“I’ve a blue silk to make up yet, but it’s a little heavy for summer wear.  I think I’ll leave it until the fall.  I’m going to teach in White Sands, you know.  How do you like my hat?  That one you had on in church yesterday was real dinky.  But I like something brighter for myself.  Did you notice those two ridiculous boys downstairs?  They’ve both come determined to sit each other out.  I don’t care a single bit about either of them, you know.  Herb Spencer is the one I like.  Sometimes I really do think he’s mr. Right.  At Christmas I thought the Spencervale schoolmaster was that.  But I found out something about him that turned me against him.  He nearly went insane when I turned him down.  I wish those two boys hadn’t come tonight.  I wanted to have a nice good talk with you, Anne, and tell you such heaps of things.  You and I were always good chums, weren’t we?”

Ruby slipped her arm about Anne’s waist with a shallow little laugh.  But just for a moment their eyes met, and, behind all the luster of Ruby’s, Anne saw something that made her heart ache.

“Come up often, won’t you, Anne?” whispered Ruby.  “Come alone—­I want you.”

“Are you feeling quite well, Ruby?”

“Me!  Why, I’m perfectly well.  I never felt better in my life.  Of course, that congestion last winter pulled me down a little.  But just see my color.  I don’t look much like an invalid, I’m sure.”

Ruby’s voice was almost sharp.  She pulled her arm away from Anne, as if in resentment, and ran downstairs, where she was gayer than ever, apparently so much absorbed in bantering her two swains that Diana and Anne felt rather out of it and soon went away.

Chapter XII

“Averil’s Atonement”

“What are you dreaming of, Anne?”

The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the brook.  Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and wild pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it.

Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh.

“I was thinking out my story, Diana.”

“Oh, have you really begun it?” cried Diana, all alight with eager interest in a moment.

“Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty well thought out.  I’ve had such a time to get a suitable plot.  None of the plots that suggested themselves suited a girl named Averil.”

“Couldn’t you have changed her name?”

“No, the thing was impossible.  I tried to, but I couldn’t do it, any more than I could change yours.  Averil was so real to me that no matter what other name I tried to give her I just thought of her as Averil behind it all.  But finally I got a plot that matched her.  Then came the excitement of choosing names for all my characters.  You have no idea how fascinating that is.  I’ve lain awake for hours thinking over those names.  The hero’s name is Perceval Dalrymple.”