bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond, couldn’t floor her. She led the
freshettes everywhere, except in English, where Anne Shirley left her far behind.
Anne herself found the studies of her Freshman year very easy, thanks in great
part to the steady work she and Gilbert had put in during those two past years in
Avonlea. This left her more time for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed.
But never for a moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there. To her, the
happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came from home. It
was not until she had got her first letters that she began to think she could ever
like Kingsport or feel at home there. Before they came, Avonlea had seemed
thousands of miles away; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to
the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same, instead of two
hopelessly segregated existences. The first batch contained six letters, from Jane
Andrews, Ruby Gillis, Diana Barry, Marilla, Mrs. Lynde and Davy. Jane’s was a
copperplate production, with every “t” nicely crossed and every “i” precisely
dotted, and not an interesting sentence in it. She never mentioned the school,
concerning which Anne was avid to hear; she never answered one of the
questions Anne had asked in her letter. But she told Anne how many yards of
lace she had recently crocheted, and the kind of weather they were having in
Avonlea, and how she intended to have her new dress made, and the way she felt
when her head ached. Ruby Gillis wrote a gushing epistle deploring Anne’s
absence, assuring her she was horribly missed in everything, asking what the
Redmond “fellows” were like, and filling the rest with accounts of her own
harrowing experiences with her numerous admirers. It was a silly, harmless
letter, and Anne would have laughed over it had it not been for the postscript.
“Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond, judging from his letters,” wrote Ruby.
“I don’t think Charlie is so stuck on it.”
So Gilbert was writing to Ruby! Very well. He had a perfect right to, of
course. Only—!! Anne did not know that Ruby had written the first letter and
that Gilbert had answered it from mere courtesy. She tossed Ruby’s letter aside
contemptuously. But it took all Diana’s breezy, newsy, delightful epistle to
banish the sting of Ruby’s postscript. Diana’s letter contained a little too much
Fred, but was otherwise crowded and crossed with items of interest, and Anne
almost felt herself back in Avonlea while reading it. Marilla’s was a rather prim
and colorless epistle, severely innocent of gossip or emotion. Yet somehow it
conveyed to Anne a whiff of the wholesome, simple life at Green Gables, with
its savor of ancient peace, and the steadfast abiding love that was there for her.
Mrs. Lynde’s letter was full of church news. Having broken up housekeeping,
Mrs. Lynde had more time than ever to devote to church affairs and had flung