"Was anybody ever paid a prettier compliment? But I couldn't quite let the first sentence pass."'Your grandmother loves you, Elizabeth.'"'She doesn't . . . she hates me.'"'You're just a wee bit foolish, darling. Your grandmother and Miss Monkman are both old people and old people are easily disturbed and worried. Of course you annoy them sometimes. And . . . of course . . . when they were young, children were brought up much more strictly than they are now. They cling to the old way.'"But I felt I was not convincing Elizabeth. After all, they don't love her and she knows it. She looked carefully back at the house to see if the door was shut. Then she said deliberately:"'Grandmother and the Woman are just two old tyrants and when Tomorrow comes I'm going to escape them forever.'"I think she expected I'd die of horror. . . . I really suspect Elizabeth said it just to make a sensation. I merely laughed and kissed her. I hope Martha Monkman saw it from the kitchen window."I can see over Summerside from the left window in the tower. Just now it is a huddle of friendly white roofs . . . friendly at last since the Pringles are my friends. Here and there a light is gleaming in gable and dormer. Here and there is a suggestion of gray-ghost smoke. Thick stars are low over it all. It is 'a dreaming town.' Isn't that a lovely phrase? You remember . . . 'Galahad through dreaming towns did go'?"I feel so happy, Gilbert. I won't have to go home to Green Gables at Christmas, defeated and discredited. Life is good . . . good!"So is Miss Sarah's pound cake. Rebecca Dew made one and 'sweated' it according to directions . . . which simply means that she wrapped it in several thicknesses of brown paper andseveral more towels and left it for three days. I can recommend it."(Are there, or are there not, two 'c's' in recommend'? In spite of the fact that I am a B.A. I can never be certain. Fancy if the Pringles had discovered that before I found Andy's diary!)"Trix Taylor was curled up in the tower one night in February, while little flurries of snow hissed against the windows and that absurdly tiny stove purred like a red-hot black cat. Trix was pouring out her woes to Anne. Anne was beginning to find herself the recipient of confidences on all sides. She was known to be engaged, so that none of the Summerside girls feared her as a possible rival, and there was something about her that made you feel it was safe to tell her secrets.Trix had come up to ask Anne to dinner the next evening. She was a jolly, plump little creature, with twinkling brown eyes and rosy cheeks, and did not look as if life weighed too heavily on her twenty years. But it appeared that she had troubles of her own."Dr. Lennox Carter is coming to dinner tomorrow night. That is why we want you especially. He is the new Head of the Modern Languages Department at Redmond and dreadfully clever, so we want somebody with brains to talk to him. You know I haven't any to boast of, nor Pringle either. As for Esme . . . well, you know, Anne, Esme is the sweetest thing and she's really clever, but she's so shy and timid she can't even make use of what brains she has when Dr. Carter is around. She's so terribly in love with him. It's pitiful. I'm very fond of Johnny . . . but before I'd dissolve into such a liquid state for him!""Are Esme and Dr. Carter engaged?""Not yet" . . . significantly. "But, oh, Anne, she's hoping he means to ask her this time. Would he come over to the Island to visit his cousin right in the middle of the term if he didn't intend to? I hope he will for Esme's sake, because she'll just die if he doesn't. But between you and me and the bed-post I'm not terribly struck on him for a brother-in-law. He's awfully fastidious, Esme says, and she's desperately afraid he won't approve of us. If he doesn't, she thinks he'll never ask her to marry him. So you can't imagine how she's hoping everything will go well at the dinner tomorrow night. I don't see why it shouldn't . . . Mamma is the most wonderful cook . . . and we have a good maid and I've bribed Pringle with half my week's allowance to behave himself. Of course he doesn't like Dr. Carter either . . . says he's got swelled head . . . but he's fond of Esme. If only Papa won't have a sulky fit on!""Have you any reason to fear it?" asked Anne. Every one in Summerside knew about CyrusTaylor's sulky fits."You never can tell when he'll take one," said Trix dolefully. "He was frightfully upset tonight because he couldn't find his new flannel nightshirt. Esme had put it in the wrong drawer. He may be over it by tomorrow night or he may not. If he's not, he'll disgrace us all and Dr. Carter will conclude he can't marry into such a family. At least, that is what Esme says and I'm afraid she may be right. I think, Anne, that Lennox Carter is very fond of Esme . . . thinks she would make a 'very suitable wife' for him . . . but doesn't want to do anything rash or throw his wonderful self away. I've heard that he told his cousin a man couldn't be too careful what kind of family he married into. He's just at the point where he might be turned either way by a trifle. And, if it comes to that, one of Papa's sulky fits isn't any trifle.""Doesn't he like Dr. Carter?""Oh, he does. He thinks it would be a wonderful match for Esme. But when Father has one of his spells on, nothing has any influence over him while it lasts. That's the Pringle for you, Anne. Grandmother Taylor was a Pringle, you know. You just can't imagine what we've gone through as a family. He never goes into rages, you know . . . like Uncle George. Uncle George's family don't mind his rages. When he goes into a temper he blows off . . . you can hear him roaring three blocks away . . . and then he's like a lamb and brings every one a new dress for a peace-offering. But Father just sulks and glowers, and won't say a word to anybody at meal times. Esme says that, after all, that's better than cousin Richard Taylor, who is always saying sarcastic things at the table and insulting his wife; but it seems to me nothing could be worse than those awful silences of Papa's. They rattle us and we're terrified to open our mouths. It wouldn't be so bad, of course, if it was only when we are alone. But it's just as apt to be where we have company. Esme and I are simply tired of trying to explain away Papa's insulting silences. She's just sick with fear that he won't have