first ten at least, so that she might see Matthew's
kindly brown eyes gleam with pride in her achievement. That, she
felt, would be a sweet reward indeed for all her hard work and patient
grubbing among unimaginative equations and conjugations.

At the end of the fortnight Anne took to "haunting" the post office
also, in the distracted company of Jane, Ruby, and Josie, opening the
Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings
as bad as any experienced during the Entrance week. Charlie and Gilbert
were not above doing this too, but Moody Spurgeon stayed resolutely
away.

"I haven't got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood,"
he told Anne. "I'm just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me
suddenly whether I've passed or not."

When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Anne began
to feel that she really couldn't stand the strain much longer. Her
appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished.
Mrs. Lynde wanted to know what else you could expect with a Tory
superintendent of education at the head of affairs, and Matthew, noting
Anne's paleness and indifference and the lagging steps that bore her
home from the post office every afternoon, began seriously to wonder if
he hadn't better vote Grit at the next election.

But one evening the news came. Anne was sitting at her open window,
for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the
world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with
flower breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the
stir of poplars. The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink
from the reflection of the west, and Anne was wondering dreamily if the
spirit of color looked like that, when she saw Diana come flying
down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the slope, with a
fluttering newspaper in her hand.

Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The
pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt
her. She could not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana
came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even
knocking, so great was her excitement.

"Anne, you've passed," she cried, "passed the VERY FIRST--you and
Gilbert both--you're ties--but your name is first. Oh, I'm so proud!"

Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne's bed, utterly
breathless and incap