would take her out West to some forsaken place whose only recommendation is
that men are plenty and women scarce? Don’t you tell me!”
But it was not at Jane, Anne gazed that day in dismay and surprise. It was at
Ruby Gillis, who sat beside her in the choir. What had happened to Ruby? She
was even handsomer than ever; but her blue eyes were too bright and lustrous,
and the color of her cheeks was hectically brilliant; besides, she was very thin;
the hands that held her hymn-book were almost transparent in their delicacy.
“Is Ruby Gillis ill?” Anne asked of Mrs. Lynde, as they went home from
church.
“Ruby Gillis is dying of galloping consumption,” said Mrs. Lynde bluntly.
“Everybody knows it except herself and her FAMILY. They won’t give in. If
you ask THEM, she’s perfectly well. She hasn’t been able to teach since she had
that attack of congestion in the winter, but she says she’s going to teach again in
the fall, and she’s after the White Sands school. She’ll be in her grave, poor girl,
when White Sands school opens, that’s what.”
Anne listened in shocked silence. Ruby Gillis, her old school-chum, dying?
Could it be possible? Of late years they had grown apart; but the old tie of
school-girl intimacy was there, and made itself felt sharply in the tug the news
gave at Anne’s heartstrings. Ruby, the brilliant, the merry, the coquettish! It was
impossible to associate the thought of her with anything like death. She had
greeted Anne with gay cordiality after church, and urged her to come up the next
evening.
“I’ll be away Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,” she had whispered
triumphantly. “There’s a concert at Carmody and a party at White Sands. Herb
Spencer’s going to take me. He’s my LATEST. Be sure to come up tomorrow.
I’m dying for a good talk with you. I want to hear all about your doings at
Redmond.”
Anne knew that Ruby meant that she wanted to tell Anne all about her own
recent flirtations, but she promised to go, and Diana offered to go with her.
“I’ve been wanting to go to see Ruby for a long while,” she told Anne, when
they left Green Gables the next evening, “but I really couldn’t go alone. It’s so
awful to hear Ruby rattling on as she does, and pretending there is nothing the
matter with her, even when she can hardly speak for coughing. She’s fighting so
hard for her life, and yet she hasn’t any chance at all, they say.”
The girls walked silently down the red, twilit road. The robins were singing
vespers in the high treetops, filling the golden air with their jubilant voices. The
silver fluting of the frogs came from marshes and ponds, over fields where seeds