“Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving are settled in their new home now,” reported Anne.  “I am sure Miss Lavendar is perfectly happy—­I know it by the general tone of her letter—­but there’s a note from Charlotta the Fourth.  She doesn’t like Boston at all, and she is fearfully homesick.  Miss Lavendar wants me to go through to Echo Lodge some day while I’m home and light a fire to air it, and see that the cushions aren’t getting moldy.  I think I’ll get Diana to go over with me next week, and we can spend the evening with Theodora Dix.  I want to see Theodora.  By the way, is Ludovic Speed still going to see her?”

“They say so,” said Marilla, “and he’s likely to continue it.  Folks have given up expecting that that courtship will ever arrive anywhere.”

“I’d hurry him up a bit, if I was Theodora, that’s what,” said Mrs. Lynde.  And there is not the slightest doubt but that she would.

There was also a characteristic scrawl from Philippa, full of Alec and Alonzo, what they said and what they did, and how they looked when they saw her.

“But I can’t make up my mind yet which to marry,” wrote Phil.  “I do wish you had come with me to decide for me.  Some one will have to.  When I saw Alec my heart gave a great thump and I thought, ’He might be the right one.’  And then, when Alonzo came, thump went my heart again.  So that’s no guide, though it should be, according to all the novels I’ve ever read.  Now, Anne, your heart wouldn’t thump for anybody but the genuine Prince Charming, would it?  There must be something radically wrong with mine.  But I’m having a perfectly gorgeous time.  How I wish you were here!  It’s snowing today, and I’m rapturous.  I was so afraid we’d have a green Christmas and I loathe them.  You know, when Christmas is a dirty grayey-browney affair, looking as if it had been left over a hundred years ago and had been in soak ever since, it is called a green Christmas!  Don’t ask me why.  As Lord Dundreary says, ’there are thome thingth no fellow can underthtand.’

“Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you hadn’t any money with you to pay your fare?  I did, the other day.  It’s quite awful.  I had a nickel with me when I got on the car.  I thought it was in the left pocket of my coat.  When I got settled down comfortably I felt for it.  It wasn’t there.  I had a cold chill.  I felt in the other pocket.  Not there.  I had another chill.  Then I felt in a little inside pocket.  All in vain.  I had two chills at once.

“I took off my gloves, laid them on the seat, and went over all my pockets again.  It was not there.  I stood up and shook myself, and then looked on the floor.  The car was full of people, who were going home from the opera, and they all stared at me, but I was past caring for a little thing like that.

“But I could not find my fare.  I concluded I must have put it in my mouth and swallowed it inadvertently.