go on and get my B.A. and be sensible and useful.”
“You couldn’t possibly be sensible and useful, Phil, so you’d better pine away
and die,” said Anne cruelly.
“Heartless Anne!”
“Silly Phil! You know quite well that Jonas loves you.”
“But—he won’t TELL me so. And I can’t MAKE him. He LOOKS it, I’ll
admit. But speak-to-me-only-with-thine-eyes isn’t a really reliable reason for
embroidering doilies and hemstitching tablecloths. I don’t want to begin such
work until I’m really engaged. It would be tempting Fate.”
“Mr. Blake is afraid to ask you to marry him, Phil. He is poor and can’t offer
you a home such as you’ve always had. You know that is the only reason he
hasn’t spoken long ago.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Phil dolefully. “Well”—brightening up—“if he
WON’T ask me to marry him I’ll ask him, that’s all. So it’s bound to come right.
I won’t worry. By the way, Gilbert Blythe is going about constantly with
Christine Stuart. Did you know?”
Anne was trying to fasten a little gold chain about her throat. She suddenly
found the clasp difficult to manage. WHAT was the matter with it—or with her
fingers?
“No,” she said carelessly. “Who is Christine Stuart?”
“Ronald Stuart’s sister. She’s in Kingsport this winter studying music. I
haven’t seen her, but they say she’s very pretty and that Gilbert is quite crazy
over her. How angry I was when you refused Gilbert, Anne. But Roy Gardner
was foreordained for you. I can see that now. You were right, after all.”
Anne did not blush, as she usually did when the girls assumed that her
eventual marriage to Roy Gardner was a settled thing. All at once she felt rather
dull. Phil’s chatter seemed trivial and the reception a bore. She boxed poor
Rusty’s ears.
“Get off that cushion instantly, you cat, you! Why don’t you stay down where
you belong?”
Anne picked up her orchids and went downstairs, where Aunt Jamesina was
presiding over a row of coats hung before the fire to warm. Roy Gardner was
waiting for Anne and teasing the Sarah-cat while he waited. The Sarah-cat did
not approve of him. She always turned her back on him. But everybody else at
Patty’s Place liked him very much. Aunt Jamesina, carried away by his unfailing
and deferential courtesy, and the pleading tones of his delightful voice, declared