Page:Anne of Avonlea (1909).djvu/260

 Miss Lavendar looked at her tea-table again, and blushed.

“I know you’ll think me dreadfully foolish,” she said. “I foolish  and I’m ashamed of it when I’m found out, but never unless I  found out. I’m not expecting anybody I was just pretending I was. You see, I was so lonely. I love company that is, the right kind of company  but so few people ever come here because it is so far out of the way. Charlotta the Fourth was lonely too. So I just pretended I was going to have a tea-party. I cooked for it and decorated the table for it  and set it with my mother’s wedding china  and I dressed up for it.”

Diana secretly thought Miss Lavendar quite as peculiar as report had pictured her. The idea of a woman of forty-five playing at having a tea-party, just as if she were a little girl! But Anne of the shining eyes exclaimed joyfuly,

“Oh, do imagine things too?”

That “too” revealed a kindred spirit to Miss Lavendar.

“Yes, I do,” she confessed, boldly. “Of course it’s silly in anybody as old as I am. But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells. But I’m glad to be Rh