God had meant Ruby to have, and
remembered it so always.

Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant room before the funeral
procession left the house, and gave her a small packet.

"I want you to have this," she sobbed. "Ruby would have liked you to
have it. It's the embroidered centerpiece she was working at. It isn't
quite finished--the needle is sticking in it just where her poor little
fingers put it the last time she laid it down, the afternoon before she
died."

"There's always a piece of unfinished work left," said Mrs. Lynde, with
tears in her eyes. "But I suppose there's always some one to finish it."

"How difficult it is to realize that one we have always known can really
be dead," said Anne, as she and Diana walked home. "Ruby is the first of
our schoolmates to go. One by one, sooner or later, all the rest of us
must follow."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Diana uncomfortably. She did not want to talk
of that. She would have preferred to have discussed the details of the
funeral--the splendid white velvet casket Mr. Gillis had insisted on
having for Ruby--"the Gillises must always make a splurge, even at
funerals," quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde--Herb Spencer's sad face, the
uncontrolled, hysteric grief of one of Ruby's sisters--but Anne would
not talk of these things. She seemed wrapped in a reverie in which Diana
felt lonesomely that she had neither lot nor part.

"Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh," said Davy suddenly. "Will she
laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea, Anne? I want to know."

"Yes, I think she will," said Anne.

"Oh, Anne," protested Diana, with a rather shocked smile.

"Well, why not, Diana?" asked Anne seriously. "Do you think we'll never
laugh in heaven?"

"Oh--I--I don't know" floundered Diana. "It doesn't seem just right,
somehow. You know it's rather dreadful to laugh in church."

"But heaven won't be like church--all the time," said Anne.

"I hope it ain't," said Davy emphatically. "If it is I don't want to
go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don't mean to go for ever so long. I
mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas Blewett of White
Sands. He says he's lived so long 'cause he always smoked tobacco and it
killed all the germs. Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?"

"No, Davy, I hope you'll never use tobacco," said Anne absently.

"What'll you feel like if the germs kill me then?" demanded Davy.

Chapter XV

A Dream Turned Upside Down