rough college. I meant to climb to
the very top--oh, I won't talk of that either. It's no use. You know
what happened. I couldn't see my dear little heart-broken mother, who
had been such a slave all her life, turned out of her home. Of course,
I could have earned enough for us to live on. But mother COULDN'T
leave her home. She had come there as a bride--and she had loved
father so--and all her memories were there. Even yet, Anne, when I
think that I made her last year happy I'm not sorry for what I did. As
for Dick--I didn't hate him when I married him--I just felt for him the
indifferent, friendly feeling I had for most of my schoolmates. I knew
he drank some--but I had never heard the story of the girl down at the
fishing cove. If I had, I COULDN'T have married him, even for mother's
sake. Afterwards--I DID hate him--but mother never knew. She
died--and then I was alone. I was only seventeen and I was alone.
Dick had gone off in the Four Sisters. I hoped he wouldn't be home
very much more. The sea had always been in his blood. I had no other
hope. Well, Captain Jim brought him home, as you know--and that's all
there is to say. You know me now, Anne--the worst of me--the barriers
are all down. And you still want to be my friend?"

Anne looked up through the birches, at the white paper-lantern of a
half moon drifting downwards to the gulf of sunset. Her face was very
sweet.

"I am your friend and you are mine, for always," she said. "Such a
friend as I never had before. I have had many dear and beloved
friends--but there is a something in you, Leslie, that I never found in
anyone else. You have more to offer me in that rich nature of yours,
and I have more to give you than I had in my careless girlhood. We are
both women--and friends forever."

They clasped hands and smiled at each other through the tears that
filled the gray eyes and the blue.

CHAPTER 22

MISS CORNELIA ARRANGES MATTERS

Gilbert insisted that Susan should be kept on at the little house for
the summer. Anne protested at first.

"Life here with just the two of us is so sweet, Gilbert. It spoils it
a little to have anyone else. Susan is a dear soul, but she is an
outsider. It won't hurt me to do the work here."

"You must take your doctor's advice," said Gilbert. "There's an old
proverb to the effect that shoemakers' wives go barefoot and doctors'
wives die young. I don't mean that it shall be true in my hous