“Pretty well.  We plan to finish the Virgil tonight . . . there are only twenty lines to do.  Then we are not going to study any more until September.”

“Do you think you will ever get to college?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”  Anne looked dreamily afar to the opal-tinted horizon.  “Marilla’s eyes will never be much better than they are now, although we are so thankful to think that they will not get worse.  And then there are the twins . . . somehow I don’t believe their uncle will ever really send for them.  Perhaps college may be around the bend in the road, but I haven’t got to the bend yet and I don’t think much about it lest I might grow discontented.”

“Well, I should like to see you go to college, Anne; but if you never do, don’t be discontented about it.  We make our own lives wherever we are, after all . . . college can only help us to do it more easily.  They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out.  Life is rich and full here . . . everywhere . . . if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness.”

“I think I understand what you mean,” said Anne thoughtfully, “and I know I have so much to feel thankful for . . . oh, so much . . . my work, and Paul Irving, and the dear twins, and all my friends.  Do you know, Mrs. Allan, I’m so thankful for friendship.  It beautifies life so much.”

“True friendship is a very helpfulul thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan, “and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity.  I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it.”

“Yes . . . like Gertie Pye’s and Julia Bell’s.  They are very intimate and go everywhere together; but Gertie is always saying nasty things of Julia behind her back and everybody thinks she is jealous of her because she is always so pleased when anybody criticizes Julia.  I think it is desecration to call that friendship.  If we have friends we should look only for the best in them and give them the best that is in us, don’t you think?  Then friendship would be the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“Friendship is very beautiful,” smiled Mrs. Allan, “but some day . . .”

Then she paused abruptly.  In the delicate, white-browed face beside her, with its candid eyes and mobile features, there was still far more of the child than of the woman.  Anne’s heart so far harbored only dreams of friendship and ambition, and Mrs. Allan did not wish to brush the bloom from her sweet unconsciousness.  So she left her sentence for the future years to finish.

XVI

The Substance of Things Hoped For

“Anne,” said Davy appealingly, scrambling up on the shiny, leather-covered sofa in the Green Gables kitchen, where Anne sat, reading a letter, “Anne, I’m awful hungry.  You’ve no idea.”