Chapter XV
A Dream Turned Upside Down
“Just one more week and we go back to Redmond,” said Anne. She was happy
at the thought of returning to work, classes and Redmond friends. Pleasing
visions were also being woven around Patty’s Place. There was a warm pleasant
sense of home in the thought of it, even though she had never lived there.
But the summer had been a very happy one, too—a time of glad living with
summer suns and skies, a time of keen delight in wholesome things; a time of
renewing and deepening of old friendships; a time in which she had learned to
live more nobly, to work more patiently, to play more heartily.
“All life lessons are not learned at college,” she thought. “Life teaches them
everywhere.”
But alas, the final week of that pleasant vacation was spoiled for Anne, by one
of those impish happenings which are like a dream turned upside down.
“Been writing any more stories lately?” inquired Mr. Harrison genially one
evening when Anne was taking tea with him and Mrs. Harrison.
“No,” answered Anne, rather crisply.
“Well, no offense meant. Mrs. Hiram Sloane told me the other day that a big
envelope addressed to the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder Company of
Montreal had been dropped into the post office box a month ago, and she
suspicioned that somebody was trying for the prize they’d offered for the best
story that introduced the name of their baking powder. She said it wasn’t
addressed in your writing, but I thought maybe it was you.”
“Indeed, no! I saw the prize offer, but I’d never dream of competing for it. I
think it would be perfectly disgraceful to write a story to advertise a baking
powder. It would be almost as bad as Judson Parker’s patent medicine fence.”
So spake Anne loftily, little dreaming of the valley of humiliation awaiting
her. That very evening Diana popped into the porch gable, bright-eyed and rosy
cheeked, carrying a letter.
“Oh, Anne, here’s a letter for you. I was at the office, so I thought I’d bring it
along. Do open it quick. If it is what I believe it is I shall just be wild with