You can't have many exclamation points left," thought Anne, "but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.”

”This will just about kill poor Momma," sobbed Hazel. "She was so pleased ... EVERYBODY was so pleased ... they all thought it an IDEAL match. Oh, can ANYTHING ever again be like it used to be?”

”Wait till the next moonlight night and try," said Anne gently.

”Oh, yes, laugh, Miss Shirley ... laugh at my suffering. I have not the least doubt that you find it all very amusing ... very amusing indeed! YOU don't know what suffering is! It is terrible ... TERRIBLE!”

Anne looked at the clock and sneezed.

”Then don't suffer," she said unpityingly.

”I WILL suffer. My feelings are VERY deep. Of course a SHALLOW soul wouldn't suffer. But I am thankful I am NOT shallow whatever else I am. Have you ANY idea what it means to be in love, Miss Shirley? Really, terribly deeply, WONDERFULLY in love? And then to trust and be deceived? I went to Kingsport SO happy ... loving all the world! I told Terry to be good to you while I was away ... not to let you be lonesome. I came home last night SO happy. And he told me he didn't love me any longer ... that it was all a mistake ... a MISTAKE! ... and that YOU had told him I didn't care for him any longer, and wanted to be FREE!”

”My intentions were honorable," said Anne, laughing. Her impish sense of humor had come to her rescue and she was laughing as much at herself as at Hazel.

”Oh, HOW did I live through the night?" said Hazel wildly. "I just walked the floor. And you don't know ... you can't even IMAGINE what I've gone through today. I've had to sit and listen ... actually LISTEN ... to people talking about Terry's infatuation for YOU. Oh, people have been watching you! THEY know what you've been doing. And why ... WHY! That is what I CANNOT understand.

You had your own lover ... why couldn't you have left me mine?

What had you against me? What had I ever DONE to you?”

”I think," said Anne, thoroughly exasperated, "that you and Terry both need a good spanking. If you weren't too angry to listen to reason ...”

”Oh, I'm not ANGRY, Miss Shirley ... only HURT ... terribly hurt," said Hazel in a voice positively foggy with tears. "I feel that I have been betrayed in EVERYTHING ... in friendship as well as in love. Well, they say after your heart is broken you never suffer any more. I hope it's true, but I fear it isn't.”

”What has become of your ambition, Hazel? And what about the millionaire patient and the honeymoon villa on the blue Mediterranean?”

”I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about, Miss Shirley.

I'm not a bit ambitious ... I'm not one of those dreadful new women. MY highest ambition was to be a happy wife and make a happy home for my husband. WAS ... WAS! To think it should be in the past tense! Well, it doesn't do to trust ANY ONE. I've learned THAT. A bitter, bitter lesson!”

Hazel wiped her eyes and Anne wiped her nose, and Dusty Miller glared at the evening star with the expression of a misanthrope.

”You'd better go, I think, Hazel. I'm really very busy and I can't see that there is anything to be gained by prolonging this interview.”

Hazel walked to the door with the air of Mary Queen of Scots advancing to the scaffold, and turned there dramatically.

”Farewell, Miss Shirley. I leave you to your conscience.”

Anne, left alone with her conscience, laid down her pen, sneezed three times and gave herself a plain talking-to.

”You may be a B.A., Anne Shirley, but you have a few things to learn yet ... things that even Rebecca Dew could have told you ... DID tell you. Be honest with yourself, my dear girl, and take your medicine like a gallant lady. Admit that you were carried off your feet by flattery. Admit that you really liked Hazel's professed adoration for you. Admit you found it pleasant to be worshiped. Admit that you liked the idea of being a sort of dea ex machina ... saving people from their own folly when they didn't in the least want to be saved from it. And having admitted all this and feeling wiser and sadder and a few thousand years older, pick up your pen and proceed with your examination papers, pausing to note in passing that Myra Pringle thinks a seraph is 'an animal that abounds in Africa.'“

12

A week later a letter came for Anne, written on pale blue paper edged with silver.

”DEAR MISS SHIRLEY:

”I am writing this to tell you that ALL MISUNDERSTANDING is cleared away between Terry and me and we are so deeply, intensely, WONDERFULLY happy that we have decided we can forgive you. Terry says he was just moonlighted into making love to you but that his heart never REALLY swerved in its allegiance to me. He says he really likes SWEET, SIMPLE girls ... that ALL MEN do ... and has no use for INTRIGUING, DESIGNING ONES. We don't understand why you behaved to us as you did ... we never will understand.

