Chapter VIII
Anne’s First Proposal
The old year did not slip away in a green twilight, with a pinky-yellow sunset.
Instead, it went out with a wild, white bluster and blow. It was one of the nights
when the storm-wind hurtles over the frozen meadows and black hollows, and
moans around the eaves like a lost creature, and drives the snow sharply against
the shaking panes.
“Just the sort of night people like to cuddle down between their blankets and
count their mercies,” said Anne to Jane Andrews, who had come up to spend the
afternoon and stay all night. But when they were cuddled between their blankets,
in Anne’s little porch room, it was not her mercies of which Jane was thinking.
“Anne,” she said very solemnly, “I want to tell you something. May I”
Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party Ruby Gillis had given the night
before. She would much rather have gone to sleep than listen to Jane’s
confidences, which she was sure would bore her. She had no prophetic inkling of
what was coming. Probably Jane was engaged, too; rumor averred that Ruby
Gillis was engaged to the Spencervale schoolteacher, about whom all the girls
were said to be quite wild.
“I’ll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet,” thought Anne,
drowsily. Aloud she said, “Of course.”
“Anne,” said Jane, still more solemnly, “what do you think of my brother
Billy?”
Anne gasped over this unexpected question, and floundered helplessly in her
thoughts. Goodness, what DID she think of Billy Andrews? She had never
thought ANYTHING about him—round-faced, stupid, perpetually smiling,
good-natured Billy Andrews. Did ANYBODY ever think about Billy Andrews?
“I—I don’t understand, Jane,” she stammered. “What do you mean—
exactly?”
“Do you like Billy?” asked Jane bluntly.
“Why—why—yes, I like him, of course,” gasped Anne, wondering if she
were telling the literal truth. Certainly she did not DISlike Billy. But could the