t decide what to say to the conductor
when he came around. As soon as I got one sentence of explanation
mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could believe it and I must compose
another. It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in Providence, and
for all the comfort that gave me I might as well have been the old lady
who, when told by the captain during a storm that she must put her trust
in the Almighty exclaimed, 'Oh, Captain, is it as bad as that?'

"Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and the
conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me, I
suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm.
I hadn't swallowed it after all. I meekly fished it out of the index
finger of my glove and poked it in the box. I smiled at everybody and
felt that it was a beautiful world."

The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least pleasant of many pleasant
holiday outings. Anne and Diana went back to it by the old way of the
beech woods, carrying a lunch basket with them. Echo Lodge, which had
been closed ever since Miss Lavendar's wedding, was briefly thrown open
to wind and sunshine once more, and firelight glimmered again in the
little rooms. The perfume of Miss Lavendar's rose bowl still filled the
air. It was hardly possible to believe that Miss Lavendar would not come
tripping in presently, with her brown eyes a-star with welcome, and
that Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and wide of smile, would not
pop through the door. Paul, too, seemed hovering around, with his fairy
fancies.

"It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the old
time glimpses of the moon," laughed Anne. "Let's go out and see if the
echoes are at home. Bring the old horn. It is still behind the kitchen
door."

The echoes were at home, over the white river, as silver-clear and
multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased to answer the girls
locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in the perfect half hour that
follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset.

Chapter VIII

Anne's First Proposal

The old year did not slip away in a green twilight, with a pinky-yellow
sunset. Instead, it went out with a wild, white bluster and blow. It was
one of the nights when the storm-wind hurtles over the frozen meadows
and black hollows, and moans around the eaves like a lost creature, and
drives the snow sharply against the shaking panes.

"Just the sort of night people like to cuddle