“If I could only share the joke with some one!” she thought.  “But I can’t.  Diana is the only one I’d want to tell, and, even if I hadn’t sworn secrecy to Jane, I can’t tell Diana things now.  She tells everything to Fred—­I know she does.  Well, I’ve had my first proposal.  I supposed it would come some day—­but I certainly never thought it would be by proxy.  It’s awfully funny—­and yet there’s a sting in it, too, somehow.”

Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not put it into words.  She had had her secret dreams of the first time some one should ask her the great question.  And it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful:  and the “some one” was to be very handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with “yes,” or one to whom a regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be given.  If the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, life-long devotion.  And it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad about, also.

And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque.  Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have him” Nettie Blewett would.  There was romance for you, with a vengeance!  Anne laughed—­and then sighed.  The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream.  Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and hum-drum?

Chapter IX

An Unwelcome Lover and a Welcome Friend

The second term at Redmond sped as quickly as had the first—­“actually whizzed away,” Philippa said.  Anne enjoyed it thoroughly in all its phases—­the stimulating class rivalry, the making and deepening of new and helpful friendships, the gay little social stunts, the doings of the various societies of which she was a member, the widening of horizons and interests.  She studied hard, for she had made up her mind to win the Thorburn Scholarship in English.  This being won, meant that she could come back to Redmond the next year without trenching on Marilla’s small savings—­something Anne was determined she would not do.

Gilbert, too, was in full chase after a scholarship, but found plenty of time for frequent calls at Thirty-eight, St. John’s.  He was Anne’s escort at nearly all the college affairs, and she knew that their names were coupled in Redmond gossip.  Anne raged over this but was helpless; she could not cast an old friend like Gilbert aside, especially when he had grown suddenly wise and wary, as behooved him in the dangerous proximity of more than one Redmond youth who would gladly have taken his place by the side of the slender, red-haired coed, whose gray eyes