“I think it would,” agreed Anne solemnly.  “Anyway, I daresay that if your Grandma and I both got down to what we really do mean, under our different ways of expressing it, we’d find out we both meant much the same thing.  You’d better go by her way of expressing it, since it’s been the result of experience.  We’ll have to wait until we see how the twins do turn out before we can be sure that my way is equally good.”  After lunch they went back to the garden, where Paul made the acquaintance of the echoes, to his wonder and delight, while Anne and Miss Lavendar sat on the stone bench under the poplar and talked.

“So you are going away in the fall?” said Miss Lavendar wistfully.  “I ought to be glad for your sake, Anne . . . but I’m horribly, selfishly sorry.  I shall miss you so much.  Oh, sometimes, I think it is of no use to make friends.  They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”

“That sounds like something Miss Eliza Andrews might say but never Miss Lavendar,” said Anne.  “Nothing is worse than emptiness . . . and I’m not going out of your life.  There are such things as letters and vacations.  Dearest, I’m afraid you’re looking a little pale and tired.”

“Oh . . . hoo . . . hoo . . . hoo,” went Paul on the dyke, where he had been making noises diligently . . . not all of them melodious in the making, but all coming back transmuted into the very gold and silver of sound by the fairy alchemists over the river.  Miss Lavendar made an impatient movement with her pretty hands.

“I’m just tired of everything . . . even of the echoes.  There is nothing in my life but echoes . . . echoes of lost hopes and dreams and joys.  They’re beautiful and mocking.  Oh Anne, it’s horrid of me to talk like this when I have company.  It’s just that I’m getting old and it doesn’t agree with me.  I know I’ll be fearfully cranky by the time I’m sixty.  But perhaps all I need is a course of blue pills.”  At this moment Charlotta the Fourth, who had disappeared after lunch, returned, and announced that the northeast corner of Mr. John Kimball’s pasture was red with early strawberries, and wouldn’t Miss Shirley like to go and pick some.

“Early strawberries for tea!” exclaimed Miss Lavendar.  “Oh, I’m not so old as I thought . . . and I don’t need a single blue pill!  Girls, when you come back with your strawberries we’ll have tea out here under the silver poplar.  I’ll have it all ready for you with home-grown cream.”

Anne and Charlotta the Fourth accordingly betook themselves back to Mr. Kimball’s pasture, a green remote place where the air was as soft as velvet and fragrant as a bed of violets and golden as amber.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet and fresh back here?” breathed Anne.  “I just feel as if I were drinking in the sunshine.”