Fortunately Mrs. Lynde came driving up the lane at this moment and Marilla made off, feeling that she had escaped from the snare of the fowler, and wishing devoutly that Mr. Bell were not quite so highly figurative in his public petitions, especially in the hearing of small boys who were always “wanting to know.”

Anne, left alone in her glory, worked with a will.  The floor was swept, the beds made, the hens fed, the muslin dress washed and hung out on the line.  Then Anne prepared for the transfer of feathers.  She mounted to the garret and donned the first old dress that came to hand . . . a navy blue cashmere she had worn at fourteen.  It was decidedly on the short side and as “skimpy” as the notable wincey Anne had worn upon the occasion of her debut at Green Gables; but at least it would not be materially injured by down and feathers.  Anne completed her toilet by tying a big red and white spotted handkerchief that had belonged to Matthew over her head, and, thus accoutred, betook herself to the kitchen chamber, whither Marilla, before her departure, had helped her carry the feather bed.

A cracked mirror hung by the chamber window and in an unlucky moment Anne looked into it.  There were those seven freckles on her nose, more rampant than ever, or so it seemed in the glare of light from the unshaded window.

“Oh, I forgot to rub that lotion on last night,” she thought.  “I’d better run down to the pantry and do it now.”

Anne had already suffered many things trying to remove those freckles.  On one occasion the entire skin had peeled off her nose but the freckles remained.  A few days previously she had found a recipe for a freckle lotion in a magazine and, as the ingredients were within her reach, she straightway compounded it, much to the disgust of Marilla, who thought that if Providence had placed freckles on your nose it was your bounden duty to leave them there.

Anne scurried down to the pantry, which, always dim from the big willow growing close to the window, was now almost dark by reason of the shade drawn to exclude flies.  Anne caught the bottle containing the lotion from the shelf and copiously anointed her nose therewith by means of a little sponge sacred to the purpose.  This important duty done, she returned to her work.  Any one who has ever shifted feathers from one tick to another will not need to be told that when Anne finished she was a sight to behold.  Her dress was white with down and fluff, and her front hair, escaping from under the handkerchief, was adorned with a veritable halo of feathers.  At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door.

“That must be Mr. Shearer,” thought Anne.  “I’m in a dreadful mess but I’ll have to run down as I am, for he’s always in a hurry.”

Down flew Anne to the kitchen door.  If ever a charitable floor did open to swallow up a miserable, befeathered damsel the Green Gables porch floor should promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment.  On the doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant, golden and fair in silk attire, a short, stout gray-haired lady in a tweed suit, and another lady, tall stately, wonderfully gowned, with a beautiful, highbred face and large, black-lashed violet eyes, whom Anne “instinctively felt,” as she would have said in her earlier days, to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan.