Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, “home o’dreams,” than it captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of her own.  It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud, and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently considered beneath his dignity.  Anne tried to banish Gilbert’s image from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being there, so Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her aerial architecture with such success that her “home o’dreams” was built and furnished before Diana spoke again.

“I suppose, Anne, you must think it’s funny I should like Fred so well when he’s so different from the kind of man I’ve always said I would marry . . . the tall, slender kind?  But somehow I wouldn’t want Fred to be tall and slender . . . because, don’t you see, he wouldn’t be Fred then.  Of course,” added Diana rather dolefully, “we will be a dreadfully pudgy couple.  But after all that’s better than one of us being short and fat and the other tall and lean, like Morgan Sloane and his wife.  Mrs. Lynde says it always makes her think of the long and short of it when she sees them together.”

“Well,” said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair before her gilt framed mirror, “I am glad Diana is so happy and satisfied.  But when my turn comes . . . if it ever does . . .  I do hope there’ll be something a little more thrilling about it.  But then Diana thought so too, once.  I’ve heard her say time and again she’d never get engaged any poky commonplace way . . . he’d have to do something splendid to win her.  But she has changed.  Perhaps I’ll change too.  But I won’t . . . and I’m determined I won’t.  Oh, I think these engagements are dreadfully unsettling things when they happen to your intimate friends.”

XXX

A Wedding at the Stone House

The last week in August came.  Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.  Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College.  In a week’s time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and set up her lares and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was already prepared for her coming.  She had sold all her superfluous household plenishings by auction and was at present reveling in the congenial occupation of helping the Allans pack up.  Mr. Allan was to preach his farewell sermon the next Sunday.  The old order was changing rapidly to give place to the new, as Anne felt with a little sadness threading all her excitement and happiness.

“Changes ain’t totally pleasant but they’re excellent things,” said Mr. Harrison philosophically.  “Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same.  If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy.”