le mean?"

"Diana is signaling for me to go over," laughed Anne. "You know we keep
up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants."

Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry
shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.

"There's a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways."

"There's a good deal more of the woman about her in others," retorted
Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.

But crispness was no longer Marilla's distinguishing characteristic. As
Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.

"Marilla Cuthbert has got MELLOW. That's what."

Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh
flowers on Matthew's grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered
there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place,
with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its
whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally
left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining
Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike
afterlight--"a haunt of ancient peace." There was a freshness in the
air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home
lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay
the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west
was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in
still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne's heart, and
she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.

"Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely, and I am glad to
be alive in you."

Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the
Blythe homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he
recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed
on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.

"Gilbert," she said, with scarlet cheeks, "I want to thank you for
giving up the school for me. It was very good of you--and I want you to
know that I appreciate it."

Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.

"It wasn't particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to be
able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after
this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?"

Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.