beautiful as ever, and his fancy was still like a prism, separating everything that
fell upon it into rainbows. He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field
and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly “kindred spirits.”
Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her
hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of
auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth
and smiles as wide as ever.
“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma’am?”
she demanded anxiously.
“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”
“I’m real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just
wanted to aggravate me. I don’t want no Yankee accent. Not that I’ve a word to
say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma’am. They’re real civilized. But give
me old P.E. Island every time.”
Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne
was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get
to the shore—Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there.
He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora’s elfin face
peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober
Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight.
“Didn’t you find your Rock People?” asked Anne.
Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.
“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all,” he said. “Nora
was there—but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed.”
“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,” said Anne. “You have grown too old
for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the
Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanted boat with the
sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden
harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of
growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.”
“You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did,” said old Mrs. Irving,
half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are getting
very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we
have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.”
“But it isn’t—it is given us to exchange our thoughts,” said Mrs. Irving