Chapter XXVI

CHAPTER XXVI

The Story Club Is Formed

Junior Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence
again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat,
stale, and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had
been sipping for weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet
pleasures of those faraway days before the concert? At first, as
she told Diana, she did not really think she could.

"I'm positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the
same again as it was in those olden days," she said mournfully,
as if referring to a period of at least fifty years back.
"Perhaps after a while I'll get used to it, but I'm afraid
concerts spoil people for everyday life. I suppose that is why
Marilla disapproves of them. Marilla is such a sensible woman.
It must be a great deal better to be sensible; but still, I don't
believe I'd really want to be a sensible person, because they are
so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no danger of my ever
being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now that I may
grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because I'm
tired. I simply couldn't sleep last night for ever so long. I
just lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again.
That's one splendid thing about such affairs--it's so lovely to
look back to them."

Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old
groove and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert
left traces. Ruby Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over
a point of precedence in their platform seats, no longer sat at
the same desk, and a promising friendship of three years was
broken up. Josie Pye and Julia Bell did not "speak" for three
months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright that Julia Bell's
bow when she got up to recite made her think of a chicken jerking
its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Sloanes would have
any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared that
the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes
had retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little
they had to do properly. Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody
Spurgeon MacPherson, because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne
Shirley put on airs about her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon
was "licked"; consequently Moody Spurgeon's sister, Ella May,
would not "speak" to Anne Shirley all the rest of the winter.
With the exception of these trifling frictions, work in Miss
Stacy's little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter,
with so little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly
every day by way of the Birch Path. On Anne's birthday they were
tripping