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 over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul. Really, after Mrs. Elisha went away I hardly had the heart to finish packing.”

“You’re just tired, Anne. Come, forget it all and take a walk with me—a ramble back through the woods beyond the marsh. There should be something there I want to show you.”

“Should be! Don’t you know if it is there?”

“No. I only know it should be, from something I saw there in spring. Come on. We’ll pretend we are two children again and we’ll go the way of the wind.”

They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert; and Gilbert, who was learning wisdom, took care to be nothing save the schoolboy comrade again. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.

“That’ll be a match some day,” Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.

Marilla winced slightly. In her heart she hoped it would, but it went against her grain to hear the matter spoken of in Mrs. Lynde’s gossipy matter-of-fact way.

“They’re only children yet,” she said shortly.

Mrs. Lynde laughed good-naturedly.

“Anne is eighteen; I was married when I was that age. We old folks, Marilla, are too much given to thinking children never grow up, that’s what. Anne is a young woman and Gilbert’s a man, and he worships the ground she walks on, as any one can see. He’s a fine fellow, and Anne can’t do better. I hope she won’t