got over the nightshirt before tomorrow night . . . and what will Lennox think? And she wants you to wear your blue dress. Her new dress is blue, because Lennox likes blue. But Papa hates it. Yours may reconcile him to hers.""Wouldn't it be better for her to wear something else?""She hasn't anything else fit to wear at a company dinner except the green poplin Father gave her at Christmas. It's a lovely dress in itself . . . Father likes us to have pretty dresses . . . but you can't think of anything as awful as Esme in green. Pringle says it makes her look as if she was in the last stages of consumption. And Lennox Carter's cousin told Esme he would never marry a delicate person. I'm more than glad Johnny isn't so 'fastidious.'""Have you told your father about your engagement to Johnny yet?" asked Anne, who knew all about Trix's love affair."No," poor Trix groaned. "I can't summon up the courage, Anne. I know he'll make a frightful scene. Papa has always been so down on Johnny because he's poor. Papa forgets that he was poorer than Johnny when he started out in the hardware business. Of course he'll have to be toldsoon . . . but I want to wait until Esme's affair is settled. I know Papa won't speak to any of us for weeks after I tell him, and Mamma will worry so . . . she can't bear Father's sulky fits. We're all such cowards before Papa. Of course, Mamma and Esme are naturally timid with every one, but Pringle and I have lots of ginger. It's only Papa who can cow us. Sometimes I think if we had any one to back us up . . . but we haven't, and we just feel paralyzed. You can't imagine, Anne darling, what a company dinner is like at our place when Papa is sulking. But if he only behaves tomorrow night I'll forgive him for everything. He can be very agreeable when he wants to be . . . Papa is really just like Longfellow's little girl . . . 'when he's good he's very, very good and when he's bad he's horrid.' I've seen him the life of the party.""He was very nice the night I had dinner with you last month.""Oh, he likes you, as I've said. That's one of the reasons why we want you so much. It may have a good influence on him. We're not neglecting anything that may please him. But when he has a really bad fit of sulks on he seems to hate everything and everybody. Anyhow, we've got a bang-up dinner planned, with an elegant orange-custard dessert. Mamma wanted pie because she says every man in the world but Papa likes pie for dessert better than anything else . . . even Professors of Modern Languages. But Papa doesn't, so it would never do to take a chance on it tomorrow night, when so much depends on it. Orange custard is Papa's favorite dessert. As for poor Johnny and me, I suppose I'll just have to elope with him some day and Papa will never forgive me."I believe if you'd just get up enough spunk to tell him and endure his resulting sulks you'd find he'd come round to it beautifully and you'd be saved months of anguish.""You don't know Papa," said Trix darkly."Perhaps I know him better than you do. You've lost your perspective.""Lost my . . . what? Anne darling, remember I'm not a B.A. I only went through the High. I'd have loved to go to college, but Papa doesn't believe in the Higher Education of women.""I only meant that you're too close to him to understand him. A stranger could very well see him more clearly . . . understand him better.""I understand that nothing can induce Papa to speak if he has made up his mind not to . . . nothing. He prides himself on that.""Then why don't the rest of you just go on and talk as if nothing was the matter?""We can't . . . I've told you he paralyzes us. You'll find it out for yourself tomorrow night if he hasn't got over the nightshirt. I don't know how he does it but he does. I don't believe we'd mind so much how cranky he was if he would only talk. It's the silence that shatters us. I'll never forgive Papa if he acts up tomorrow night when so much is at stake.""Let's hope for the best, dear.""I'm trying to. And I know it will help to have you there. Mamma thought we ought to have Katherine Brooke too, but I knew it wouldn't have a good effect on Papa. He hates her. I don't blame him for that, I must say. I haven't any use for her myself. I don't see how you can be as nice to her as you are.""I'm sorry for her, Trix.""Sorry for her! But it's all her own fault she isn't liked. Oh, well, it takes all kinds of people to make a world . . . but Summerside could spare Katherine Brooke . . . glum old cat!""She's an excellent teacher, Trix. . . .""Oh, do I know it? I was in her class. She did hammer things into my head . . . and flayed the flesh off my bones with sarcasm as well. And the way she dresses! Papa can't bear to see a woman badly dressed. He says he has no use for dowds and he's sure God hasn't either. Mamma would be horrified if she knew I told you that, Anne. She excused it in Papa because he is a man. If that was all we had to excuse in him! And poor Johnny hardly daring to come to the house now because Papa is so rude to him. I slip out on fine nights and we walk round and round the square and get half frozen."Anne drew what was something like a breath of relief when Trix had gone, and slipped down to coax a snack out of Rebecca Dew."Going to the Taylors for dinner, are you? Well, I hope old Cyrus will be decent. If his family weren't all so afraid of him in his sulky fits he wouldn't indulge in them so often, of that I feel certain. I tell you, Miss Shirley, he enjoys his sulks. And now I suppose I must warm That Cat's milk. Pampered animal!"When Anne arrived at the Cyrus Taylor house the next evening she felt the chill in the atmosphere as soon as she entered the door. A trim maid showed her up to the guest room but as Anne went up the stairs she caught sight of Mrs. Cyrus Taylor scuttling from the dining-room to the kitchen and Mrs. Cyrus was wiping tears away from her pale, careworn, but still rather sweet face. It was all too clear that Cyrus had not yet "got over" the nightshirt.This was confirmed by a distressed Trix creeping into the room and whispering nervously,"Oh, Anne, he's in a dreadful humor. He seemed pretty amiable this morning and our hopes rose. But Hugh Pringle beat him at a game of checkers this afternoon and Papa can't bear to lose a checker game. And it had to happen today, of course. He found Esme 'admiring herself in the mirror,' as he put