Perhaps you just wanted material for a story and thought you could find it in tampering with the first sweet, tremulous love of a girl. But we thank you for REVEALING US TO OURSELVES. Terry says he never realized the deeper meaning of life before. So really it was all for the best. We are SO sympathetic ... we can FEEL each other's thoughts. Nobody understands him but me and I want to be a SOURCE OF INSPIRATION to him forever. I am not clever like YOU but I feel I can be THAT, for we are SOUL-MATES and have vowed eternal TRUTH AND CONSTANCY to each other, no matter how many JEALOUS PEOPLE and FALSE FRIENDS may try to make trouble between us.

”We are going to be married as soon as I have my trousseau ready.

I am going up to Boston to get it. There really isn't ANYTHING in Summerside. My dress is to be WHITE MOIRE and my traveling-suit will be dove gray with hat, gloves and blouse of DELPHINIUM BLUE.

Of course I'm very young, but I want to be married when I AM young, before the BLOOM goes off life.

Terry is all that my WILDEST DREAMS could picture and every THOUGHT of my heart is for him alone. I KNOW we are going to be RAPTUROUSLY HAPPY. ONCE I believed all my friends would REJOICE with me in my happiness, but I have learned a BITTER LESSON in WORLDLY WISDOM since then.

”Yours TRULY, HAZEL MARR.

”P.S. 1. You told me Terry had SUCH A TEMPER. Why, he's a perfect lamb, his sister says.

”H.M.

P.S. 2. I've heard that LEMON JUICE will bleach freckles. You might try it on your nose.

”H.M.”

”To quote Rebecca Dew," remarked Anne to Dusty Miller, "postscript Number Two IS the last straw.”

13

Anne went home for her second Summerside vacation with mixed feelings. Gilbert was not to be in Avonlea that summer. He had gone west to work on a new railroad that was being built. But Green Gables was still Green Gables and Avonlea was still Avonlea.

The Lake of Shining Waters shone and sparkled as of old. The ferns still grew as thickly over the Dryad's Bubble, and the log-bridge, though it was a little crumblier and mossier every year, still led up to the shadows and silences and wind-songs of the Haunted Wood.

And Anne had prevailed on Mrs. Campbell to let little Elizabeth go home with her for a fortnight ... no more. But Elizabeth, looking forward to two whole weeks with Miss Shirley, asked no more of life.

”I feel like MISS Elizabeth today," she told Anne with a sigh of delightful excitement, as they drove away from Windy Poplars.

"Will you please call me 'Miss Elizabeth' when you introduce me to your friends at Green Gables? It would make me feel so grown up.”

”I will," promised Anne gravely, remembering a small, red-headed damsel who had once begged to be called Cordelia.

Elizabeth's drive from Blight River to Green Gables, over a road which only Prince Edward Island in June can show, was almost as ecstatic a thing for her as it had been for Anne that memorable spring evening so many years ago. The world was beautiful, with wind-rippled meadows on every hand and surprises lurking around every corner. She was with her beloved Miss Shirley; she would be free from the Woman for two whole weeks; she had a new pink gingham dress and a pair of lovely new brown boots. It was almost as if Tomorrow were already there ... with fourteen Tomorrows to follow. Elizabeth's eyes were shining with dreams when they turned into the Green Gables lane where the pink wild roses grew.

Things seemed to change magically for Elizabeth the moment she got to Green Gables. For two weeks she lived in a world of romance.

You couldn't step outside the door without stepping into something romantic. Things were just bound to happen in Avonlea ... if not today, then tomorrow. Elizabeth knew she hadn't QUITE got into Tomorrow yet, but she knew she was on the very fringes of it.

Everything in and about Green Gables seemed to be acquainted with her. Even Marilla's pink rosebud tea-set was like an old friend.

The rooms looked at her as if she had always known and loved them; the very grass was greener than grass anywhere else; and the people who lived at Green Gables were the kind of people who lived in Tomorrow. She loved them and was beloved by them. Davy and Dora adored her and spoiled her; Marilla and Mrs. Lynde approved of her.

She was neat, she was lady-like, she was polite to her elders.

They knew Anne did not like Mrs. Campbell's methods, but it was plain to be seen that she had trained her great-granddaughter properly.

”Oh, I don't want to sleep, Miss Shirley," Elizabeth whispered when they were in bed in the little porch gable, after a rapturous evening. "I don't want to sleep away a single minute of these wonderful two weeks. I wish I could get along without any sleep while I'm here.”

