n the far end of the
grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a
wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity
of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Anne could run like a deer,
however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys
at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr.
Phillips was in the act of hanging up his hat.

Mr. Phillips's brief reforming energy was over; he didn't want the
bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something
to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it
in Anne, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a
forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a
particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.

"Anne Shirley, since you seem to be so fond of the boys' company we
shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon," he said sarcastically.
"Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Gilbert Blythe."

The other boys snickered. Diana, turning pale with pity, plucked the
wreath from Anne's hair and squeezed her hand. Anne stared at the master
as if turned to stone.

"Did you hear what I said, Anne?" queried Mr. Phillips sternly.

"Yes, sir," said Anne slowly "but I didn't suppose you really meant it."

"I assure you I did"--still with the sarcastic inflection which all the
children, and Anne especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. "Obey me at
once."

For a moment Anne looked as if she meant to disobey. Then, realizing
that there was no help for it, she rose haughtily, stepped across the
aisle, sat down beside Gilbert Blythe, and buried her face in her arms
on the desk. Ruby Gillis, who got a glimpse of it as it went down,
told the others going home from school that she'd "acksually never seen
anything like it--it was so white, with awful little red spots in it."

To Anne, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be
singled out for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it
was worse still to be sent to sit with a boy, but that that boy should
be Gilbert Blythe was heaping insult on injury to a degree utterly
unbearable. Anne felt that she could not bear it and it would be of
no use to try. Her whole being seethed with shame and anger and
humiliation.

At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged.
But as Anne never lifted her head and as Gilbert worked fractions