"Then ask her," said Anne promptly. "I'd be very sorry myself to
see Mrs. Rachel go away."

"And if she comes," continued Marilla, "You can go to college as well
as not. She'll be company for me and she'll do for the twins what I

can't do, so there's no reason in the world why you shouldn't go."
Anne had a long meditation at her window that night. Joy and regret

struggled together in her heart. She had come at last. . .suddenly
and unexpectedly. . .to the bend in the road; and college was around it,

with a hundred rainbow hopes and visions; but Anne realized as well that
when she rounded that curve she must leave many sweet things behind. . .

all the little simple duties and interests which had grown so dear to her
in the last two years and which she had glorified into beauty and delight

by the enthusiasm she had put into them. She must give up her school. . .
and she loved every one of her pupils, even the stupid and naughty ones.

The mere thought of Paul Irving made her wonder if Redmond were such a
name to conjure with after all.

"I've put out a lot of little roots these two years," Anne told the moon,
"and when I'm pulled up they're going to hurt a great deal. But it's best

to go, I think, and, as Marilla says, there's no good reason why I shouldn't.
I must get out all my ambitions and dust them."

Anne sent in her resignation the next day; and Mrs. Rachel, after
a heart to heart talk with Marilla, gratefully accepted the offer

of a home at Green Gables. She elected to remain in her own house
for the summer, however; the farm was not to be sold until the fall

and there were many arrangements to be made.
"I certainly never thought of living as far off the road as Green Gables,"

sighed Mrs. Rachel to herself. "But really, Green Gables doesn't seem as
out of the world as it used to do. . .Anne has lots of company and the

twins make it real lively. And anyhow, I'd rather live at the bottom
of a well than leave Avonlea."

These two decisions being noised abroadspeedily ousted the arrival
of Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip. Sage heads were shaken over

Marilla Cuthbert's rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her.
People opined that they wouldn't get on together. They were both

"too fond of their own way," and many doleful predictions were made,
none of which disturbed the parties in question at all. They had

come to a clear and distinct understanding of the respective duties
and rights of their new arrangements and meant to abide by them.

"I won't meddle with you nor you with me," Mrs. Rachel had said decidedly,
"and as for the twins, I'll be glad to do all I can for them; but I won't

undertake to answer Davy's questions, that's what. I'm not an encyclopedia,
neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer. You'll miss Anne for that."

"Sometimes Anne's answers were about as queer as Davy's questions,"
said Marilla drily. "The twins will miss her and no mistake; but

her future can't be sacrificed to Davy's thirst for information.
When he asks questions I can't answer I'll just tell him children

should be seen and not heard. That was how I was brought up,
and I don't know but what it was just as good a way as all these

new-fangled notions for training children."
"Well, Anne's methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,"

said Mrs. Lynde smilingly. "He is a reformed character, that's what."
"He isn't a bad little soul," conceded Marilla. "I never expected to get

as fond of those children as I have. Davy gets round you somehow . . .and
Dora is a lovely child, although she is. . .kind of. . .well, kind of. . ."

"Monotonous? Exactly," supplied Mrs. Rachel. "Like a book where every
page is the same, that's what. Dora will make a good, reliable woman but

she'll never set the pond on fire. Well, that sort of folks are comfortable
to have round, even if they're not as interesting as the other kind."

Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of
Anne's resignation brought unmixed pleasure. Her pupils looked

upon it as a sheer catastrophe. Annetta Bell had hysterics when
she went home. Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked

battles with other boys by way of relieving his feelings. Barbara
Shaw cried all night. Paul Irving defiantly told his grandmother

that she needn't expect him to eat any porridge for a week.
"I can't do it, Grandma," he said. "I don't really know if I can

eat ANYTHING. I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat.
I'd have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn't been

watching me. I believe I will cry after I go to bed. It wouldn't
show on my eyes tomorrow, would it? And it would be such a relief.

But anyway, I can't eat porridge. I'm going to need all my strength
of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won't have any left

to grapple with porridge. Oh Grandma, I don't know what I'll do when
my beautiful teacher goes away. Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews

will get the school. I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice. But I know
she won't understand things like Miss Shirley."

Diana also took a very pessimistic view of affairs.
"It will be horriblylonesome here next winter," she mourned, one twilight

when the moonlight was raining "airy silver" through the cherry boughs
and filling the east gable with a soft, dream-like radiance in which

the two girls sat and talked, Anne on her low rocker by the window,
Diana sitting Turkfashion on the bed. "You and Gilbert will be gone

. . .and the Allans too. They are going to call Mr. Allan to
Charlottetown and of course he'll accept. It's too mean. We'll

be vacant all winter, I suppose, and have to listen to a long
string of candidates. . .and half of them won't be any good."

"I hope they won't call Mr. Baxter from East Grafton here, anyhow,"
said Anne decidedly. "He wants the call but he does preach such

gloomy sermons. Mr. Bell says he's a minister of the old school,
but Mrs. Lynde says there's nothing whatever the matter with him

but indigestion. His wife isn't a very good cook, it seems, and
Mrs. Lynde says that when a man has to eat sour bread two weeks

out of three his theology is bound to get a kink in it somewhere.
Mrs. Allan feels very badly about going away. She says everybody

has been so kind to her since she came here as a bride that she
feels as if she were leaving lifelong friends. And then, there's

the baby's grave, you know. She says she doesn't see how she can
go away and leave that. . .it was such a little mite of a thing

and only three months old, and she says she is afraid it will miss
its mother, although she knows better and wouldn't say so to Mr. Allan

for anything. She says she has slipped through the birch grove back
of the manse nearly every night to the graveyard and sung a little

lullaby to it. She told me all about it last evening when I was
up putting some of those early wild roses on Matthew's grave.

I promised her that as long as I was in Avonlea I would put flowers
on the baby's grave and when I was away I felt sure that. . ."

"That I would do it," supplied Diana heartily. "Of course I will.
And I'll put them on Matthew's grave too, for your sake, Anne."

"Oh, thank you. I meant to ask you to if you would. And on little
Hester Gray's too? Please don't forget hers. Do you know, I've

thought and dreamed so much about little Hester Gray that she has
become strangely real to me. I think of her, back there in her

little garden in that cool, still, green corner; and I have a fancy
that if I could steal back there some spring evening, just at the

magic time 'twixt light and dark, and tiptoe so softly up the beech
hill that my footsteps could not frighten her, I would find the

garden just as it used to be, all sweet with June lilies and early
roses, with the tiny house beyond it all hung with vines; and

little Hester Gray would be there, with her soft eyes, and the wind
ruffling her dark hair, wandering about, putting her fingertips

under the chins of the lilies and whispering secrets with the roses;
and I would go forward, oh, so softly, and hold out my hands and

say to her, `Little Hester Gray, won't you let me be your playmate,
for I love the roses too?' And we would sit down on the old bench

and talk a little and dream a little, or just be beautifully silent
together. And then the moon would rise and I would look around me