ANNE’S homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her

weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea

students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday

night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on

hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party.

Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in

the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond,

were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.

Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her

satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking

herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long

as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had

to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes,

a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great

deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of

life frankly.

“But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,”

whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not

have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,

too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert

to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and

ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem

the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.

There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys

were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good

comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared

how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius

for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague

consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing

to round out one’s conceptions of companionship and furnish broader

standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her

feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought

that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the

crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and

merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening

around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever

young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to

get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane

Andrews that she didn’t understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said;

he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on

and for her part she didn’t think it any fun to be bothering about books

and that sort of thing when you didn’t have to. Frank Stockley had lots

more dash and go, but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert and

she really couldn’t decide which she liked best!

In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about

her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the

“rose-red” girl, Stella Maynard, and the “dream girl,” Priscilla Grant,

she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking

maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the

vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies,

as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne’s own.

After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home

on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen’s

scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and

the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of

individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was

admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down

to three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery

scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible

winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as

won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a

patched coat.

Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the

Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with

small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was

admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes

of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious

Jane--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie

Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in

attendance at Queen’s. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy’s old

pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.

Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense

as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the

class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no

longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the

proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It

would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be

insupportable if she did not.

In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times.

Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her

Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was,

as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the

vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the

latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical

old lady.

“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other

girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne

has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while

it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was

a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love

them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in

Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where

snow-wreaths lingered; and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in

the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen’s students thought and

talked only of examinations.

“It doesn’t seem possible that the term is nearly over,” said Anne.

“Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter

of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next

week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but

when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and

the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don’t seem half so

important.”

Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view

of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important

indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was

all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her

moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on

them--as the girls truly thought theirs did--you could not regard them

philosophically.

“I’ve lost seven pounds in the last two weeks,” sighed Jane. “It’s no

use to say don’t worry. I _will_ worry. Worrying helps you some--it

seems as if you were doing something when you’re worrying. It would be

dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen’s all winter

and spending so much money.”

“_I_ don’t care,” said Josie Pye. “If I don’t pass this year I’m coming

back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says

that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal

and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship.”

“That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie,” laughed Anne, “but just

now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out

all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns

are poking their heads up in Lovers’ Lane, it’s not a great deal of

difference whether I win the Avery or not. I’ve done my best and I begin

to understand what is meant by the ‘joy of the strife.’ Next to trying

and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don’t talk

about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses

and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark

beech-woods back of Avonlea.”

“What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?” asked Ruby

practically.

Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side

eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft

cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions,

looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome

of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden

tissue of youth’s own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its

possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of

promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.