Chapter XXVIII

CHAPTER XXVIII

An Unfortunate Lily Maid

OF course you must be Elaine, Anne," said Diana. "I could never
have the courage to float down there."

"Nor I," said Ruby Gillis, with a shiver. "I don't mind floating
down when there's two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up.
It's fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn't.
I'd die really of fright."

"Of course it would be romantic," conceded Jane Andrews, "but I
know I couldn't keep still. I'd be popping up every minute or so
to see where I was and if I wasn't drifting too far out. And you
know, Anne, that would spoil the effect."

"But it's so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," mourned
Anne. "I'm not afraid to float down and I'd love to be Elaine.
But it's ridiculous just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine
because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair--
Elaine had 'all her bright hair streaming down,' you know.
And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot
be a lily maid."

"Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby's," said Diana
earnestly, "and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to
be before you cut it."

"Oh, do you really think so?" exclaimed Anne, flushing
sensitively with delight. "I've sometimes thought it was
myself--but I never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell
me it wasn't. Do you think it could be called auburn now, Diana?"

"Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking
admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over
Anne's head and were held in place by a very jaunty black
velvet ribbon and bow.

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope,
where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the
bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the
water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby
and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and
Anne had come over to play with them.

Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on
and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell
having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back
pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among the stumps and wept,
not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily
consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of
thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish
amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports
to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout
over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about
in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne's idea that they