o pat Matthew's shoulder. Marilla would have given much just
then to have possessed Anne's power of putting her feelings into words;
but nature and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her
arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing
that she need never let her go.

Matthew, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went
out-of-doors. Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked
agitatedly across the yard to the gate under the poplars.

"Well now, I guess she ain't been much spoiled," he muttered, proudly.
"I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm after all.
She's smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the
rest. She's been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake
than what Mrs. Spencer made--if it WAS luck. I don't believe it was any
such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I
reckon."

The day finally came when Anne must go to town. She and Matthew drove
in one fine September morning, after a tearful parting with Diana and an
untearful practical one--on Marilla's side at least--with Marilla. But
when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at
White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived
to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into
unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of
heartache--the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away
in ready tears. But that night, when Marilla went to bed, acutely and
miserably conscious that the little gable room at the end of the
hall was untenanted by any vivid young life and unstirred by any soft
breathing, she buried her face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in
a passion of sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough to reflect
how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful fellow creature.

Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to
hurry off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a
whirl of excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the
professors by sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Anne
intended taking up the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss
Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to do the same. This meant getting a
First Class teacher's license in one year instead of two, if they were
successful; but it also meant much more an