measured me at Ruby's party. I'm so glad you made my new dresses

longer. That dark-green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you
to put on the flounce. Of course I know it wasn't really

necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Josie Pye
has flounces on all her dresses. I know I'll be able to study

better because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling
deep down in my mind about that flounce."

"It's worth something to have that," admitted Marilla.
Miss Stacy came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils

eager for work once more. Especially did the Queen's class gird
up their loins for the fray, for at the end of the coming year,

dimly shadowing their pathway already, loomed up that fateful
thing known as "the Entrance," at the thought of which one and

all felt their hearts sink into their very shoes. Suppose they
did not pass! That thought was doomed to haunt Anne through the

waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the
almost entire exclusion of moral and theological problems. When

Anne had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably at pass
lists of the Entrance exams, where Gilbert Blythe's name was

blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.
But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork

was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New
worlds of thought, feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating

fields of unexplored knowledge seemed to be opening out before
Anne's eager eyes.

"Hills peeped o'er hill and Alps on Alps arose."
Much of all this was due to Miss Stacy's tactful, careful,

broadminded guidance. She led her class to think and explore and
discover for themselves and encouraged straying from the old

beaten paths to a degree that quite shocked Mrs. Lynde and the
school trustees, who viewed all innovations on established

methods rather dubiously.
Apart from her studies Anne expanded socially, for Marilla,

mindful of the Spencervale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed
occasional outings. The Debating Club flourished and gave

several concerts; there were one or two parties almost verging on
grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and skating frolics galore.

Betweentimes Anne grew, shooting up so rapidly that Marilla was
astonished one day, when they were standing side by side, to find

the girl was taller than herself.
"Why, Anne, how you've grown!" she said, almost unbelievingly. A

sigh followed on the words. Marilla felt a queer regret over
Anne's inches. The child she had learned to love had vanished

somehow and here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen,
with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in

her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the
child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss.

And that night, when Anne had gone to prayer meeting with Diana,
Marilla sat alone in the wintrytwilight and indulged in the

weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her
at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to

laugh through her tears.
"I was thinking about Anne," she explained. "She's got to be

such a big girl--and she'll probably be away from us next winter.
I'll miss her terrible."

"She'll be able to come home often," comforted Matthew, to whom
Anne was as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had

brought home from Bright River on that June evening four years before.
"The branch railroad will be built to Carmody by that time."

"It won't be the same thing as having her here all the time,"
sighed Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief

uncomforted. "But there--men can't understand these things!"
There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change.

For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the
more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less.

Marilla noticed and commented on this also.
"You don't chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use

half as many big words. What has come over you?"
Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked

dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out
on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.

"I don't know--I don't want to talk as much," she said, denting her
chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. "It's nicer to think dear,

pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures.
I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.

And somehow I don't want to use big words any more.
It's almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really growing

big enough to say them if I did want to. It's fun to be
almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun

I expected, Marilla. There's so much to learn and do and think
that there isn't time for big words. Besides, Miss Stacy says

the short ones are much stronger and better. She makes us write
all our essays as simply as possible. It was hard at first.

I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could
think of--and I thought of any number of them. But I've got

used to it now and I see it's so much better."
"What has become of your story club? I haven't heard you speak

of it for a long time."
"The story club isn't in existence any longer. We hadn't time

for it--and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly
to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries.

Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story for training in
composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might

happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very
sharply and makes us criticize our own too. I never thought my

compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them
myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether, but

Miss Stacy said I could learn to write well if I only trained
myself to be my own severest critic. And so I am trying to."

"You've only two more months before the Entrance," said Marilla.
"Do you think you'll be able to get through?"

Anne shivered.
"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'll be all right--and then I

get horribly afraid. We've studied hard and Miss Stacy has
drilled us thoroughly, but we mayn't get through for all that.

We've each got a stumbling block. Mine is geometry of course,
and Jane's is Latin, and Ruby and Charlie's is algebra, and

Josie's is arithmetic. Moody Spurgeon says he feels it in his
bones that he is going to fail in English history. Miss Stacy is

going to give us examinations in June just as hard as we'll have at
the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so we'll have some idea.

I wish it was all over, Marilla. It haunts me. Sometimes I wake up
in the night and wonder what I'll do if I don't pass."

"Why, go to school next year and try again," said Marilla unconcernedly.
"Oh, I don't believe I'd have the heart for it. It would be such

a disgrace to fail, especially if Gil--if the others passed. And
I get so nervous in an examination that I'm likely to make a mess

of it. I wish I had nerves like Jane Andrews. Nothing rattles her."
Anne sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the

spring world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green
things upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in

her book. There would be other springs, but if she did not
succeed in passing the Entrance, Anne felt convinced that she

would never recover sufficiently to enjoy them.
CHAPTER XXXII