it, and just walked her out of her room and locked the door. The poor darling was only wondering if he looked nice enough to please Lennox Carter, Ph.D. She hadn't even a chance to put her pearl string on. And look at me. I didn't dare curl my hair . . . Papa doesn't like curls that are not natural . . . and I look like a fright. Not that it matters about me . . . only it just shows you. Papa threw out the flowers Mamma put on the dining-room table and she feels it so . . . she took such trouble with them . . . and he wouldn't let her put on her garnet earrings. He hasn't had such a bad spell since he came home from the west last spring and found Mamma had put red curtains in the sitting-room, when he preferred mulberry. Oh, Anne, do talk as hard as you can at dinner, if he won't. If you don't, it will be too dreadful.""I'll do my best," promised Anne, who certainly had never found herself at a loss for something to say. But then never had she found herself in such a situation as presently confronted her.They were all gathered around the table . . . a very pretty and well appointed table in spite of the missing flowers. Timid Mrs. Cyrus, in a gray silk dress, had a face that was grayer than her dress. Esme, the beauty of the family . . . a very pale beauty, pale gold hair, pale pink lips, pale forget-me-not eyes . . . was so much paler than usual that she looked as if she were going to faint. Pringle, ordinarily a fat, cheerful urchin of fourteen, with round eyes and glasses and hair so fair it looked almost white, looked like a tied dog, and Trix had the air of a terrified school-girl.Dr. Carter, who was undeniably handsome and distinguished-looking, with crisp dark hair, brilliant dark eyes and silver-rimmed glasses, but whom Anne, in the days of his Assistant Professorship at Redmond, had thought a rather pompous young bore, looked ill at ease. Evidently he felt that something was wrong somewhere . . . a reasonable conclusion when your host simply stalks to the head of the table and drops into his chair without a word to you or anybody.Cyrus would not say grace. Mrs. Cyrus, blushing beet-red, murmured almost inaudibly, "For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful." The meal started badly by nervous Esme dropping her fork on the floor. Everybody except Cyrus jumped, because their nerves were likewise keyed up to the highest pitch. Cyrus glared at Esme out of his bulging blue eyes in a kind of enraged stillness. Then he glared at everybody and froze them into dumbness. He glared at poor Mrs. Cyrus, when she took a helping of horseradish sauce, with a glare that reminded her of her weak stomach. She couldn't eat any of it after that . . . and she was so fond of it. She didn't believe it would hurt her. But for that matter she couldn't eat anything, nor could Esme. They only pretended. The meal proceeded in a ghastly silence, broken by spasmodic speeches about the weather from Trix and Anne. Trix implored Anne with her eyes to talk, but Anne found herself for once in her life with absolutely nothing to say. She felt desperately that she must talk, but only the most idiotic things came into her head . . . things it would be impossible to utter aloud. Was everyone bewitched? It was curious, the effect one sulky, stubborn man had on you. Anne couldn'thave believed it possible. And there was no doubt that he was really quite happy in the knowledge that he had made everybody at his table horribly uncomfortable. What on earth was going on in his mind? Would he jump if any one stuck a pin in him? Anne wanted to slap him . . . rap his knuckles . . . stand him in a corner . . . treat him like the spoiled child he really was, in spite of his spiky gray hair and truculent mustache.Above all she wanted to make him speak. She felt instinctively that nothing in the world would punish him so much as to be tricked into speaking when he was determined not to.Suppose she got up and deliberately smashed that huge, hideous, old-fashioned vase on the table in the corner . . . an ornate thing covered with wreaths of roses and leaves which it was most difficult to dust but which must be kept immaculately clean. Anne knew that the whole family hated it, but Cyrus Taylor would not hear of having it banished to the attic, because it had been his mother's. Anne thought she would do it fearlessly if she really believed that it would make Cyrus explode into vocal anger.Why didn't Lennox Carter talk? If he would, she, Anne, could talk, too, and perhaps Trix and Pringle would escape from the spell that bound them and some kind of conversation would be possible. But he simply sat there and ate. Perhaps he thought it was really the best thing to do . . . perhaps he was afraid of saying something that would still further enrage the evidently already enraged parent of his lady."Will you please start the pickles, Miss Shirley?" said Mrs. Taylor faintly.Something wicked stirred in Anne. She started the pickles . . . and something else. Without letting herself stop to think she bent forward, her great, gray-green eyes glimmering limpidly, and said gently,"Perhaps you would be surprised to hear, Dr. Carter, that Mr. Taylor went deaf very suddenly last week?"Anne sat back, having thrown her bomb. She could not tell precisely what she expected or hoped. If Dr. Carter got the impression that his host was deaf instead of in a towering rage of silence, it might loosen his tongue. She had not told a falsehood . . . she had not said Cyrus Taylor was deaf. As for Cyrus Taylor, if she had hoped to make him speak she had failed. He merely glared at her, still in silence.But Anne's remark had an effect on Trix and Pringle that she had never dreamed of. Trix was in a silent rage herself. She had, the moment before Anne had hurled her rhetorical question, seen Esme furtively wipe away a tear that had escaped from one of her despairing blue eyes. Everything was hopeless . . . Lennox Carter would never ask Esme to marry him now . . . it didn't matter any more what any one said or did. Trix was suddenly possessed with a burning desire to get square with her brutal father. Anne's speech gave her a weird inspiration, and Pringle, a volcano of suppressed impishness, blinked his white eyelashes for a dazed moment and thenpromptly followed her lead. Never, as long as they might live, would Anne, Esme or Mrs. Cyrusforget the dreadful quarter of an hour