“Can’t we take a ramble up Lovers’ Lane before you go in?” asked Gilbert as they crossed the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters, in which the moon lay like a great, drowned blossom of gold.

Anne assented readily.  Lovers’ Lane was a veritable path in a fairyland that night—­a shimmering, mysterious place, full of wizardry in the white-woven enchantment of moonlight.  There had been a time when such a walk with Gilbert through Lovers’ Lane would have been far too dangerous.  But Roy and Christine had made it very safe now.  Anne found herself thinking a good deal about Christine as she chatted lightly to Gilbert.  She had met her several times before leaving Kingsport, and had been charmingly sweet to her.  Christine had also been charmingly sweet.  Indeed, they were a most cordial pair.  But for all that, their acquaintance had not ripened into friendship.  Evidently Christine was not a kindred spirit.

“Are you going to be in Avonlea all summer?” asked Gilbert.

“No.  I’m going down east to Valley Road next week.  Esther Haythorne wants me to teach for her through July and August.  They have a summer term in that school, and Esther isn’t feeling well.  So I’m going to substitute for her.  In one way I don’t mind.  Do you know, I’m beginning to feel a little bit like a stranger in Avonlea now?  It makes me sorry—­but it’s true.  It’s quite appalling to see the number of children who have shot up into big boys and girls—­really young men and women—­these past two years.  Half of my pupils are grown up.  It makes me feel awfully old to see them in the places you and I and our mates used to fill.”

Anne laughed and sighed.  She felt very old and mature and wise—­which showed how young she was.  She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever.  Where was it now—­the glory and the dream?

“‘So wags the world away,’” quoted Gilbert practically, and a trifle absently.  Anne wondered if he were thinking of Christine.  Oh, Avonlea was going to be so lonely now—­with Diana gone!

Chapter XXX

Mrs. Skinner’s Romance

Anne stepped off the train at Valley Road station and looked about to see if any one had come to meet her.  She was to board with a certain Miss Janet Sweet, but she saw no one who answered in the least to her preconception of that lady, as formed from Esther’s letter.  The only person in sight was an elderly woman, sitting in a wagon with mail bags piled around her.  Two hundred would have been a charitable guess at her weight; her face was as round and red as a harvest-moon and almost as featureless.  She wore a tight, black, cashmere dress, made in the fashion of ten years ago, a little dusty black straw hat trimmed with bows of yellow ribbon, and faded black lace mits.