But she was the gayest of all the gay revellers that night, and told Gilbert unregretfully that her card was full when he came to ask her for a dance.  Afterwards, when she sat with the girls before the dying embers at Patty’s Place, removing the spring chilliness from their satin skins, none chatted more blithely than she of the day’s events.

“Moody Spurgeon MacPherson called here tonight after you left,” said Aunt Jamesina, who had sat up to keep the fire on.  “He didn’t know about the graduation dance.  That boy ought to sleep with a rubber band around his head to train his ears not to stick out.  I had a beau once who did that and it improved him immensely.  It was I who suggested it to him and he took my advice, but he never forgave me for it.”

“Moody Spurgeon is a very serious young man,” yawned Priscilla.  “He is concerned with graver matters than his ears.  He is going to be a minister, you know.”

“Well, I suppose the Lord doesn’t regard the ears of a man,” said Aunt Jamesina gravely, dropping all further criticism of Moody Spurgeon.  Aunt Jamesina had a proper respect for the cloth even in the case of an unfledged parson.

Chapter XXXVIII

False Dawn

“Just imagine—­this night week I’ll be in Avonlea—­delightful thought!” said Anne, bending over the box in which she was packing Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s quilts.  “But just imagine—­this night week I’ll be gone forever from Patty’s Place—­horrible thought!”

“I wonder if the ghost of all our laughter will echo through the maiden dreams of Miss Patty and Miss Maria,” speculated Phil.

Miss Patty and Miss Maria were coming home, after having trotted over most of the habitable globe.

“We’ll be back the second week in May” wrote Miss Patty.  “I expect Patty’s Place will seem rather small after the Hall of the Kings at Karnak, but I never did like big places to live in.  And I’ll be glad enough to be home again.  When you start traveling late in life you’re apt to do too much of it because you know you haven’t much time left, and it’s a thing that grows on you.  I’m afraid Maria will never be contented again.”

“I shall leave here my fancies and dreams to bless the next comer,” said Anne, looking around the blue room wistfully—­her pretty blue room where she had spent three such happy years.  She had knelt at its window to pray and had bent from it to watch the sunset behind the pines.  She had heard the autumn raindrops beating against it and had welcomed the spring robins at its sill.  She wondered if old dreams could haunt rooms—­if, when one left forever the room where she had joyed and suffered and laughed and wept, something of her, intangible and invisible, yet nonetheless real, did not remain behind like a voiceful memory.

“I think,” said Phil, “that a room where one dreams and grieves and rejoices and lives becomes inseparably connected with those processes and acquires a personality of its own.  I am sure if I came into this room fifty years from now it would say ‘Anne, Anne’ to me.  What nice times we’ve had here, honey!  What chats and jokes and good chummy jamborees!  Oh, dear me!  I’m to marry Jo in June and I know I will be rapturously happy.  But just now I feel as if I wanted this lovely Redmond life to go on forever.”