"I'm so glad my window looks east into the sunrising," said Anne, going
over to Diana. "It's so splendid to see the morning coming up over those
long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It's new every
morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest
sunshine. Oh, Diana, I love this little room so dearly. I don't know how
I'll get along without it when I go to town next month."

"Don't speak of your going away tonight," begged Diana. "I don't want to
think of it, it makes me so miserable, and I do want to have a good time
this evening. What are you going to recite, Anne? And are you nervous?"

"Not a bit. I've recited so often in public I don't mind at all now.
I've decided to give 'The Maiden's Vow.' It's so pathetic. Laura Spencer
is going to give a comic recitation, but I'd rather make people cry than
laugh."

"What will you recite if they encore you?"

"They won't dream of encoring me," scoffed Anne, who was not without her
own secret hopes that they would, and already visioned herself telling
Matthew all about it at the next morning's breakfast table. "There are
Billy and Jane now--I hear the wheels. Come on."

Billy Andrews insisted that Anne should ride on the front seat with him,
so she unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sit
back with the girls, where she could have laughed and chattered to her
heart's content. There was not much of either laughter or chatter
in Billy. He was a big, fat, stolid youth of twenty, with a round,
expressionless face, and a painful lack of conversational gifts. But he
admired Anne immensely, and was puffed up with pride over the prospect
of driving to White Sands with that slim, upright figure beside him.

Anne, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionally
passing a sop of civility to Billy--who grinned and chuckled and never
could think of any reply until it was too late--contrived to enjoy the
drive in spite of all. It was a night for enjoyment. The road was full
of buggies, all bound for the hotel, and laughter, silver clear, echoed
and reechoed along it. When they reached the hotel it was a blaze of
light from top to bottom. They were met by the ladies of the concert
committee, one of whom took Anne off to the performers' dressing room
which was filled with the members of a Charlottetown Symphony Club,
among whom Anne felt suddenly shy and frightened and countrified. Her
dress, which, in the ea