that followed. "Such an affliction for poor papa," said Trix, addressing Dr. Carter across the table. "And him only sixty-eight."Two little white dents appeared at the corners of Cyrus Taylor's nostrils when he heard his ageadvanced six years. But he remained silent. "It's such a treat to have a decent meal," said Pringle, clearly and distinctly. "What would you think, Dr. Carter, of a man who makes his family live on fruit and eggs . . . nothing but fruit and eggs . . . just for a fad?""Does your father . . . ?" began Dr. Carter bewilderedly."What would you think of a husband who bit his wife when she put up curtains he didn't like . . . deliberately bit her?" demanded Trix. "Till the blood came," added Pringle solemnly. "Do you mean to say your father . . . ?" "What would you think of a man who would cut up a silk dress of his wife's just because the wayit was made didn't suit him?" said Trix. "What would you think," said Pringle, "of a man who refuses to let his wife have a dog?" "When she would so love to have one," sighed Trix. "What would you think of a man," continued Pringle, who was beginning to enjoy himself hugely,"who would give his wife a pair of goloshes for a Christmas present . . . nothing but a pair ofgoloshes?" "Goloshes don't exactly warm the heart," admitted Dr. Carter. His eyes met Anne's and he smiled. Anne reflected that she had never seen him smile before. It changed his face wonderfully for the better. What was Trix saying? Who would have thought she could be such a demon?"Have you ever wondered, Dr. Carter, how awful it must be to live with a man who thinksnothing . . . nothing--of picking up the roast, if it isn't perfectly done, and hurling it at the maid?" Dr. Carter glanced apprehensively at Cyrus Taylor, as if he feared Cyrus might throw the skeletons of the chickens at somebody. Then he seemed to remember comfortingly that his host was deaf."What would you think of a man who believed the earth was flat?" asked Pringle.Anne thought Cyrus would speak then. A tremor seemed to pass over his rubicund face, but no words came. Still, she was sure his mustaches were a little less defiant."What would you think of a man who let his aunt . . . his only aunt . . . go to the poorhouse?" asked Trix."And pastured his cow in the graveyard?" said Pringle. "Summerside hasn't got over that sight yet.""What would you think of a man who would write down in his diary every day what he had for dinner?" asked Trix."The great Pepys did that," said Dr. Carter with another smile. His voice sounded as if he would like to laugh. Perhaps after all he was not pompous, thought Anne . . . only young and shy and overserious. But she was feeling positively aghast. She had never meant things to go as far as this. She was finding out that it is much easier to start things than finish them. Trix and Pringle were being diabolically clever. They had not said that their father did a single one of these things. Anne could fancy Pringle saying, his round eyes rounder still with pretended innocence, "I just asked those questions of Dr. Carter for information.""What would you think," kept on Trix, "of a man who opens and reads his wife's letters?""What would you think of a man who would go to a funeral . . . his father's funeral . . . in overalls?" asked Pringle.What would they think of next? Mrs. Cyrus was crying openly and Esme was quite calm with despair. Nothing mattered any more. She turned and looked squarely at Dr. Carter, whom she had lost forever. For once in her life she was stung into saying a really clever thing."What," she asked quietly, "would you think of a man who spent a whole day hunting for the kittens of a poor cat who had been shot, because he couldn't bear to think of them starving to death?"A strange silence descended on the room. Trix and Pringle looked suddenly ashamed of themselves. And then Mrs. Cyrus piped up, feeling it her wifely duty to back up Esme's unexpected defense of her father."And he can crochet so beautifully . . . he made the loveliest centerpiece for the parlor table last winter when he was laid up with lumbago."Every one has some limit of endurance and Cyrus Taylor had reached his. He gave his chair such a furious backward push that it shot instantly across the polished floor and struck the table on which the vase stood. The table went over and the vase broke in the traditional thousand pieces. Cyrus,his bushy white eyebrows fairly bristling with wrath, stood up and exploded at last."I don't crochet, woman! Is one contemptible doily going to blast a man's reputation forever? I was so bad with that blamed lumbago I didn't know what I was doing. And I'm deaf, am I, Miss Shirley? I'm deaf?""She didn't say you were, Papa," cried Trix, who was never afraid of her father when his temper was vocal."Oh, no, she didn't say it. None of you said anything! You didn't say I was sixty-eight when I'm only sixty-two, did you? You didn't say I wouldn't let your mother have a dog! Good Lord, woman, you can have forty thousand dogs if you want to and you know it! When did I ever deny you anything you wanted . . . when?""Never, Poppa, never," sobbed Mrs. Cyrus brokenly. "And I never wanted a dog. I never even thought of wanting a dog, Poppa.""When did I open your letters? When have I ever kept a diary? A diary! When did I ever wear overalls to anybody's funeral? When did I pasture a cow in the graveyard? What aunt of mine is in the poorhouse? Did I ever throw a roast at anybody? Did I ever make you live on fruit and eggs?""Never, Poppa, never," wept Mrs. Cyrus. "You've always been a good provider . . . the best.""Didn't you tell me you wanted goloshes last Christmas?""Yes, oh, yes; of course I did, Poppa. And my feet have been so nice and warm all winter.""Well, then!" Cyrus threw a triumphant glance around the room. His eyes encountered Anne's. Suddenly the unexpected happened. Cyrus chuckled. His cheeks actually dimpled. Those dimples worked a miracle with his whole expression. He brought his chair back to the table and sat down."I've got a very bad habit of sulking, Dr. Carter. Every one has some bad habit . . . that's mine. The only one. Come, come, Momma, stop crying. I admit I deserved all I got except that crack of yours about crocheting. Esme, my girl, I won't forget that you were the only one who stood up for me. Tell Maggie to come and clear up that mess . . . I know you're all glad the