“Why did you spoil your pretty thought by tagging that last sentence on, honey?” grumbled Phil.  “I don’t like to think of broken hearts—­or anything unpleasant.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to shirk unpleasant things all your life, Phil?”

“Dear me, no.  Am I not up against them now?  You don’t call Alec and Alonzo pleasant things, do you, when they simply plague my life out?”

“You never take anything seriously, Phil.”

“Why should I?  There are enough folks who do.  The world needs people like me, Anne, just to amuse it.  It would be a terrible place if everybody were intellectual and serious and in deep, deadly earnest.  My mission is, as Josiah Allen says, ‘to charm and allure.’  Confess now.  Hasn’t life at Patty’s Place been really much brighter and pleasanter this past winter because I’ve been here to leaven you?”

“Yes, it has,” owned Anne.

“And you all love me—­even Aunt Jamesina, who thinks I’m stark mad.  So why should I try to be different?  Oh, dear, I’m so sleepy.  I was awake until one last night, reading a harrowing ghost story.  I read it in bed, and after I had finished it do you suppose I could get out of bed to put the light out?  No!  And if Stella had not fortunately come in late that lamp would have burned good and bright till morning.  When I heard Stella I called her in, explained my predicament, and got her to put out the light.  If I had got out myself to do it I knew something would grab me by the feet when I was getting in again.  By the way, Anne, has Aunt Jamesina decided what to do this summer?”

“Yes, she’s going to stay here.  I know she’s doing it for the sake of those blessed cats, although she says it’s too much trouble to open her own house, and she hates visiting.”

“What are you reading?”

“Pickwick.”

“That’s a book that always makes me hungry,” said Phil.  “There’s so much good eating in it.  The characters seem always to be reveling on ham and eggs and milk punch.  I generally go on a cupboard rummage after reading Pickwick.  The mere thought reminds me that I’m starving.  Is there any tidbit in the pantry, Queen Anne?”

“I made a lemon pie this morning.  You may have a piece of it.”

Phil dashed out to the pantry and Anne betook herself to the orchard in company with Rusty.  It was a moist, pleasantly-odorous night in early spring.  The snow was not quite all gone from the park; a little dingy bank of it yet lay under the pines of the harbor road, screened from the influence of April suns.  It kept the harbor road muddy, and chilled the evening air.  But grass was growing green in sheltered spots and Gilbert had found some pale, sweet arbutus in a hidden corner.  He came up from the park, his hands full of it.

Anne was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace.  She was building a castle in air—­a wondrous mansion whose sunlit courts and stately halls were steeped in Araby’s perfume, and where she reigned queen and chatelaine.  She frowned as she saw Gilbert coming through the orchard.  Of late she had managed not to be left alone with Gilbert.  But he had caught her fairly now; and even Rusty had deserted her.