"A bit matronish of course," laughed Anne. "But you've escaped the middle-aged spread so far, Di. As for my not changing … well, Mrs. H. B. Donnell agrees with you. She told me at the funeral that I didn't look a day older. But Mrs. Harmon Andrews doesn't. She said, 'Dear me, Anne, how you've failed!' It's all in the beholder's eye … or conscience. The only time I feel I'm getting along a bit is when I look at the pictures in the magazines. The heroes and heroines in them are beginning to look too young to me. But never mind, Di … we're going to be girls again tomorrow. That's what I've come up to tell you. We're going to take an afternoon and evening off and visit all our old haunts … every one of them. We'll walk over the spring fields and through those ferny old woods. We'll see all the old familiar things we loved and hills where we'll find our youth again. Nothing ever seems impossible in spring, you know. We'll stop feeling parental and responsible and be as giddy as Mrs. Lynde really thinks me still in her heart of hearts. There's really no fun in being sensible all the time, Diana."
"My, how like you that sounds! And I'd love to. But … "
"There aren't any buts. I know you're thinking, 'Who'll get the men's supper?'"
"Not exactly. Anne Cordelia can get the men's supper as well as I can, if she is only eleven," said Diana proudly. "She was going to, anyway. I was going to the Ladies' Aid. But I won't. I'll go with you. It will be like having a dream come true. You know, Anne, lots of evenings I sit down and just pretend we're little girls again. I'll take our supper with us … "
"And we'll eat it back in Hester Gray's garden … I suppose Hester Gray's garden is still there?"
"I suppose so," said Diana doubtfully. "I've never been there since I was married. Anne Cordelia explores a lot … but I always tell her she mustn't go too far from home. She loves prowling about the woods … and one day when I scolded her for talking to herself in the garden she said she wasn't talking to herself … she was talking to the spirit of the flowers. You know that dolls' tea-set with the tiny pink rosebuds you sent her for her ninth birthday. There isn't a piece broken … she's so careful. She only uses it when the Three Green People come to tea with her. I can't get out of her who she thinks they are. I declare in some ways, Anne, she's far more like you than she is like me."
"Perhaps there's more in a name than Shakespeare allowed. Don't grudge Anne Cordelia her fancies, Diana. I'm always sorry for children who don't spend a few years in fairyland."
"Olivia Sloane is our teacher now," said Diana doubtfully. "She's a B.A., you know, and just took the school for a year to be near her mother. She says children should be made to face realities."
"Have I lived to hear you taking up with Sloanishness, Diana Wright?"
"No … no … NO! I don't like her a bit. … She has such round staring blue eyes like all that clan. And I don't mind Anne Cordelia's fancies. They're pretty … just like yours used to be. I guess she'll get enough 'reality' as life goes on."
"Well, it's settled then. Come down to Green Gables about two and we'll have a drink of Marilla's red currant wine … she makes it now and then in spite of the minister and Mrs. Lynde … just to make us feel real devilish."
"Do you remember the day you set me drunk on it?" giggled Diana, who did not mind "devilish" as she would if anybody but Anne used it. Everybody knew Anne didn't really mean things like that. It was just her way.
"We'll have a real do-you-remember day tomorrow, Diana. I won't keep you any longer … there's Fred coming with the buggy. Your dress is lovely."
"Fred made me get a new one for the wedding. I didn't feel we could afford it since we built the new barn, but he said he wasn't going to have his wife looking like someone that was sent for and couldn't go when everybody else would be dressed within an inch of her life. Wasn't that just like a man?"
"Oh, you sound just like Mrs. Elliott at the Glen," said Anne severely. "You want to watch that tendency. Would you like to live in a world where there were no men?"
"It would be horrible," admitted Diana. "Yes, yes, Fred, I'm coming. Oh, all right! Till tomorrow then, Anne."
Anne paused by the Dryad's Bubble on her way back. She loved that old brook so. Every trill of her childhood's laughter that it had ever caught, it had held and now seemed to give out again to her listening ears. Her old dreams … she could see them reflected in the clear Bubble … old vows … old whispers … the brook kept them all and murmured of them … but there was no one to listen save the wise old spruces in the Haunted Wood that had been listening so long.
CHAPTER II.
"Such a lovely day … made for us," said Diana. "I'm afraid it's a pet day, though … there'll be rain tomorrow."
"Never mind. We'll drink its beauty today, even if its sunshine is gone tomorrow. We'll enjoy each other's friendship today even if we are to be parted tomorrow. Look at those long, golden-green hills … those mist-blue valleys. They're ours, Diana … I don't care if that furthest hill is registered in Abner Sloan's name … it's ours today. There's a west wind blowing … I always feel adventurous when a west wind blows … and we're going to have a perfect ramble."
They had. All the old dear spots were revisited: Lover's Lane, the Haunted Wood, Idlewild, Violet Vale, the Birch Path, Crystal Lake. There were some changes. The little ring of birch saplings in Idlewild, where they had had a playhouse long ago, had grown into big trees; the Birch Path, long untrodden, was matted with bracken; the Crystal Lake had entirely disappeared, leaving only a damp mossy hollow. But Violet Vale was purple with violets and the seedling apple tree Gilbert had once found far back in the woods was a huge tree peppered over with tiny, crimson-tipped blossom-buds.
They walked bareheaded. Annie's hair still gleamed like polished mahogany in the sunlight and Diana's was still glossy black. They exchanged gay and understanding, warm and friendly, glances. Sometimes they walked in silence … Anne always maintained that two people as sympathetic as she and Diana could feel each other's thoughts. Sometimes they peppered their conversation with do-you-remembers. "Do you remember the day you fell through the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road?" … "Do you remember when we jumped on Aunt Josephine?" … "Do you remember our Story Club?" … "Do you remember Mrs. Morgan's visit when you stained your nose red?" … "Do you remember how we signalled to each other from our windows with candles?" … "Do you remember the fun we had at Miss Lavender's wedding and Charlotta's blue bows?" … "Do you remember the Improvement Society?" It almost seemed to them they could hear their old peals of laughter echoing down the years.
The A.V.I.S. was, it seemed, dead. It had petered out soon after Anne's marriage.
"They just couldn't keep it up, Anne. The young people in Avonlea now are not what they were in our day."
"Don't talk as if 'our day' were ended, Diana. We're only fifteen years old and kindred spirits. The air isn't just full of light … it is light. I'm not sure that I haven't sprouted wings."
"I feel just that way, too," said Diana, forgetting that she had tipped the scale at one hundred and fifty-five that morning. "I often feel that I'd love to be turned into a bird for a little while. It must be wonderful to fly."
Beauty was all around them. Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways. The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves. Gay trills of song were everywhere. There were little hollows where you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold. At every turn some fresh spring
