These two decisions being noised abroad speedily ousted the arrival of Mrs. Harrison in popular gossip.  Sage heads were shaken over Marilla Cuthbert’s rash step in asking Mrs. Rachel to live with her.  People opined that they wouldn’t get on together.  They were both “too fond of their own way,” and many doleful predictions were made, none of which disturbed the parties in question at all.  They had come to a clear and distinct understanding of the respective duties and rights of their new arrangements and meant to abide by them.

“I won’t meddle with you nor you with me,” Mrs. Rachel had said decidedly, “and as for the twins, I’ll be glad to do all I can for them; but I won’t undertake to answer Davy’s questions, that’s what.  I’m not an encyclopedia, neither am I a Philadelphia lawyer.  You’ll miss Anne for that.”

“Sometimes Anne’s answers were about as queer as Davy’s questions,” said Marilla drily.  “The twins will miss her and no mistake; but her future can’t be sacrificed to Davy’s thirst for information.  When he asks questions I can’t answer I’ll just tell him children should be seen and not heard.  That was how I was brought up, and I don’t know but what it was just as good a way as all these new-fangled notions for training children.”

“Well, Anne’s methods seem to have worked fairly well with Davy,” said Mrs. Lynde smilingly.  “He is a reformed character, that’s what.”

“He isn’t a bad little soul,” conceded Marilla.  “I never expected to get as fond of those children as I have.  Davy gets round you somehow . . . and Dora is a lovely child, although she is . . . kind of . . . well, kind of . . .”

“Monotonous?  Exactly,” supplied Mrs. Rachel.  “Like a book where every page is the same, that’s what.  Dora will make a good, reliable woman but she’ll never set the pond on fire.  Well, that sort of folks are comfortable to have round, even if they’re not as interesting as the other kind.”

Gilbert Blythe was probably the only person to whom the news of Anne’s resignation brought unmixed pleasure.  Her pupils looked upon it as a sheer catastrophe.  Annetta Bell had hysterics when she went home.  Anthony Pye fought two pitched and unprovoked battles with other boys by way of relieving his feelings.  Barbara Shaw cried all night.  Paul Irving defiantly told his grandmother that she needn’t expect him to eat any porridge for a week.

“I can’t do it, Grandma,” he said.  “I don’t really know if I can eat anything.  I feel as if there was a dreadful lump in my throat.  I’d have cried coming home from school if Jake Donnell hadn’t been watching me.  I believe I will cry after I go to bed.  It wouldn’t show on my eyes tomorrow, would it?  And it would be such a relief.  But anyway, I can’t eat porridge.  I’m going to need all my strength of mind to bear up against this, Grandma, and I won’t have any left to grapple with porridge.  Oh Grandma, I don’t know what I’ll do when my beautiful teacher goes away.  Milty Boulter says he bets Jane Andrews will get the school.  I suppose Miss Andrews is very nice.  But I know she won’t understand things like Miss Shirley.”