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.”
“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.
Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.
“Don’t these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?”
Anne took them and buried her face in them.
“I’m in Mr. Silas Sloane’s barrens this very minute,” she said rapturously.
“I suppose you will be there in reality in a few days?”
“No, not for a fortnight. I’m going to visit with Phil in Bolingbroke before I go home. You’ll be in Avonlea before I will.”
“No,
