Chapter XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIII

The Hotel Concert

Put on your white organdy, by all means, Anne," advised Diana decidedly.

They were together in the east gable chamber; outside it was
only twilight--a lovely yellowish-green twilight with a clear-blue
cloudless sky. A big round moon, slowly deepening from her
pallid luster into burnished silver, hung over the Haunted Wood;
the air was full of sweet summer sounds--sleepy birds twittering,
freakish breezes, faraway voices and laughter. But in Anne's room
the blind was drawn and the lamp lighted, for an important toilet
was being made.

The east gable was a very different place from what it had been
on that night four years before, when Anne had felt its bareness
penetrate to the marrow of her spirit with its inhospitable chill.
Changes had crept in, Marilla conniving at them resignedly, until
it was as sweet and dainty a nest as a young girl could desire.

The velvet carpet with the pink roses and the pink silk curtains
of Anne's early visions had certainly never materialized; but her
dreams had kept pace with her growth, and it is not probable she
lamented them. The floor was covered with a pretty matting, and
the curtains that softened the high window and fluttered in the
vagrant breezes were of pale-green art muslin. The walls, hung
not with gold and silver brocade tapestry, but with a dainty
apple-blossom paper, were adorned with a few good pictures given
Anne by Mrs. Allan. Miss Stacy's photograph occupied the place
of honor, and Anne made a sentimental point of keeping fresh
flowers on the bracket under it. Tonight a spike of white lilies
faintly perfumed the room like the dream of a fragrance. There
was no "mahogany furniture," but there was a white-painted
bookcase filled with books, a cushioned wicker rocker, a toilet
table befrilled with white muslin, a quaint, gilt-framed mirror
with chubby pink Cupids and purple grapes painted over its arched
top, that used to hang in the spare room, and a low white bed.

Anne was dressing for a concert at the White Sands Hotel.
The guests had got it up in aid of the Charlottetown hospital,
and had hunted out all the available amateur talent in the
surrounding districts to help it along. Bertha Sampson and
Pearl Clay of the White Sands Baptist choir had been asked to
sing a duet; Milton Clark of Newbridge was to give a violin solo;
Winnie Adella Blair of Carmody was to sing a Scotch ballad; and Laura
Spencer of Spencervale and Anne Shirley of Avonlea were to recite.

As Anne would have said at one time, it was "an epoch in her life,"
and she was deliciously athrill with the excitement of it.
Matthew was in the seventh heaven of gratified pride over the
honor conferred on his Anne