To Anne and Priscilla, with their more serious views of life, Phil remained the amusing, lovable baby she had seemed on their first meeting.  Yet, as she said herself, she had “heaps” of brains.  When or where she found time to study was a mystery, for she seemed always in demand for some kind of “fun,” and her home evenings were crowded with callers.  She had all the “beaux” that heart could desire, for nine-tenths of the Freshmen and a big fraction of all the other classes were rivals for her smiles.  She was naively delighted over this, and gleefully recounted each new conquest to Anne and Priscilla, with comments that might have made the unlucky lover’s ears burn fiercely.

“Alec and Alonzo don’t seem to have any serious rival yet,” remarked Anne, teasingly.

“Not one,” agreed Philippa.  “I write them both every week and tell them all about my young men here.  I’m sure it must amuse them.  But, of course, the one I like best I can’t get.  Gilbert Blythe won’t take any notice of me, except to look at me as if I were a nice little kitten he’d like to pat.  Too well I know the reason.  I owe you a grudge, Queen Anne.  I really ought to hate you and instead I love you madly, and I’m miserable if I don’t see you every day.  You’re different from any girl I ever knew before.  When you look at me in a certain way I feel what an insignificant, frivolous little beast I am, and I long to be better and wiser and stronger.  And then I make good resolutions; but the first nice-looking mannie who comes my way knocks them all out of my head.  Isn’t college life magnificent?  It’s so funny to think I hated it that first day.  But if I hadn’t I might never got really acquainted with you.  Anne, please tell me over again that you like me a little bit.  I yearn to hear it.”

“I like you a big bit—­and I think you’re a dear, sweet, adorable, velvety, clawless, little—­kitten,” laughed Anne, “but I don’t see when you ever get time to learn your lessons.”

Phil must have found time for she held her own in every class of her year.  Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics, who detested coeds, and had bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond, couldn’t floor her.  She led the freshettes everywhere, except in English, where Anne Shirley left her far behind.  Anne herself found the studies of her Freshman year very easy, thanks in great part to the steady work she and Gilbert had put in during those two past years in Avonlea.  This left her more time for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed.  But never for a moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there.  To her, the happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came from home.  It was not until she had got her first letters that she began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home there.  Before they came, Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same,