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waist. She looks vivid and red-rosy; there's that pale, fair

one gazing out of the window. She has lovely hair, and looks
as if she knew a thing or two about dreams. I'd like to know

them both--know them well--well enough to walk with my arm
about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just now I

don't know them and they don't know me, and probably don't
want to know me particularly. Oh, it's lonesome!"

It was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in
her hall bedroom that night at twilight. She was not to

board with the other girls, who all had relatives in town to
take pity on them. Miss Josephine Barry would have liked

to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the Academy
that it was out of the question; so miss Barry hunted up a

boarding-house, assuring Matthew and Marilla that it was
the very place for Anne.

"The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman,"
explained Miss Barry. "Her husband was a British officer,

and she is very careful what sort of boarders she takes.
Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons under

her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the
Academy, in a quiet neighborhood."

All this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so,
but it did not materially help Anne in the first agony

of homesickness that seized upon her. She looked dismally
about her narrow little room, with its dull-papered,

pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty book-
case; and a horrible choke came into her throat as she

thought of her own white room at Green Gables, where
she would have the pleasant consciousness of a great green

still outdoors, of sweet peas growing in the garden, and
moonlight falling on the orchard, of the brook below the

slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind
beyond it, of a vast starry sky, and the light from Diana's

window shining out through the gap in the trees. Here
there was nothing of this; Anne knew that outside of her

window was a hard street, with a network of telephone
wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a

thousand lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that
she was going to cry, and fought against it.

"I WON'T cry. It's silly--and weak--there's the third
tear splashing down by my nose. There are more coming!

I must think of something funny to stop them. But there's
nothing funny except what is connected with Avonlea, and

that only makes things worse--four--five--I'm going home
next Friday, but that seems a hundred years away. Oh,

Matthew is nearly home by now--and Marilla is at the
gate, looking down the lane for him--six--seven--eight--

oh, there's no use in counting them! They're coming in a
flood presently. I can't cheer up--I don't WANT to cheer

up. It's nicer to be miserable!"
The flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not

Josie Pye appeared at that moment. In the joy of seeing
a familiar face Anne forgot that there had never been much

love lost between her and Josie. As a part of Avonlea life
even a Pye was welcome.

"I'm so glad you came up," Anne said sincerely.
"You've been crying," remarked Josie, with aggravating pity.

"I suppose you're homesick--some people have so little
self-control in that respect. I've no intention of being

homesick, I can tell you. Town's too jolly after that poky
old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so long.

You shouldn't cry, Anne; it isn't becoming, for your
nose and eyes get red, and then you seem ALL red. I'd a

perfectly scrumptious time in the Academy today. Our French
professor is simply a duck. His moustache would give you

kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable around,
Anne? I'm literally starving. Ah, I guessed likely Marilla'd

load you up with cake. That's why I called round. Otherwise
I'd have gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank

Stockley. He boards same place as I do, and he's a sport.
He noticed you in class today, and asked me who the red-headed

girl was. I told him you were an orphan that the Cuthberts
had adopted, and nobody knew very much about what you'd been

before that."
Anne was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were

not more satisfactory than Josie Pye's companionship when
Jane and Ruby appeared, each with an inch of Queen's

color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned proudly to her
coat. As Josie was not "speaking" to Jane just then she had

to subside into comparative harmlessness.
"Well," said Jane with a sigh, "I feel as if I'd lived many

moons since the morning. I ought to be home studying my
Virgil--that horrid old professor gave us twenty lines to

start in on tomorrow. But I simply couldn't settle down to
study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the traces of tears. If

you've been crying DO own up. It will restore my self-respect,
for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I

don't mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey,
too. Cake? You'll give me a teeny piece, won't you? Thank

you. It has the real Avonlea flavor."
Ruby, perceiving the Queen's calendar lying on the table,

wanted to know if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.
Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.

"Oh, that reminds me," said Josie, "Queen's is to get one
of the Avery scholarships after all. The word came today.

Frank Stockley told me--his uncle is one of the board of
governors, you know. It will be announced in the

Academy tomorrow."
An Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more

quickly, and the horizons of her ambition shifted and
broadened as if by magic. Before Josie had told the news

Anne's highest pinnacle of aspiration had been a teacher's
provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and

perhaps the medal! But now in one moment Anne saw herself
winning the Avery scholarship, taking an Arts course at

Redmond College, and graduating in a gown and mortar board,
before the echo of Josie's words had died away. For the

Avery scholarship was in English, and Anne felt that here
her foot was on native heath.???

A wealthymanufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left
part of his fortune to endow a large number of scholarships

to be distributed among the various high schools and academies
of the Maritime Provinces, according to their respective

standings. There had been much doubt whether one would be
allotted to Queen's, but the matter was settled at last, and

at the end of the year the graduate who made the highest mark
in English and English Literature would win the scholarship--

two hundred and fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond
College. No wonder that Anne went to bed that night with

tingling cheeks!
"I'll win that scholarship if hard work can do it," she

resolved. "Wouldn't Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.?
Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have

such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them--
that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one

ambition you see another one glittering higher up still.
It does make life so interesting."

CHAPTER XXXV
The Winter at Queen's

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 criticalminority in favor of Anne Shirley.
Ethel Marr was admitted by all competent judges to have the most



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