Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.

Chapter XXVII

Mutual Confidences

March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.

Over the girls at Patty’s Place was falling the shadow of April examinations.  They were studying hard; even Phil had settled down to text and notebooks with a doggedness not to be expected of her.

“I’m going to take the Johnson Scholarship in Mathematics,” she announced calmly.  “I could take the one in Greek easily, but I’d rather take the mathematical one because I want to prove to Jonas that I’m really enormously clever.”

“Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes and your crooked smile than for all the brains you carry under your curls,” said Anne.

“When I was a girl it wasn’t considered lady-like to know anything about Mathematics,” said Aunt Jamesina.  “But times have changed.  I don’t know that it’s all for the better.  Can you cook, Phil?”

“No, I never cooked anything in my life except a gingerbread and it was a failure—­flat in the middle and hilly round the edges.  You know the kind.  But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest to learn to cook don’t you think the brains that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship will also enable me to learn cooking just as well?”

“Maybe,” said Aunt Jamesina cautiously.  “I am not decrying the higher education of women.  My daughter is an M.A.  She can cook, too.  But I taught her to cook before I let a college professor teach her Mathematics.”

In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford, saying that she and Miss Maria had decided to remain abroad for another year.

“So you may have Patty’s Place next winter, too,” she wrote.  “Maria and I are going to run over Egypt.  I want to see the Sphinx once before I die.”

“Fancy those two dames ‘running over Egypt’!  I wonder if they’ll look up at the Sphinx and knit,” laughed Priscilla.

“I’m so glad we can keep Patty’s Place for another year,” said Stella.  “I was afraid they’d come back.  And then our jolly little nest here would be broken up—­and we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruel world of boardinghouses again.”

“I’m off for a tramp in the park,” announced Phil, tossing her book aside.  “I think when I am eighty I’ll be glad I went for a walk in the park tonight.”

“What do you mean?” asked Anne.

“Come with me and I’ll tell you, honey.”

They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and magics of a March evening.  Very still and mild it was, wrapped in a great, white, brooding silence—­a silence which was yet threaded through with many little silvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened as much with your soul as your ears.  The girls wandered down a long pineland aisle that seemed to lead right out into the heart of a deep-red, overflowing winter sunset.