darn thing is smashed . . . and bring on the pudding."Anne could never have believed that an evening which began so terribly could end up so pleasantly. Nobody could have been more genial or better company than Cyrus: and there was evidently no aftermath of reckoning, for when Trix came down a few evenings later it was to tell Anne that she had at last scraped up enough courage to tell her father about Johnny."Was he very dreadful, Trix?""He . . . he wasn't dreadful at all," admitted Trix sheepishly. "He just snorted and said it was about time Johnny came to the point after hanging around for two years and keeping every one else away. I think he felt he couldn't go into another spell of sulks so soon after the last one. And you know, Anne, between sulks Papa really is an old duck.""I think he is a great deal better father to you than you deserve," said Anne, quite in Rebecca Dew's manner. "You were simply outrageous at that dinner, Trix.""Well, you know you started it," said Trix. "And good old Pringle helped a bit. All's well that ends well . . . and thank goodness I'll never have to dust that vase again."(Extract from letter to Gilbert two weeks later.)"Esme Taylor's engagement to Dr. Lennox Carter is announced. By all I can gather from various bits of local gossip I think he decided that fatal Friday night that he wanted to protect her, and save her from her father and her family . . . and perhaps from her friends! Her plight evidently appealed to his sense of chivalry. Trix persists in thinking I was the means of bringing it about and perhaps I did take a hand, but I don't think I'll ever try an experiment like that again. It's too much like picking up a lightning flash by the tail."I really don't know what got into me, Gilbert. It must have been a hangover from my old detestation of anything savoring of Pringleism. It does seem old now. I've almost forgotten it. But other folks are still wondering. I hear Miss Valentine Courtaloe says she isn't at all surprised I have won the Pringles over, because I have 'such a way with me'; and the minister's wife thinks it is an answer to the prayer she put up. Well, who knows but that it was?"Jen Pringle and I walked part of the way home from school yesterday and talked of 'ships and shoes and sealing wax' . . . of almost everything but geometry. We avoid that subject. Jen knows I don't know too much about geometry, but my own wee bit of knowledge about Captain Myrom balances that. I lent Jen my Foxe's Book of Martyrs. I hate to lend a book I love . . . it never seems quite the same when it comes back to me . . . but I love Foxe's Martyrs only because dear Mrs. Allan gave it to me for a Sunday-school prize years ago. I don't like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed . . . ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!"Well, I'm glad Esme and Trix are both happy. Since my own little romance is in flower I am all the more interested in other people's. A nice interest, you know. Not curious or malicious but justglad there's such a lot of happiness spread about."It's still February and 'on the convent roof the snows are sparkling to the moon' . . . only it isn't a convent . . . just the roof of Mr. Hamilton's barn. But I'm beginning to think, 'Only a few more weeks till spring . . . and a few more weeks then till summer . . . and holidays . . . and Green Gables . . . and golden sunlight on Avonlea meadows . . . and a gulf that will be silver at dawn and sapphire at noon and crimson at sunset . . . and you.'"Little Elizabeth and I have no end of plans for spring. We are such good friends. I take her milk every evening and once in so long she is allowed to go for a walk with me. We have discovered that our birthdays are on the same day and Elizabeth flushed 'divinest rosy red' with the excitement of it. She is so sweet when she blushes. Ordinarily she is far too pale and doesn't get any pinker because of the new milk. Only when we come back from our twilight trysts with evening winds does she have a lovely rose color in her little cheeks. Once she asked me gravely, 'Will I have a lovely creamy skin like yours when I grow up, Miss Shirley, if I put buttermilk on my face every night?' Buttermilk seems to be the preferred cosmetic in Spook's Lane. I have discovered that Rebecca Dew uses it. She has bound me over to keep it secret from the widows because they would think it too frivolous for her age. The number of secrets I have to keep at Windy Poplars is aging me before my time. I wonder if I buttermilked my nose if it would banish those seven freckles. By the way, did it ever occur to you, sir, that I had a 'lovely creamy skin'? If it did, you never told me so. And have you realized to the full that I am 'comparatively beautiful'? Because I have discovered that I am."'What is it like to be beautiful, Miss Shirley?' asked Rebecca Dew gravely the other day . . . when I was wearing my new biscuit-colored voile."'I've often wondered,' said I."'But you are beautiful,' said Rebecca Dew."'I never thought you could be sarcastic, Rebecca,' I said reproachfully."'I did not mean to be sarcastic, Miss Shirley. You are beautiful . . . comparatively.'"'Oh! Comparatively!' said I."'Look in the sideboard glass,' said Rebecca Dew, pointing. 'Compared to me, you are.'"Well, I was!"But I hadn't finished with Elizabeth. One stormy evening when the wind was howling along Spook's Lane, we couldn't go for a walk, so we came up to my room and drew a map of fairyland. Elizabeth sat on my blue doughnut cushion to make her higher, and looked like a serious little gnome as she bent over the map. (By the way, no phonetic spelling for me! 