oked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to
make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, 'Oh, you
POOR little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other
trees all around you and little mosses and Junebells growing over your
roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in you branches, you
could grow, couldn't you? But you can't where you are. I know just
exactly how you feel, little trees.' I felt sorry to leave them behind
this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don't you? Is
there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Spencer
that."

"Well now, yes, there's one right below the house."

"Fancy. It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I
never expected I would, though. Dreams don't often come true, do they?
Wouldn't it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly
perfectly happy. I can't feel exactly perfectly happy because--well,
what color would you call this?"

She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and
held it up before Matthew's eyes. Matthew was not used to deciding on
the tints of ladies' tresses, but in this case there couldn't be much
doubt.

"It's red, ain't it?" he said.

The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from
her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.

"Yes, it's red," she said resignedly. "Now you see why I can't be
perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don't mind the other
things so much--the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I
can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf
complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I CANNOT imagine that red
hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, 'Now my hair is a glorious
black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I KNOW it is just
plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow. I read
of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn't red
hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow. What
is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?"

"Well now, I'm afraid I can't," said Matthew, who was getting a little
dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy
had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.

"Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was
divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it