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cream by Dora in the pantry, or eating red-currants with her in the yard – ‘red-currants are such beautiful things, aren’t they, Dora? It’s just like eating jewels, isn’t it?’; little Elizabeth pleading with Davy to teach her how to waggle her ears; little Elizabeth singing to herself in the haunted dusk of the firs; little Elizabeth hovering over the bed of red and white daisies under the parlour windows; little Elizabeth with fingers sweet from gathering the big fat pink cabbage roses; little Elizabeth gazing at the great moon hanging over the brook valley – ‘I think the moon has worried eyes, don’t you, Mrs Lynde?’; little Elizabeth crying bitterly because a chapter in the serial story in Davy’s magazine left the hero in a sad predicament – ‘Oh, Miss Shirley, I’m sure he can never live through it!’; little Elizabeth curled up, all flushed and sweet like a wild rose, for an afternoon nap on the kitchen sofa, with Dora’s kittens cuddled about her; little Elizabeth shrieking with laughter to see the wind blowing the dignified old hens’ tails over their backs – could it be little Elizabeth laughing like that?; little Elizabeth helping Anne to frost cup-cakes, Mrs Lynde to cut the patches for a new ‘double Irish chain’ quilt, and Dora to rub the old brass candlesticks till they could see their faces in them; little Elizabeth learning to sing Clementine and carolling about ‘herring boxes without topses’ everywhere; little Elizabeth cutting out tiny biscuits with a thimble under Marilla’s tutelage. Why, the Green Gables folks could hardly look at a place or a thing without being reminded of little Elizabeth.

‘I wonder if I’ll ever have such a happy fortnight again?’ thought little Elizabeth as she drove away from Green Gables. The road to the station was just as beautiful as it had been two weeks before, but half the time little Elizabeth couldn’t see it for tears.

‘I couldn’t have believed I’d miss a child so much,’ said Mrs Lynde.

When little Elizabeth went Katherine Brooke and her dog came for the rest of the summer. Katherine had resigned from the staff of the High School at the close of the year, and meant to go to Redmond in the autumn to take a secretarial course at Redmond University. Anne had advised this.

‘I know you’d like it, and you’ve never liked teaching,’ said the latter, as they sat one evening in a ferny corner of a clover field and watched the glories of a sunset sky.

‘Life owes me something more than it has paid me, and I’m going out to collect it,’ said Katherine decidedly. ‘I feel so much younger than I did this time last year,’ she added, with a laugh.

‘I’m sure it’s the best thing for you to do, but I hate to think of Summerside and the High without you. What will the tower room be like next year without our evenings of confab and argument, and our hours of foolishness, when we turned everybody and everything into a joke?’

THE THIRD YEAR

1

Windy Willows

Spook’s Lane

Sept. 8

DEAREST,

The summer is over, the summer in which I have seen you only that weekend in May. And I am back at Windy Willows for my third – and last – year in Summerside High. Katherine and I had a delightful time together at Green Gables, and I’m going to miss her dreadfully this year. The new Junior teacher is a jolly little personage, chubby and rosy and friendly as a puppy, but somehow there’s nothing more to her than that. She has sparkling, shallow blue eyes with no thought behind them. I like her; I’ll always like her – neither more nor less. There’s nothing to discover in her. There was so much to discover in Katherine when you once got past her guard.

There is no change at Windy Willows – yes, there is. The old red cow has gone to her long home, so Rebecca Dew sadly informed me when I came down to supper Monday night. The widows have decided not to bother with another one, but to get milk and cream from Mr Cherry. This means that little Elizabeth will come no more to the garden gate for her new milk. But Mrs Campbell seems to have grown reconciled to her coming over here when she wants to, so that does