'Gnome' is far eerierand fairy-er than 'nome.')"Our map isn't completed yet . . . every day we think of something more to go in it. Last night we located the house of the Witch of the Snow and drew a triple hill, covered completely with wild cherry trees in bloom, behind it. (By the way, I want some wild cherry trees near our house of dreams, Gilbert.) Of course we have a Tomorrow on the map . . . located east of Today and west of Yesterday . . . and we have no end of 'times' in fairyland. Spring-time, long time, short time, new-moon time, good-night time, next time . . . but no last time, because that is too sad a time for fairyland; old time, young time . . . because if there is an old time there ought to be a young time, too; mountain time . . . because that has such a fascinating sound; night-time and day-time . . . but no bed-time or school-time; Christmas-time; no only time, because that also is too sad . . . but lost time, because it is so nice to find it; some time, good time, fast time, slow time, half-past kissing-time, going-home time, and time immemorial . . . which is one of the most beautiful phrases in the world. And we have cunning little red arrows everywhere, pointing to the different 'times.' I know Rebecca Dew thinks I'm quite childish. But, oh, Gilbert, don't let's ever grow too old and wise . . . no, not too old and silly for fairyland."Rebecca Dew, I feel sure, is not quite certain that I am an influence for good in Elizabeth's life. She thinks I encourage her in being 'fanciful.' One evening when I was away Rebecca Dew took the milk to her and found her already at the gate, looking at the sky so intently that she never heard Rebecca's (anything but) fairy footfalls."'I was listening, Rebecca,' she explained."'You do too much listening,' said Rebecca disapprovingly."Elizabeth smiled, remotely, austerely. (Rebecca Dew didn't use those words but I know exactly how Elizabeth smiled.)"'You would be surprised, Rebecca, if you knew what I hear sometimes,' she said, in a way that made Rebecca Dew's flesh creep on her bones . . . or so she avers."But Elizabeth is always touched with faery and what can be done about it?"Your Very Anne-est ANNE."P.S.1. Never, never, never shall I forget Cyrus Taylor's face when his wife accused him of crocheting. But I shall always like him because he hunted for those kittens. And I like Esme for standing up for her father under the supposed wreck of all her hopes."P.S.2. I have put in a new pen. And I love you because you aren't pompous like Dr. Carter . . . and I love you because you haven't got sticky-out ears like Johnny. And . . . the very best reason of all . . . I love you for just being Gilbert!""Windy Poplars, "Spook's Lane, "May 30th."DEAREST-AND-THEN-MORE-DEAR:"It's spring!"Perhaps you, up to your eyes in a welter of exams in Kingsport, don't know it. But I am aware of it from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Summerside is aware of it. Even the most unlovely streets are transfigured by arms of bloom reaching over old board fences and a ribbon of dandelions in the grass that borders the sidewalks. Even the china lady on my shelf is aware of it and I know if I could only wake up suddenly enough some night I'd catch her dancing a pas seul in her pink, gilt-heeled shoes."Everything is calling 'spring' to me . . . the little laughing brooks, the blue hazes on the Storm King, the maples in the grove when I go to read your letters, the white cherry trees along Spook's Lane, the sleek and saucy robins hopping defiance to Dusty Miller in the back yard, the creeper hanging greenly down over the half-door to which little Elizabeth comes for milk, the fir trees preening in new tassel tips around the old graveyard . . . even the old graveyard itself, where all sorts of flowers planted at the heads of the graves are budding into leaf and bloom, as if to say, 'Even here life is triumphant over death.' I had a really lovely prowl about the graveyard the other night. (I'm sure Rebecca Dew thinks my taste in walks frightfully morbid. 'I can't think why you have such a hankering after that unchancy place,' she says.) I roamed over it in the scented green cat's light and wondered if Nathan Pringle's wife really had tried to poison him. Her grave looked so innocent with its new grass and its June lilies that I concluded she had been entirely maligned."Just another month and I'll be home for vacation! I keep thinking of the old orchard at Green Gables with its trees now in full snow . . . the old bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters . . . the murmur of the sea in your ears . . . a summer afternoon in Lover's Lane . . . and you!"I have just the right kind of pen tonight, Gilbert, and so . . .(Two pages omitted.)"I was around at the Gibsons' this evening for a call. Marilla asked me some time ago to look them up because she once knew them when they lived in White Sands. Accordingly I looked them up and have been looking them up weekly ever since because Pauline seems to enjoy my visits and I'm so sorry for her. She is simply a slave to her mother . . . who is a terrible old woman."Mrs. Adoniram Gibson is eighty and spends her days in a wheel-chair. They moved to Summerside fifteen years ago. Pauline, who is forty-five, is the youngest of the family, all her brothers and sisters being married and all of them determined not to have Mrs. Adoniram in their homes. She keeps the house and waits on her mother hand and foot. She is a little pale, fawn-eyed thing with golden-brown hair that is still glossy and pretty. They are quite comfortably off and if it were not for her mother Pauline could have a very pleasant easy life. She just loves church work and would be perfectly happy attending Ladies' Aids and Missionary Societies, planning for church suppers and Welcome socials, not to speak of exulting proudly in being the possessor of the finest wandering-jew in town. But she can hardly ever get away from the house, even to go to church on Sundays. I can't see any way of escape for her, for old Mrs. Gibson will probably live to be a hundred. And, while she may not have the use of her legs, there is certainly nothing the matter with her tongue. It always fills me with helpless rage to sit there and hear her making poor Pauline the target for her sarcasm. And yet Pauline has told me that her mother 'thinks quite highly' of me and is much nicer to her when I am around. If this be so I shiver to think what she must be when I am not around."Pauline dares not do anything without asking her mother. She can't even buy her own clothes . . . not so much as a pair of stockings. Everything has to be sent up for Mrs. Gibson's approval; everything has to be worn until it has been turned twice. Pauline has worn the same hat for four years."Mrs. Gibson can't bear any noise in the house or a breath of fresh air. It is said she never smiled in her life. . . . I've never caught her at it, anyway, and when I look at her I find myself wondering what would happen to her face if she did smile. Pauline can't even have a room to herself. She has to sleep in the same room with her mother and be up almost