ure you won't have him, he'll take Nettie. Please
don't mention this to any one, will you, Anne?"

"Certainly not," said Anne, who had no desire whatever to publish abroad
the fact that Billy Andrews wanted to marry her, preferring her, when
all was said and done, to Nettie Blewett. Nettie Blewett!

"And now I suppose we'd better go to sleep," suggested Jane.

To sleep went Jane easily and speedily; but, though very unlike MacBeth
in most respects, she had certainly contrived to murder sleep for Anne.
That proposed-to damsel lay on a wakeful pillow until the wee sma's, but
her meditations were far from being romantic. It was not, however, until
the next morning that she had an opportunity to indulge in a good laugh
over the whole affair. When Jane had gone home--still with a hint of
frost in voice and manner because Anne had declined so ungratefully
and decidedly the honor of an alliance with the House of Andrews--Anne
retreated to the porch room, shut the door, and had her laugh out at
last.

"If I could only share the joke with some one!" she thought. "But I
can't. Diana is the only one I'd want to tell, and, even if I hadn't
sworn secrecy to Jane, I can't tell Diana things now. She tells
everything to Fred--I know she does. Well, I've had my first proposal. I
supposed it would come some day--but I certainly never thought it would
be by proxy. It's awfully funny--and yet there's a sting in it, too,
somehow."

Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not put
it into words. She had had her secret dreams of the first time some one
should ask her the great question. And it had, in those dreams, always
been very romantic and beautiful: and the "some one" was to be very
handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether
he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with "yes," or one to whom a
regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be given. If
the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would
be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing
her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, life-long devotion. And it
would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad
about, also.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely
grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because
his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn't "have him"
Nettie Blewett would. The