“To Alec or Alonzo?” asked Anne.

“To one of them, I suppose,” sighed Phil, “if I can ever decide which.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to decide,” scolded Aunt Jamesina.

“I was born a see-saw Aunty, and nothing can ever prevent me from teetering.”

“You ought to be more levelheaded, Philippa.”

“It’s best to be levelheaded, of course,” agreed Philippa, “but you miss lots of fun.  As for Alec and Alonzo, if you knew them you’d understand why it’s difficult to choose between them.  They’re equally nice.”

“Then take somebody who is nicer” suggested Aunt Jamesina.  “There’s that Senior who is so devoted to you—­Will Leslie.  He has such nice, large, mild eyes.”

“They’re a little bit too large and too mild—­like a cow’s,” said Phil cruelly.

“What do you say about George Parker?”

“There’s nothing to say about him except that he always looks as if he had just been starched and ironed.”

“Marr Holworthy then.  You can’t find a fault with him.”

“No, he would do if he wasn’t poor.  I must marry a rich man, Aunt Jamesina.  That—­and good looks—­is an indispensable qualification.  I’d marry Gilbert Blythe if he were rich.”

“Oh, would you?” said Anne, rather viciously.

“We don’t like that idea a little bit, although we don’t want Gilbert ourselves, oh, no,” mocked Phil.  “But don’t let’s talk of disagreeable subjects.  I’ll have to marry sometime, I suppose, but I shall put off the evil day as long as I can.”

“You mustn’t marry anybody you don’t love, Phil, when all’s said and done,” said Aunt Jamesina.

     “’Oh, hearts that loved in the good old way
     Have been out o’ the fashion this many a day.’”

trilled Phil mockingly.  “There’s the carriage.  I fly—­Bi-bi, you two old-fashioned darlings.”

When Phil had gone Aunt Jamesina looked solemnly at Anne.

“That girl is pretty and sweet and goodhearted, but do you think she is quite right in her mind, by spells, Anne?”

“Oh, I don’t think there’s anything the matter with Phil’s mind,” said Anne, hiding a smile.  “It’s just her way of talking.”

Aunt Jamesina shook her head.

“Well, I hope so, Anne.  I do hope so, because I love her.  But I can’t understand her—­she beats me.  She isn’t like any of the girls I ever knew, or any of the girls I was myself.”

“How many girls were you, Aunt Jimsie?”

“About half a dozen, my dear.”

Chapter XX

Gilbert Speaks

“This has been a dull, prosy day,” yawned Phil, stretching herself idly on the sofa, having previously dispossessed two exceedingly indignant cats.

Anne looked up from Pickwick Papers.  Now that spring examinations were over she was treating herself to Dickens.

“It has been a prosy day for us,” she said thoughtfully, “but to some people it has been a wonderful day.  Some one has been rapturously happy in it.  Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today—­or a great poem written—­or a great man born.  And some heart has been broken, Phil.”