“Yes, he told us so last evening,” said Priscilla, seeing that outraged Anne
would not answer. “He and Charlie were down. We knew they were coming, so
we painstakingly put out of sight or out of reach all Miss Ada’s cushions. That
very elaborate one with the raised embroidery I dropped on the floor in the
corner behind the chair it was on. I thought it would be safe there. But would
you believe it? Charlie Sloane made for that chair, noticed the cushion behind it,
solemnly fished it up, and sat on it the whole evening. Such a wreck of a cushion
as it was! Poor Miss Ada asked me today, still smiling, but oh, so reproachfully,
why I had allowed it to be sat upon. I told her I hadn’t—that it was a matter of
predestination coupled with inveterate Sloanishness and I wasn’t a match for
both combined.”
“Miss Ada’s cushions are really getting on my nerves,” said Anne. “She
finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their
lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood
them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and
if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday,
when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in
thought ‘and for all those who live in houses where cushions are loved not
wisely but too well!’ There! we’re ready, and I see the boys coming through Old
St. John’s. Do you cast in your lot with us, Phil?”
“I’ll go, if I can walk with Priscilla and Charlie. That will be a bearable degree
of gooseberry. That Gilbert of yours is a darling, Anne, but why does he go
around so much with Goggle-eyes?”
Anne stiffened. She had no great liking for Charlie Sloane; but he was of
Avonlea, so no outsider had any business to laugh at him.
“Charlie and Gilbert have always been friends,” she said coldly. “Charlie is a
nice boy. He’s not to blame for his eyes.”
“Don’t tell me that! He is! He must have done something dreadful in a
previous existence to be punished with such eyes. Pris and I are going to have
such sport with him this afternoon. We’ll make fun of him to his face and he’ll
never know it.”
Doubtless, “the abandoned P’s,” as Anne called them, did carry out their
amiable intentions. But Sloane was blissfully ignorant; he thought he was quite a
fine fellow to be walking with two such coeds, especially Philippa Gordon, the
class beauty and belle. It must surely impress Anne. She would see that some
people appreciated him at his real value.
Gilbert and Anne loitered a little behind the others, enjoying the calm, still