of the
Freshman football team?"

"Yes, he told us so last evening," said Priscilla, seeing that outraged
Anne would not answer. "He and Charlie were down. We knew they were
coming, so we painstakingly put out of sight or out of reach all Miss
Ada's cushions. That very elaborate one with the raised embroidery I
dropped on the floor in the corner behind the chair it was on. I thought
it would be safe there. But would you believe it? Charlie Sloane made
for that chair, noticed the cushion behind it, solemnly fished it up,
and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck of a cushion as it was!
Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh, so reproachfully,
why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told her I hadn't--that it was
a matter of predestination coupled with inveterate Sloanishness and I
wasn't a match for both combined."

"Miss Ada's cushions are really getting on my nerves," said Anne. "She
finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch
of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to
put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They
topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the
dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those
exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and for all those
who live in houses where cushions are loved not wisely but too well!'
There! we're ready, and I see the boys coming through Old St. John's. Do
you cast in your lot with us, Phil?"

"I'll go, if I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie. That will be a
bearable degree of gooseberry. That Gilbert of yours is a darling, Anne,
but why does he go around so much with Goggle-eyes?"

Anne stiffened. She had no great liking for Charlie Sloane; but he was
of Avonlea, so no outsider had any business to laugh at him.

"Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends," she said coldly.
"Charlie is a nice boy. He's not to blame for his eyes."

"Don't tell me that! He is! He must have done something dreadful in a
previous existence to be punished with such eyes. Pris and I are going
to have such sport with him this afternoon. We'll make fun of him to his
face and he'll never know it."

Doubtless, "the abandoned P's," as Anne called them, did carry out their
amiable intentions. But Sloane was blissfully ignorant; he thought he
was quite a fine fellow to be walking with two such coeds, especially
Philippa Gordon, the clas