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There
was no silly sentiment in Anne's ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys were to her,
when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades.
If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared how many
other friends he had nor with whom he walked.
She had a genius for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but
she had a vague consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good
thing to round out one's conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison.
Not that Anne could have put her feelings on the matter into just
such clear definition. But she thought that if Gilbert had ever walked home
with her from the train, over the crisp fields and along the ferny byways,
they might have had many and merry and interesting conversations about the
new world that was opening around them and their hopes and ambitions
therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to get
the best out of life and put the best into it.
Ruby Gillis told Jane Andrews that she didn't understand half the
things Gilbert Blythe said; he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she
had a thoughtful fit on and for her part she didn't think it any fun to be
bothering about books and that sort of thing when you didn't have to.
Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go, but then he wasn't half as
good-looking as Gilbert and she really couldn't decide which she liked best!
In
the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about her,
thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself.
With the "rose-red" girl, Stella Maynard, and the
"dream girl," Priscilla Grant, she soon became intimate, finding
the latter pale spiritual-looking maiden to be full to the brim of mischief
and pranks and fun, while the vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of
wistful dreams and fancies, as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne's own.
After
the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home on Fridays
and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen's scholars had
gravitated into their own places in the ranks and the various classes had
assumed distinct and settled shadings of individuality. Certain facts had
become generally accepted. It
was admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down to
three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery scholarship
was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible winner.
The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as won by a
fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a patched coat.
Ruby
Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the Second
Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with small but
critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was admitted by all
competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Jane
Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious Jane--carried off the honors in the
domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain preeminence as
the sharpest- tongued young lady in attendance at Queen's.
So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy's old pupil's held their
own in the wider arena of the academical course.
Anne
worked hard and steadily. Her
rivalry with Gilbert was as intense as it had ever been in Avonlea school,
although it was not known in the class at large, but somehow the bitterness
had gone out of it. Anne no longer wished to win for the sake of defeating
Gilbert; rather, for the proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a
worthy foeman. It would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought
life would be insupportable if she did not.
In
spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times.
Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her
Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry.
The latter was, as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were
not dim nor the vigor of her tongue in the least abated.
But she never sharpened the latter on Anne, who continued to be a
prime favorite with the critical old lady.
"That
Anne-girl improves all the time," she said.
"I get tired of other girls--there is such a provoking and
eternal sameness about them. Anne
has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it
lasts. I don't know that she is
as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I
like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making
myself love them."
Then,
almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the
Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths
lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the
valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought and talked
only of examinations.
"It
doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over," said Anne.
"Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole
winter of studies and classes. And
here we are, with the exams looming up next week.
Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when
I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue
air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so important."
Jane
and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it.
To them the coming examinations were constantly very important
indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes.
It was all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to
have her moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on
them--as the girls truly thought theirs did-- you could not regard them
philosophically.
"I've
lost seven pounds in the last two weeks," sighed Jane.
"It's no use to say don't worry.
I WILL worry. Worrying helps you some--it seems as if you were doing
something when you're worrying. It
would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen's all
winter and spending so much money."
"_I_
don't care," said Josie Pye. "If
I don't pass this year I'm coming back next.
My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that
Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal and that
Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship."
"That
may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie," laughed Anne, "but just
now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out all
purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are
poking their heads up in Lovers' Lane, it's not a great deal of difference
whether I win the Avery or not. I've
done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the `joy of the
strife.' Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing.
Girls, don't talk about exams! Look
at that arch of pale green sky over those houses and picture to yourself
what it must look like over the purply-dark beech-woods back of Avonlea."
"What
are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?" asked Ruby practically.
Jane
and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy of
fashions. But Anne, with her
elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands,
and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof
and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a
possible future from the golden tissue of youth's own optimism.
All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in the
oncoming years--each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal
chaplet.
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