Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But as “things seen are mightier than things heard,” or suspected, the realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the shock of perfect surprise. This was succeeded by a queer, little lonely feeling … as if, somehow, Diana had gone forward into a new world, shutting a gate behind her, leaving Anne on the outside.
“Things are changing so fast it almost frightens me,” Anne thought, a little sadly. “And I’m afraid that this can’t help making some difference between Diana and me. I’m sure I can’t tell her all my secrets after this … she might tell Fred. And what can she see in Fred? He’s very nice and jolly … but he’s just Fred Wright.”
It is always a very puzzling question … what can somebody see in somebody else? But how fortunate after all that it is so, for if everybody saw alike … well, in that case, as the old Indian said, “Everybody would want my squaw.” It was plain that Diana did see something in Fred Wright, however Anne’s eyes might be holden. Diana came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the east gable. Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.
“I’m so happy,” said Diana, “but it does seem ridiculous to think of me being engaged.”
“What is it really like to be engaged?” asked Anne curiously.
“Well, that all depends on who you’re engaged to,” answered Diana, with that maddening air of superior wisdom always assumed by those who are engaged over those who are not. “It’s perfectly lovely to be engaged to Fred … but I think it would be simply horrid to be engaged to anyone else.”
“There’s not much comfort for the rest of us in that, seeing that there is only one Fred,” laughed Anne.
“Oh, Anne, you don’t understand,” said Diana in vexation. “I didn’t mean that … it’s so hard to explain. Never mind, you’ll understand sometime, when your own turn comes.”
“Bless you, dearest of Dianas, I understand now. What is an imagination for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people’s eyes?”
“You must be my bridesmaid, you know, Anne. Promise me that … wherever you may be when I’m married.”
“I’ll come from the ends of the earth if necessary,” promised Anne solemnly.
“Of course, it won’t be for ever so long yet,” said Diana, blushing. “Three years at the very least … for I’m only eighteen and mother says no daughter of hers shall be married before she’s twenty-one. Besides, Fred’s father is going to buy the Abraham Fletcher farm for him and he says he’s got to have it two thirds paid for before he’ll give it to him in his own name. But three years isn’t any too much time to get ready for housekeeping, for I haven’t a speck of fancy work made yet. But I’m going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow. Myra Gillis had thirty-seven doilies when she was married and I’m determined I shall have as many as she had.”
“I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only thirty-six doilies,” conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.
Diana looked hurt.
“I didn’t think you’d make fun of me, Anne,” she said reproachfully.
“Dearest, I wasn’t making fun of you,” cried Anne repentantly. “I was only teasing you a bit. I think you’ll make the sweetest little housekeeper in the world. And I think it’s perfectly lovely of you to be planning already for your home o’ dreams.”
Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, “home o’ dreams,” than it captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish Gilbert’s image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her “home o’dreams” was built and furnished before Diana spoke again.
“I suppose, Anne, you must think it’s funny I should like Fred so well when he’s so different from the kind of man I’ve always said I would marry … the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn’t want Fred to be tall and slender … because, don’t you see, he wouldn’t be Fred then. Of course,” added Diana rather dolefully, “we will be a dreadfully pudgy couple. But after all that’s better than one of us being short and fat and the other tall and lean, like Morgan Sloane and his wife. Mrs. Lynde says it always makes her think of the long and short of it when she sees them together.”
“Well,” said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair before her gilt framed mirror, “I am glad Diana is so happy and satisfied. But when my turn comes … if it ever does … I do hope there’ll be something a little more thrilling about it. But then Diana thought so too, once. I’ve heard her say time and again she’d never get engaged any poky commonplace way … he’d have to do something splendid to win her. But she has changed. Perhaps I’ll change too. But I won’t … I’m determined I won’t. Oh, I think these engagements are dreadfully unsettling things when they happen to your intimate friends.”
XXX
A Wedding at the Stone House
The last week in August came. Miss Lavendar was to be married in it. Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College. In a week’s time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move
