whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not
have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert
to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and
ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem
the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.
There was no silly sentiment in Anne s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good
comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared
how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius
for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague
consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing
to round out one s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her
feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought
that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the
crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and
merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening
around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to
get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane
Andrews that she didn t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said;
he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on
and for her part she didn t think it any fun to be bothering about books
and that sort of thing when you didn t have to. Frank Stockley had lots
more dash and go, but then he wasn t half as good-looking as Gilbert and
she really couldn t decide which she liked best!
In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about
her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the
rose-red girl, Stella Maynard, and the dream girl, Priscilla Grant,
she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking
maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the
vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies,
as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne s own.
After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home
on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen s
scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and
248