“What a foolish, frivolous person I must be,” she sighed.  “I’m wholesomely ashamed to think that a new dress . . . even it is a forget-me-not organdy . . . should exhilarate me so, when a good conscience and an extra contribution to Foreign Missions couldn’t do it.”

Midway in her visit Anne went home to Green Gables for a day to mend the twins’ stockings and settle up Davy’s accumulated store of questions.  In the evening she went down to the shore road to see Paul Irving.  As she passed by the low, square window of the Irving sitting room she caught a glimpse of Paul on somebody’s lap; but the next moment he came flying through the hall.

“Oh, Miss Shirley,” he cried excitedly, “you can’t think what has happened!  Something so splendid.  Father is here . . . just think of that!  Father is here!  Come right in.  Father, this is my beautiful teacher.  You know, father.”

Stephen Irving came forward to meet Anne with a smile.  He was a tall, handsome man of middle age, with iron-gray hair, deep-set, dark blue eyes, and a strong, sad face, splendidly modeled about chin and brow.  Just the face for a hero of romance, Anne thought with a thrill of intense satisfaction.  It was so disappointing to meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or stooped, or otherwise lacking in manly beauty.  Anne would have thought it dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar’s romance had not looked the part.

“So this is my little son’s ‘beautiful teacher,’ of whom I have heard so much,” said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake.  “Paul’s letters have been so full of you, Miss Shirley, that I feel as if I were pretty well acquainted with you already.  I want to thank you for what you have done for Paul.  I think that your influence has been just what he needed.  Mother is one of the best and dearest of women; but her robust, matter-of-fact Scotch common sense could not always understand a temperament like my laddie’s.  What was lacking in her you have supplied.  Between you, I think Paul’s training in these two past years has been as nearly ideal as a motherless boy’s could be.”

Everybody likes to be appreciated.  Under Mr. Irving’s praise Anne’s face “burst flower like into rosy bloom,” and the busy, weary man of the world, looking at her, thought he had never seen a fairer, sweeter slip of girlhood than this little “down east” schoolteacher with her red hair and wonderful eyes.

Paul sat between them blissfully happy.

“I never dreamed father was coming,” he said radiantly.  “Even Grandma didn’t know it.  It was a great surprise.  As a general thing . . .”  Paul shook his brown curls gravely . . .  “I don’t like to be surprised.  You lose all the fun of expecting things when you’re surprised.  But in a case like this it is all right.  Father came last night after I had gone to bed.  And after Grandma and Mary Joe had stopped being surprised he and Grandma came upstairs to look at me, not meaning to wake me up till morning.  But I woke right up and saw father.  I tell you I just sprang at him.”