“Yes, when I was young. Do I seem very old to you, Paul?”
“Do you know, I can’t make up my mind about that,” said Paul confidentially. “Your hair looks old … I never knew a young person with white hair. But your eyes are as young as my beautiful teacher’s when you laugh. I tell you what, Miss Lavendar” … Paul’s voice and face were as solemn as a judge’s … “I think you would make a splendid mother. You have just the right look in your eyes … the look my little mother always had. I think it’s a pity you haven’t any boys of your own.”
“I have a little dream boy, Paul.”
“Oh, have you really? How old is he?”
“About your age I think. He ought to be older because I dreamed him long before you were born. But I’ll never let him get any older than eleven or twelve; because if I did some day he might grow up altogether and then I’d lose him.”
“I know,” nodded Paul. “That’s the beauty of dream-people … they stay any age you want them. You and my beautiful teacher and me myself are the only folks in the world that I know of that have dream-people. Isn’t it funny and nice we should all know each other? But I guess that kind of people always find each other out. Grandma never has dream-people and Mary Joe thinks I’m wrong in the upper story because I have them. But I think it’s splendid to have them. YOU know, Miss Lavendar. Tell me all about your little dream-boy.”
“He has blue eyes and curly hair. He steals in and wakens me with a kiss every morning. Then all day he plays here in the garden … and I play with him. Such games as we have. We run races and talk with the echoes; and I tell him stories. And when twilight comes …”
“I know,” interrupted Paul eagerly. “He comes and sits beside you … SO … because of course at twelve he’d be too big to climb into your lap … and lays his head on your shoulder … SO … and you put your arms about him and hold him tight, tight, and rest your cheek on his head … yes, that’s the very way. Oh, you DO know, Miss Lavendar.”
Anne found the two of them there when she came out of the stone house, and something in Miss Lavendar’s face made her hate to disturb them.
“I’m afraid we must go, Paul, if we want to get home before dark. Miss Lavendar, I’m going to invite myself to Echo Lodge for a whole week pretty soon.”
“If you come for a week I’ll keep you for two,” threatened Miss Lavendar.
XXVIII. The Prince Comes Back to the Enchanted Palace
The last day of school came and went. A triumphant “semi-annual examination” was held and Anne’s pupils acquitted themselves splendidly. At the close they gave her an address and a writing desk. All the girls and ladies present cried, and some of the boys had it cast up to them later on that they cried too, although they always denied it.
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, Mrs. Peter Sloane, and Mrs. William Bell walked home together and talked things over.
“I do think it is such a pity Anne is leaving when the children seem so much attached to her,” sighed Mrs. Peter Sloane, who had a habit of sighing over everything and even finished off her jokes that way. “To be sure,” she added hastily, “we all know we’ll have a good teacher next year too.”
“Jane will do her duty, I’ve no doubt,” said Mrs. Andrews rather stiffly. “I don’t suppose she’ll tell the children quite so many fairy tales or spend so much time roaming about the woods with them. But she has her name on the Inspector’s Roll of Honor and the Newbridge people are in a terrible state over her leaving.”
“I’m real glad Anne is going to college,” said Mrs. Bell. “She has always wanted it and it will be a splendid thing for her.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Mrs. Andrews was determined not to agree fully with anybody that day. “I don’t see that Anne needs any more education. She’ll probably be marrying Gilbert Blythe, if his infatuation for her lasts till he gets through college, and what good will Latin and Greek do her then? If they taught you at college how to manage a man there might be some sense in her going.”
Mrs. Harmon Andrews, so Avonlea gossip whispered, had never learned how to manage her “man,” and as a result the Andrews household was not exactly a model of domestic happiness.
“I see that the Charlottetown call to Mr. Allan is up before the Presbytery,” said Mrs. Bell. “That means we’ll be losing him soon, I suppose.”
“They’re not going before September,” said Mrs. Sloane. “It will be a great loss to the community … though I always did think that Mrs. Allan dressed rather too gay for a minister’s wife. But we are none of us perfect. Did you notice how neat and snug Mr. Harrison looked today? I never saw such a changed man. He goes to church every Sunday and has subscribed to the salary.”
“Hasn’t that Paul Irving grown to be a big boy?” said Mrs. Andrews. “He was such a mite for his age when he came here. I declare I hardly knew him today. He’s getting to look a lot like his father.”
“He’s a smart boy,” said Mrs. Bell.
“He’s smart enough, but” … Mrs. Andrews lowered her voice … “I believe he tells queer stories. Gracie came home from school one day last week with the greatest rigmarole he had told her about people who lived down at the shore … stories there couldn’t be a word of truth in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them, and she said Paul didn’t intend her to. But if he didn’t what did he tell them to her for?”
“Anne says Paul is a genius,” said Mrs. Sloane.
“He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans,” said Mrs. Andrews. Mrs. Andrews’ only acquaintance with the word “genius” was derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual “a queer genius.” She probably thought, with Mary Joe, that it meant a person with something wrong in his upper story.
Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had sat on the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on her hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils that for a moment college had lost all its charm. She still felt the clasp of Annetta Bell’s arms about her neck and heard the childish wail, “I’ll NEVER love any teacher as much as you, Miss Shirley, never, never.”
For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much more … lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore of childish hearts. Perhaps she had not succeeded in “inspiring” any wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had taught them, more by her own sweet personality than by all her careful precepts, that it was good and necessary in the years that were before them to live their lives finely and graciously, holding fast to truth and courtesy and kindness, keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and meanness and vulgarity. They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they had forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the Roses.
“Another chapter in my life is closed,” said Anne aloud, as she locked her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance in the idea of that “closed chapter” did comfort her a little.
Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and everybody concerned had a good time.
She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded her to buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting and making it together, while the happy Charlotta the Fourth basted and swept up clippings.