trustees decided to take you. I was tickled to death when Thomas came
home and told me.
I don t feel that I ought to take it, murmured Anne. I mean--I don t
think I ought to let Gilbert make such a sacrifice for--for me.
I guess you can t prevent him now. He s signed papers with the White
Sands trustees. So it wouldn t do him any good now if you were to
refuse. Of course you ll take the school. You ll get along all right,
now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a
good thing she was, that s what. There s been some Pye or other going to
Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in
life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn t their home.
Bless my heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Barry
gable mean?
Diana is signaling for me to go over, laughed Anne. You know we keep
up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants.
Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry
shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.
There s a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways.
There s a good deal more of the woman about her in others, retorted
Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.
But crispness was no longer Marilla s distinguishing characteristic. As
Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.
Marilla Cuthbert has got _mellow_. That s what.
Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh
flowers on Matthew s grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered
there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place,
with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its
whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally
left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining
Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike
afterlight-- a haunt of ancient peace. There was a freshness in the
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