thing eatable
around, Anne? I'm literally starving. Ah, I guessed likely Marilla'd
load you up with cake. That's why I called round. Otherwise I'd have
gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley. He boards
same place as I do, and he's a sport. He noticed you in class today, and
asked me who the red-headed girl was. I told him you were an orphan that
the Cuthberts had adopted, and nobody knew very much about what you'd
been before that."

Anne was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more
satisfactory than Josie Pye's companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared,
each with an inch of Queen's color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned
proudly to her coat. As Josie was not "speaking" to Jane just then she
had to subside into comparative harmlessness.

"Well," said Jane with a sigh, "I feel as if I'd lived many moons since
the morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old
professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply
couldn't settle down to study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the
traces of tears. If you've been crying DO own up. It will restore my
self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I
don't mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake?
You'll give me a teeny piece, won't you? Thank you. It has the real
Avonlea flavor."

Ruby, perceiving the Queen's calendar lying on the table, wanted to know
if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.

Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.

"Oh, that reminds me," said Josie, "Queen's is to get one of the Avery
scholarships after all. The word came today. Frank Stockley told me--his
uncle is one of the board of governors, you know. It will be announced
in the Academy tomorrow."

An Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more quickly, and the
horizons of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic. Before
Josie had told the news Anne's highest pinnacle of aspiration had been
a teacher's provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and
perhaps the medal! But now in one moment Anne saw herself winning
the Avery scholarship, taking an Arts course at Redmond College, and
graduating in a gown and mortar board, before the echo of Josie's words
had died away. For the Avery scholarship was in English, and Anne felt
that here her foot was on native heath.

A wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his
fortune to endow