ntirely different
thing. "I think Avonlea is a lovely place; and the people in it are very
nice, too."

"I guess you've got a spice of temper," commented Mr. Harrison,
surveying the flushed cheeks and indignant eyes opposite him. "It goes
with hair like yours, I reckon. Avonlea is a pretty decent place or I
wouldn't have located here; but I suppose even you will admit that it
has SOME faults?"

"I like it all the better for them," said loyal Anne. "I don't like
places or people either that haven't any faults. I think a truly perfect
person would be very uninteresting. Mrs. Milton White says she never met
a perfect person, but she's heard enough about one . . . her husband's
first wife. Don't you think it must be very uncomfortable to be married
to a man whose first wife was perfect?"

"It would be more uncomfortable to be married to the perfect wife,"
declared Mr. Harrison, with a sudden and inexplicable warmth.

When tea was over Anne insisted on washing the dishes, although Mr.
Harrison assured her that there were enough in the house to do for weeks
yet. She would dearly have loved to sweep the floor also, but no broom
was visible and she did not like to ask where it was for fear there
wasn't one at all.

"You might run across and talk to me once in a while," suggested Mr.
Harrison when she was leaving. "'Tisn't far and folks ought to be
neighborly. I'm kind of interested in that society of yours. Seems to me
there'll be some fun in it. Who are you going to tackle first?"

"We are not going to meddle with PEOPLE . . . it is only PLACES we mean to
improve," said Anne, in a dignified tone. She rather suspected that Mr.
Harrison was making fun of the project.

When she had gone Mr. Harrison watched her from the window . . . a lithe,
girlish shape, tripping lightheartedly across the fields in the sunset
afterglow.

"I'm a crusty, lonesome, crabbed old chap," he said aloud, "but there's
something about that little girl makes me feel young again . . . and it's
such a pleasant sensation I'd like to have it repeated once in a while."

"Redheaded snippet," croaked Ginger mockingly.

Mr. Harrison shook his fist at the parrot.

"You ornery bird," he muttered, "I almost wish I'd wrung your neck when
my brother the sailor brought you home. Will you never be done getting
me into trouble?"

Anne ran home blithely and recounted her adventures to Marilla, who had
been not a little alarmed by her long absence and was on