“I suppose I’m growing old,” she said.

Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years, save to grow something thinner, and even more angular; there was a little more gray in the hair that was still twisted up in the same hard knot, with two hairpins—­were they the same hairpins?—­still stuck through it.  But her expression was very different; the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor had developed wonderfully; her eyes were gentler and milder, her smile more frequent and tender.

Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood, the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life that followed.  And the coming of Anne—­the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and radiance, until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose.  Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne.  And Anne would be home tomorrow night.

The kitchen door opened.  Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lynde.  Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her hands full of Mayflowers and violets.

“Anne Shirley!” exclaimed Marilla.  For once in her life she was surprised out of her reserve; she caught her girl in her arms and crushed her and her flowers against her heart, kissing the bright hair and sweet face warmly.  “I never looked for you till tomorrow night.  How did you get from Carmody?”

“Walked, dearest of Marillas.  Haven’t I done it a score of times in the Queen’s days?  The mailman is to bring my trunk tomorrow; I just got homesick all at once, and came a day earlier.  And oh!  I’ve had such a lovely walk in the May twilight; I stopped by the barrens and picked these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale; it’s just a big bowlful of violets now—­the dear, sky-tinted things.  Smell them, Marilla—­drink them in.”

Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more interested in Anne than in drinking violets.

“Sit down, child.  You must be real tired.  I’m going to get you some supper.”

“There’s a darling moonrise behind the hills tonight, Marilla, and oh, how the frogs sang me home from Carmody!  I do love the music of the frogs.  It seems bound up with all my happiest recollections of old spring evenings.  And it always reminds me of the night I came here first.  Do you remember it, Marilla?”

“Well, yes,” said Marilla with emphasis.  “I’m not likely to forget it ever.”

“They used to sing so madly in the marsh and brook that year.  I would listen to them at my window in the dusk, and wonder how they could seem so glad and so sad at the same time.  Oh, but it’s good to be home again!  Redmond was splendid and Bolingbroke delightful—­but Green Gables is home.”