Page:Anne of Avonlea (1909).djvu/66

 smell dying fir is very heaven. That’s two thirds Wordsworth and one third Anne Shirley. It doesn’t seem possible that there should be dying fir in heaven, does it? And yet it doesn’t seem to me that heaven would be quite perfect if you couldn’t get a whiff of dead fir as you went through its woods. Perhaps we’ll have the odour there without the death. Yes, I think that will be the way. That delicious aroma must be the souls of the firs and of course it will be just souls in heaven.”

“Trees haven’t souls,” said practical Diana, “but the smell of dead fir is certainly lovely. I’m going to make a cushion and fill it with fir needles. You’d better make one too, Anne.”

“I think I shall and use it for my naps. I’d be certain to dream I was a dryad or a wood-nymph then. But just this minute I’m well content to be Anne Shirley, Avonlea schoolma’am, driving over a road like this on such a sweet, friendly day.”

“It’s a lovely day but we have anything but a lovely task before us,” sighed Diana. “Why on earth did you offer to canvass this road, Anne? Almost all the cranks in Avonlea live along it, and we’ll probably be treated as if we were begging for ourselves. It’s the very worst road of all.”

“That is why I chose it. Of course Gilbert and Fred would have taken this road if we had asked them. But you see, Diana, I feel myself responsible for the A. V. I. S., since I was the first to suggest it, and it seems to me that I ought to do the most disagreeable Rh