“People who haven’t natural gumption never learn,” retorted Aunt Jamesina,
“neither in college nor life. If they live to be a hundred they really don’t know
anything more than when they were born. It’s their misfortune not their fault,
poor souls. But those of us who have some gumption should duly thank the Lord
for it.”
“Will you please define what gumption is, Aunt Jimsie?” asked Phil.
“No, I won’t, young woman. Any one who has gumption knows what it is,
and any one who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of
defining it.”
The busy days flew by and examinations were over. Anne took High Honors
in English. Priscilla took Honors in Classics, and Phil in Mathematics. Stella
obtained a good all-round showing. Then came Convocation.
“This is what I would once have called an epoch in my life,” said Anne, as she
took Roy’s violets out of their box and gazed at them thoughtfully. She meant to
carry them, of course, but her eyes wandered to another box on her table. It was
filled with lilies-of-the-valley, as fresh and fragrant as those which bloomed in
the Green Gables yard when June came to Avonlea. Gilbert Blythe’s card lay
beside it.
Anne wondered why Gilbert should have sent her flowers for Convocation.
She had seen very little of him during the past winter. He had come to Patty’s
Place only one Friday evening since the Christmas holidays, and they rarely met
elsewhere. She knew he was studying very hard, aiming at High Honors and the
Cooper Prize, and he took little part in the social doings of Redmond. Anne’s
own winter had been quite gay socially. She had seen a good deal of the
Gardners; she and Dorothy were very intimate; college circles expected the
announcement of her engagement to Roy any day. Anne expected it herself. Yet
just before she left Patty’s Place for Convocation she flung Roy’s violets aside
and put Gilbert’s lilies-of-the-valley in their place. She could not have told why
she did it. Somehow, old Avonlea days and dreams and friendships seemed very
close to her in this attainment of her long-cherished ambitions. She and Gilbert
had once picturedout merrily the day on which they should be capped and
gowned graduates in Arts. The wonderful day had come and Roy’s violets had
no place in it. Only her old friend’s flowers seemed to belong to this fruition of
old-blossoming hopes which he had once shared.
For years this day had beckoned and allured to her; but when it came the one
single, keen, abiding memory it left with her was not that of the breathless
moment when the stately president of Redmond gave her cap and diploma and