Chapter XXXIV - Page 2

pruned down and branched out.
The real ME--back here--is just the same. It won't make a
bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly;
at heart I shall always be your little Anne, who will love
you and Matthew and dear Green Gables more and better every
day of her life."

Anne laid her fresh young cheek against Marilla's faded
one, and reached out a hand to pat Matthew's shoulder.
Marilla would have given much just then to have possessed
Anne's power of putting her feelings into words; but nature
and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her
arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart,
wishing that she need never let her go.

Matthew, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up
and went out-of-doors. Under the stars of the blue summer
night he walked agitatedly across the yard to the gate
under the poplars.

"Well now, I guess she ain't been much spoiled," he
muttered, proudly. "I guess my putting in my oar occasional
never did much harm after all. She's smart and pretty,
and loving, too, which is better than all the rest.
She's been a blessing to us, and there never was a
luckier mistake than what Mrs. Spencer made--if it WAS luck.
I don't believe it was any such thing. It was Providence,
because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon."

The day finally came when Anne must go to town. She
and Matthew drove in one fine September morning, after a
tearful parting with Diana and an untearful practical one--
on Marilla's side at least--with Marilla. But when Anne
had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach
picnic at White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins,
where she contrived to enjoy herself tolerably well; while
Marilla plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and kept at
it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache--the
ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in
ready tears. But that night, when Marilla went to bed,
acutely and miserably conscious that the little gable room
at the end of the hall was untenanted by any vivid young
life and unstirred by any soft breathing, she buried her
face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in a passion of
sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough to reflect
how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful
fellow creature.

Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town
just in time to hurry off to the Academy. That first day
passed pleasantly enough in a whirl of excitement, meeting
all the new students, learning to know the professors by
sight and being assorted and organized into classes.
Anne intended taking up the Second Year work being advised
to do so by Miss Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to