every hour of the night rubbing Mrs. Gibson's back or giving her a pill or getting a hot-water bottle for her . . . hot, not lukewarm! . . . or changing her pillows or seeing what that mysterious noise is in the back yard. Mrs. Gibson does her sleeping in the afternoons and spends her nights devising tasks for Pauline."Yet nothing has ever made Pauline bitter. She is sweet and unselfish and patient and I am glad she has a dog to love. The only thing she has ever had her own way about is keeping that dog . . . and then only because there was a burglary somewhere in town and Mrs. Gibson thought it would be a protection. Pauline never dares to let her mother see how much she loves the dog. Mrs. Gibson hates him and complains of his bringing bones in but she never actually says he must go, for her own selfish reason."But at last I have a chance to give Pauline something and I'm going to do it. I'm going to give hera day, though it will mean giving up my next week-end at Green Gables."Tonight when I went in I could see that Pauline had been crying. Mrs. Gibson did not long leave me in doubt why. "'Pauline wants to go and leave me, Miss Shirley,' she said. 'Nice, grateful daughter I've got,haven't I?' "'Only for a day, Ma,' said Pauline, swallowing a sob and trying to smile. "'Only for a day,' says she! 'Well, you know what my days are like, Miss Shirley . . . every oneknows what my days are like. But you don't know . . . yet . . . Miss Shirley, and I hope you never will, how long a day can be when you are suffering.'"I knew Mrs. Gibson didn't suffer at all now, so I didn't try to be sympathetic. "'I'd get some one to stay with you, of course, Ma,' said Pauline. 'You see,' she explained to me, 'my cousin Louisa is going to celebrate her silver wedding at White Sands next Saturday week and she wants me to go. I was her bridesmaid when she was married to Maurice Hilton. I would like to go so much if Ma would give her consent.'"'If I must die alone I must,' said Mrs. Gibson. 'I leave it to your conscience, Pauline.' "I knew Pauline's battle was lost the moment Mrs. Gibson left it to her conscience. Mrs. Gibsonhas got her way all her life by leaving things to people's consciences. I've heard that years ago somebody wanted to marry Pauline and Mrs. Gibson prevented it by leaving it to her conscience. "Pauline wiped her eyes, summoned up a piteous smile and picked up a dress she was makingover . . . a hideous green and black plaid. "'Now don't sulk, Pauline,' said Mrs. Gibson. 'I can't abide people who sulk. And mind you put acollar on that dress. Would you believe it, Miss Shirley, she actually wanted to make the dress without a collar? She'd wear a low-necked dress, that one, if I'd let her.' "I looked at poor Pauline with her slender little throat . . . which is rather plump and pretty yet . . .enclosed in a high, stiff-boned net collar. "'Collarless dresses are coming in,' I said. "'Collarless dresses,' said Mrs. Gibson, 'are indecent.' "(Item:--I was wearing a collarless dress.) "'Moreover,' went on Mrs. Gibson, as if it were all of a piece. 'I never liked Maurice Hilton. Hismother was a Crockett. He never had any sense of decorum . . . always kissing his wife in the most unsuitable places!'"(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I'm afraid Mrs. Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)"'But, Ma, you know that was the day she nearly escaped being trampled by Harvey Wither's horse running amuck on the church green. It was only natural Maurice should feel a little excited.'"'Pauline, please don't contradict me. I still think the church steps were an unsuitable place for any one to be kissed. But of course my opinions don't matter to any one any longer. Of course every one wishes I was dead. Well, there'll be room for me in the grave. I know what a burden I am to you. I might as well die. Nobody wants me.'"'Don't say that, Ma,' begged Pauline."'I will say it. Here you are, determined to go to that silver wedding although you know I'm not willing.'"'Ma dear. I'm not going . . . I'd never think of going if you weren't willing. Don't excite yourself so. . . .'"'Oh, I can't even have a little excitement, can't I, to brighten my dull life? Surely you're not going so soon, Miss Shirley?'"I felt that if I stayed any longer I'd either go crazy or slap Mrs. Gibson's nut-cracker face. So I said I had exam papers to correct."'Ah well, I suppose two old women like us are very poor company for a young girl,' sighed Mrs. Gibson. 'Pauline isn't very cheerful . . . are you, Pauline? Not very cheerful. I don't wonder Miss Shirley doesn't want to stay long.'"Pauline came out to the porch with me. The moon was shining down on her little garden and sparkling on the harbor. A soft, delightful wind was talking to a white apple tree. It was spring . . . spring . . . spring! Even Mrs. Gibson can't stop plum trees from blooming. And Pauline's soft gray-blue eyes were full of tears."'I would like to go to Louie's wedding so much,' she said, with a long sigh of despairing resignation."'You are going,' I said."'Oh, no, dear, I can't go. Poor Ma will never consent. I'll just put it out of my mind. Isn't the moon beautiful tonight?' she added, in a loud, cheerful tone."'I've never heard of any good that came from moon gazing,' called out Mrs. Gibson from the sitting-room. 'Stop chirruping there, Pauline, and come in and get my red bedroom slippers with the fur round the tops for me. These shoes pinch my feet something terrible. But nobody cares how I suffer.'"I felt that I didn't care how much she suffered. Poor darling Pauline! But a day off is certainly coming to Pauline and she is going to have her silver wedding. I, Anne Shirley, have spoken it."I told Rebecca Dew and the widows all about it when I came home and we had such fun, thinking up all the lovely, insulting things I might have said to Mrs. Gibson. Aunt Kate does not think I will succeed in getting Mrs. Gibson to let Pauline go but Rebecca Dew has faith in me. 