For a while she didn't sleep. It was heavenly to lie there and listen to the splendid low thunder Miss Shirley had told her was the sound of the sea. Elizabeth loved it and the sigh of the wind around the eaves as well. Elizabeth had always been "afraid of the night." Who knew what queer thing might jump at you out of it?

But now she was afraid no longer. For the first time in her life the night seemed like a friend to her.

They would go to the shore tomorrow, Miss Shirley had promised, and have a dip in those silver-tipped waves they had seen breaking beyond the green dunes of Avonlea when they drove over the last hill. Elizabeth could see them coming in, one after the other.

One of them was a great dark wave of sleep ... it rolled right over her ... Elizabeth drowned in it with a delicious sigh of surrender.

”It's ... so ... easy ... to ... love ... God ... here," was her last conscious thought.

But she lay awake for a while every night of her stay at Green Gables, long after Miss Shirley had gone to sleep, thinking over things. Why couldn't life at The Evergreens be like life at Green Gables?

Elizabeth had never lived where she could make a noise if she wanted to. Everybody at The Evergreens had to move softly ... speak softly ... even, so Elizabeth felt, THINK softly. There were times when Elizabeth desired perversely to yell loud and long.

”You may make all the noise you want to here," Anne had told her.

But it was strange ... she no longer wanted to yell, now that there was nothing to prevent her. She liked to go quietly, stepping gently among all the lovely things around her. But Elizabeth learned to laugh during that sojourn at Green Gables.

And when she went back to Summerside she carried delightful memories with her and left equally delightful ones behind her.

To the Green Gables folks Green Gables seemed for months full of memories of little Elizabeth. For "little Elizabeth" she was to them in spite of the fact that Anne had solemnly introduced her as ”Miss Elizabeth." She was so tiny, so golden, so elf-like, that they couldn't think of her as anything but little Elizabeth ... little Elizabeth dancing in a twilight garden among the white June lilies ... coiled up on a bough of the big Duchess apple tree reading fairy tales, unlet and unhindered ... little Elizabeth half drowned in a field of buttercups where her golden head seemed just a larger buttercup ... chasing silver-green moths or trying to count the fireflies in Lover's Lane ... listening to the bumblebees zooming in the canterbury-bells ... being fed strawberries and cream by Dora in the pantry or eating red currants with her in the yard ... "Red currants are such beautiful things, aren't they, Dora? It's just like eating jewels, isn't it?" ...

little Elizabeth singing to herself in the haunted dusk of the firs ... with fingers sweet from gathering the big, fat, pink "cabbage roses" ... gazing at the great moon hanging over the brook valley ... "I think the moon has WORRIED EYES, don't you, Mrs. Lynde?”

... crying bitterly because a chapter in the serial story in Davy's magazine left the hero in a sad predicament ... "Oh, Miss Shirley, I'm sure he can never live through it!" ... little Elizabeth curled up, all flushed and sweet like a wild rose, for an afternoon nap on the kitchen sofa with Dora's kittens cuddled about her ... shrieking with laughter to see the wind blowing the dignified old hens' tails over their backs ... COULD it be little Elizabeth laughing like that? ... helping Anne frost cupcakes, Mrs. Lynde cut the patches for a new "double Irish chain" quilt, and Dora rub the old brass candlesticks till they could see their faces in them ... cutting out tiny biscuits with a thimble under Marilla's tutelage. Why, the Green Gables folks could hardly look at a place or thing without being reminded of little Elizabeth.

”I wonder if I'll ever have such a happy fortnight again," thought little Elizabeth, as she drove away from Green Gables. The road to the station was just as beautiful as it had been two weeks before, but half the time little Elizabeth couldn't see it for tears.

”I couldn't have believed I'd miss a child so much," said Mrs. Lynde.

When little Elizabeth went, Katherine Brooke and her dog came for the rest of the summer. Katherine had resigned from the staff of the High School at the close of the year and meant to go to Redmond in the fall to take a secretarial course at Redmond University.

Anne had advised this.

”I know you'd like it and you've never liked teaching," said the latter, as they sat one evening in a ferny corner of a clover field and watched the glories of a sunset sky.

”Life owes me something more than it has paid me and I'm going out to collect it," said Katherine decidedly. "I feel so much younger than I did this time last year," she added with a laugh.

”I'm sure it's the best thing for you to do, but I hate to think of Summerside and the High without you. What will the tower room be like next year without our evenings of confab and argument, and our hours of foolishness, when we turned everybody and everything into a joke?”