Charlotta the Fourth had blossomed out into young ladyhood. She wore her hair now in an enormous pompador and had discarded the blue ribbon bows of auld lang syne, but her face was as freckled, her nose as snubbed, and her mouth and smiles as wide as ever.
“You don’t think I talk with a Yankee accent, do you, Miss Shirley, ma’am?” she demanded anxiously.
“I don’t notice it, Charlotta.”
“I’m real glad of that. They said I did at home, but I thought likely they just wanted to aggravate me. I don’t want no Yankee accent. Not that I’ve a word to say against the Yankees, Miss Shirley, ma’am. They’re real civilized. But give me old P.E. Island every time.”
Paul spent his first fortnight with his grandmother Irving in Avonlea. Anne was there to meet him when he came, and found him wild with eagerness to get to the shore — Nora and the Golden Lady and the Twin Sailors would be there. He could hardly wait to eat his supper. Could he not see Nora’s elfin face peering around the point, watching for him wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in the twilight.
“Didn’t you find your Rock People?” asked Anne.
Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.
“The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all,” he said. “Nora was there — but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed.”
“Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed,” said Anne. “You have grown too old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly, enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will play no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much longer. You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave fairyland behind you.”
“You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did,” said old Mrs. Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.
“Oh, no, we don’t,” said Anne, shaking her head gravely. “We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts.”
“But it isn’t — it is given us to exchange our thoughts,” said Mrs. Irving seriously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not understand epigrams.
Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to the general pleasantness of life.
(1 Chronicles of Avonlea.)
“What a nice playtime this has been,” said Anne. “I feel like a giant refreshed. And it’s only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport, and Redmond and Patty’s Place. Patty’s Place is the dearest spot, Miss Lavendar. I feel as if I had two homes — one at Green Gables and one at Patty’s Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn’t seem a day since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I was little I couldn’t see from one end of the summer to the other. It stretched before me like an unending season. Now, ‘‘tis a handbreadth, ‘tis a tale.’”
“Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?” asked Miss Lavendar quietly.
“I am just as much Gilbert’s friend as ever I was, Miss Lavendar.”
Miss Lavendar shook her head.
“I see something’s gone wrong, Anne. I’m going to be impertinent and ask what. Have you quarrelled?”
“No; it’s only that Gilbert wants more than friendship and I can’t give him more.”
“Are you sure of that, Anne?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“I’m very, very sorry.”
“I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne petulantly.
“Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne — that is why. You needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s a fact.”
Chapter XXIV
Enter Jonas
“PROSPECT POINT, “August 20th.
“Dear Anne — spelled — with — an — E,” wrote Phil, “I must prop my eyelids open long enough to write you. I’ve neglected you shamefully this summer, honey, but all my other correspondents have been neglected, too. I have a huge pile of letters to answer, so I must gird up the loins of my mind and hoe in. Excuse my mixed metaphors. I’m fearfully sleepy. Last night Cousin Emily and I were calling at a neighbor’s. There were several other callers there, and as soon as those unfortunate creatures left, our hostess and her three daughters picked them all to pieces. I knew they would begin on Cousin Emily and me as soon as the door shut behind us. When we came home Mrs. Lilly informed us that the aforesaid neighbor’s hired boy was supposed to be down with scarlet fever. You can always trust Mrs. Lilly to tell you cheerful things like that. I have a horror of scarlet fever. I couldn’t sleep when I went to bed for thinking of it. I tossed and tumbled about, dreaming fearful dreams when I did snooze for a minute; and at three I wakened up with a high fever, a sore throat, and a raging headache. I knew I had scarlet fever; I got up in a panic and hunted up Cousin Emily’s ‘doctor book’ to read up the symptoms. Anne, I had them all. So I went back to bed, and knowing the worst, slept like a top the rest of the night. Though why a top should sleep sounder than anything else I never could understand. But this morning I was quite well, so it couldn’t have been the fever. I suppose if I did catch it last night it couldn’t have developed so soon. I can remember that in daytime, but at three o’clock at night I never can be logical.
“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing at Prospect Point. Well, I always like to spend a month of summer at the shore, and father insists that I come to his second-cousin Emily’s ‘select boardinghouse’ at Prospect Point. So a fortnight ago I came as usual. And as usual old ‘Uncle Mark Miller’ brought me from the station with his ancient buggy and what he calls his ‘generous purpose’ horse. He is a nice old man and gave me a handful of pink peppermints. Peppermints always seem to me such a religious sort of candy — I suppose because when I was a little girl Grandmother Gordon always gave them to me in church. Once I asked, referring to the smell of peppermints, ‘Is that the odor of sanctity?’ I didn’t like to eat Uncle Mark’s peppermints because he just fished them loose out of his pocket, and had to pick some rusty nails and other things from among them before he gave them to me. But I wouldn’t hurt his dear old feelings for anything, so I carefully sowed them along the road at intervals. When the last one was gone, Uncle Mark said, a little rebukingly, ‘Ye shouldn’t a’et all them candies to onct, Miss Phil. You’ll likely have the stummick-ache.’
“Cousin Emily has only five boarders besides myself — four old ladies and one young man. My righthand neighbor is Mrs. Lilly. She is one of those people who seem to take a gruesome pleasure in detailing all their many aches and pains and sicknesses. You cannot mention any ailment but she says, shaking her head, ‘Ah, I know too well what that is’ — and then you get all the details. Jonas declares he once spoke of locomotor ataxia in hearing and she said she knew too well what that was. She suffered from it for ten years and was finally cured by a traveling doctor.
“Who is Jonas? Just wait, Anne Shirley. You’ll hear all about Jonas in the proper time and place. He is not to be mixed up with estimable old ladies.
“My left-hand neighbor at the table is Mrs. Phinney. She