'Anyhow, if you can't, nobody can,' she said."I was at supper recently with Mrs. Tom Pringle who wouldn't take me to board. (Rebecca says I am the best paying boarder she ever heard of because I am invited out to supper so often.) I'm very glad she didn't. She's nice and purry and her pies praise her in the gates, but her home isn't Windy Poplars and she doesn't live in Spook's Lane and she isn't Aunt Kate and Aunt Chatty and Rebecca Dew. I love them all three and I'm going to board here next year and the year after. My chair is always called 'Miss Shirley's chair' and Aunt Chatty tells me that when I'm not here Rebecca Dew sets my place at the table just the same, so it won't seem so lonesome.' Sometimes Aunt Chatty's feelings have complicated matters a bit but she says she understands me now and knows I would never hurt her intentionally."Little Elizabeth and I go out for a walk twice a week now. Mrs. Campbell has agreed to that, but it must not be oftener and never on Sundays. Things are better for little Elizabeth in spring. Some sunshine gets into even that grim old house and outwardly it is even beautiful because of the dancing shadows of tree tops. Still, Elizabeth likes to escape from it whenever she can. Once in a while we go up-town so that Elizabeth can see the lighted shop windows. But mostly we go as far as we dare down the Road that Leads to the End of the World, rounding every corner adventurously and expectantly, as if we were going to find Tomorrow behind it, while all the little green evening hills neatly nestle together in the distance. One of the things Elizabeth is going to do in Tomorrow is 'go to Philadelphia and see the angel in the church.' I haven't told her . . . I never will tell her . . . that the Philadelphia St. John was writing about was not Phila., Pa. We lose our illusions soon enough. And anyhow, if we could get into Tomorrow, who knows what we might find there? Angels everywhere, perhaps."Sometimes we watch the ships coming up the harbor before a fair wind, over a glistening pathway, through the transparent spring air, and Elizabeth wonders if her father may be on board one of them. She clings to the hope that he may come some day. I can't imagine why he doesn't. I'm sure he would if he knew what a darling little daughter he has here longing for him. I suppose he never realizes she is quite a girl now . . . . I suppose he still thinks of her as the little baby who cost his wife her life."I'll soon have finished my first year in Summerside High. The first term was a nightmare, but the last two have been very pleasant. The Pringles are delightful people. How could I ever have compared them to the Pyes? Sid Pringle brought me a bunch of trilliums today. Jen is going to lead her class and Miss Ellen is reported to have said that I am the only teacher who ever really understood the child! The only fly in my ointment is Katherine Brooke, who continues unfriendly and distant. I'm going to give up trying to be friends with her. After all, as Rebecca Dew says, there are limits."Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. . . . Sally Nelson has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. She is going to be married the last of June at Bonnyview, Dr. Nelson's summer home down at the jumping-off place. She is marrying Gordon Hill. Then Nora Nelson will be the only one of Dr. Nelson's six girls left unmarried. Jim Wilcox has been going with her for years . . . 'off and on' as Rebecca Dew says . . . but it never seems to come to anything and nobody thinks it will now. I'm very fond of Sally, but I've never made much headway getting acquainted with Nora. She's a good deal older than I am, of course, and rather reserved and proud. Yet I'd like to be friends with her. She isn't pretty or clever or charming but somehow she's got a tang. I've a feeling she'd be worth while."Speaking of weddings, Esme Taylor was married to her Ph.D. last month. As it was on Wednesday afternoon I couldn't go to the church to see her, but every one says she looked very beautiful and happy and Lennox looked as if he knew he had done the right thing and had the approval of his conscience. Cyrus Taylor and I are great friends. He often refers to the dinner which he has come to consider a great joke on everybody. 'I've never dared sulk since,' he told me. 'Momma might accuse me of sewing patchwork next time.' And then he tells me to be sure and give his love to 'the widows.' Gilbert, people are delicious and life is delicious and I am"Forevermore"Yours!"P.S. Our old red cow down at Mr. Hamilton's has a spotted calf. We've been buying our milk for three months from Lew Hunt. Rebecca says we'll have cream again now . . . and that she has always heard the Hunt well was inexhaustible and now she believes it. Rebecca didn't want that calf to be born at all. Aunt Kate had to get Mr. Hamilton to tell her that the cow was really too old to have a calf before she would consent.""Ah, when you've been old and bed-rid as long as me you'll have more sympathy," whined Mrs.Gibson."Please don't think I'm lacking in sympathy, Mrs. Gibson," said Anne, who, after half an hour's vain effort, felt like wringing Mrs. Gibson's neck. Nothing but poor Pauline's pleading eyes in the background kept her from giving up in despair and going home. "I assure you, you won't be lonely and neglected. I will be here all day and see that you lack nothing in any way.""Oh, I know I'm of no use to any one," said Mrs. Gibson, apropos of nothing that had been said. "You don't need to rub that in, Miss Shirley. I'm ready to go any time . . . any time. Pauline can gad round all she wants to then. I won't be here to feel neglected. None of the young people of today have any sense. Giddy . . . very giddy."Anne didn't know whether it was Pauline or herself who was the giddy young person without sense, but she tried the last shot in her locker."Well, you know, Mrs. Gibson, people will talk so terribly if Pauline doesn't go to her cousin's silver wedding.""Talk!" said Mrs. Gibson sharply. "What will they talk about?""Dear Mrs. Gibson . . ." ('May I be forgiven the adjective!' thought Anne) "in your long life you have learned, I know, just what idle tongues can say.""You needn't be casting my age up to me," snapped Mrs. Gibson. "And I don't need to be told it's a censorious world. Too well . . . too well I know it. And I don't need to be told that this town is full of tattling toads neither. But I dunno's I fancy them jabbering about me . . . saying, I s'pose, that I'm an old tyrant. I ain't stopping Pauline from going. Didn't I leave it to her conscience?""So few people will believe that," said Anne, carefully sorrowful.Mrs. Gibson sucked a peppermint lozenge fiercely for a minute or two. Then she said,"I hear there's mumps at White Sands."