unromantic; but to go by Lover s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and
the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.
Lover s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched
far up into the woods to the end of the Cuthbert farm. It was the way by
which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home
in winter. Anne had named it Lover s Lane before she had been a month at
Green Gables.
Not that lovers ever really walk there, she explained to Marilla,
but Diana and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there s a
Lover s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it s a very pretty
name, don t you think? So romantic! We can t imagine the lovers into it,
you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without
people calling you crazy.
Anne, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover s Lane as far
as the brook. Here Diana met her, and the two little girls went on
up the lane under the leafy arch of maples-- maples are such sociable
trees, said Anne; they re always rustling and whispering to
you --until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane
and walked through Mr. Barry s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond
Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr.
Andrew Bell s big woods. Of course there are no violets there now,
Anne told Marilla, but Diana says there are millions of them in spring.
Oh, Marilla, can t you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away
my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Diana says she never saw the beat
of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It s nice to be clever at
something, isn t it? But Diana named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so
I let her; but I m sure I could have found something more poetical than
plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch
Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Marilla.
It was. Other people besides Anne thought so when they stumbled on it.
It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill
straight through Mr. Bell s woods, where the light came down sifted
through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart
of a diamond. It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches,
white stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild
lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly
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