“He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals in and wakens me with a kiss every morning. Then all day he plays here in the garden … and I play with him. Such games as we have. We run races and talk with the echoes; and I tell him stories. And when twilight comes …”
“I know,” interrupted Paul eagerly. “He comes and sits beside you … so … because of course at twelve he’d be too big to climb into your lap … and lays his head on your shoulder … so … and you put your arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your cheek on his head … yes, that’s the very way. Oh, you do know, Miss Lavendar.”
Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house, and something in Miss Lavendar’s face made her hate to disturb them.
“I’m afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark. Miss Lavendar, I’m going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole week pretty soon.”
“If you come for a week I’ll keep you for two,” threatened Miss Lavendar.
XXVIII
The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
The last day of school came and went. A triumphant “semiannual examination” was held and Anne’s pupils acquitted themselves splendidly. At the close they gave her an address and a writing desk. All the girls and ladies present cried, and some of the boys had it cast up to them later on that they cried too, although they always denied it.
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell walked home together and talked things over.
“I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem so much attached to her,” sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit of sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way. “To be sure,” she added hastily, “we all know we’ll have a good teacher next year too.”
“Jane will do her duty, I’ve no doubt,” said Mrs. Andrews rather stiffly. “I don’t suppose she’ll tell the children quite so many fairy tales or spend so much time roaming about the woods with them. But she has her name on the Inspector’s Roll of Honour and the Newbridge people are in a terrible state over her leaving.”
“I’m real glad Anne is going to college,” said Mrs. Bell. “She has always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Andrews was determined not to agree fully with anybody that day. “I don’t see that Anne needs any more education. She’ll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his infatuation for her lasts till he gets through college, and what good will Latin and Greek do her then? If they taught you at college how to manage a man there might be some sense in her going.”
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never learned how to manage her “man,” and as a result the Andrews household was not exactly a model of domestic happiness.
“I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the Presbytery,” said Mrs. Bell. “That means we’ll be losing him soon, I suppose.”
“They’re not going before September,” said Mrs. Sloane. “It will be a great loss to the community … though I always did think that Mrs. Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister’s wife. But we are none of us perfect. Did you notice how neat and snug Mr. Harrison looked today? I never saw such a changed man. He goes to church every Sunday and has subscribed to the salary.”
“Hasn’t that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?” said Mrs. Andrews. “He was such a mite for his age when he came here. I declare I hardly knew him today. He’s getting to look a lot like his father.”
“He’s a very smart boy,” said Mrs. Bell.
“He’s smart enough, but” … Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice … “I believe he tells queer stories. Gracie came home from school one day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about people who lived down at the shore … stories there couldn’t be a word of truth in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them, and she said Paul didn’t intend her to. But if he didn’t what did he tell them to her for?”
“Anne says Paul is a genius,” said Mrs. Sloane.
“He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans,” said Mrs. Andrews. Mrs. Andrews’ only acquaintance with the word “genius” was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual “a queer genius.” She probably thought, with Mary Joe, that it meant a person with something wrong in his upper story.
Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had sat on the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils that for a moment college had lost all its charm. She still felt the clasp of Annetta Bell’s arms about her neck and heard the childish wail, “I’ll never love any teacher as much as you, Miss Shirley, never, never.”
For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much more … lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of childish hearts. Perhaps
