“Yes, indeed, she is a very dear friend of mine,” was Anne’s demure reply, which gave no hint of the sudden thrill that tingled over her from head to foot at Mr. Irving’s question. Anne “felt instinctively” that romance was peeping at her around a corner.
Mr. Irving rose and went to the window, looking out on a great, golden, billowing sea where a wild wind was harping. For a few moments there was silence in the little dark-walled room. Then he turned and looked down into Anne’s sympathetic face with a smile, half-whimsical, half-tender.
“I wonder how much you know,” he said.
“I know all about it,” replied Anne promptly. “You see,” she explained hastily, “Miss Lavendar and I are very intimate. She wouldn’t tell things of such a sacred nature to everybody. We are kindred spirits.”
“Yes, I believe you are. Well, I am going to ask a favor of you. I would like to go and see Miss Lavendar if she will let me. Will you ask her if I may come?”
Would she not? Oh, indeed she would! Yes, this was romance, the very, the real thing, with all the charm of rhyme and story and dream. It was a little belated, perhaps, like a rose blooming in October which should have bloomed in June; but none the less a rose, all sweetness and fragrance, with the gleam of gold in its heart. Never did Anne’s feet bear her on a more willing errand than on that walk through the beechwoods to Grafton the next morning. She found Miss Lavendar in the garden. Anne was fearfully excited. Her hands grew cold and her voice trembled.
“Miss Lavendar, I have something to tell you … something very important. Can you guess what it is?”
Anne never supposed that Miss Lavendar could GUESS; but Miss Lavendar’s face grew very pale and Miss Lavendar said in a quiet, still voice, from which all the color and sparkle that Miss Lavendar’s voice usually suggested had faded.
“Stephen Irving is home?”
“How did you know? Who told you?” cried Anne disappointedly, vexed that her great revelation had been anticipated.
“Nobody. I knew that must be it, just from the way you spoke.”
“He wants to come and see you,” said Anne. “May I send him word that he may?”
“Yes, of course,” fluttered Miss Lavendar. “There is no reason why he shouldn’t. He is only coming as any old friend might.”
Anne had her own opinion about that as she hastened into the house to write a note at Miss Lavendar’s desk.
“Oh, it’s delightful to be living in a storybook,” she thought gaily. “It will come out all right of course … it must … and Paul will have a mother after his own heart and everybody will be happy. But Mr. Irving will take Miss Lavendar away … and dear knows what will happen to the little stone house … and so there are two sides to it, as there seems to be to everything in this world.” The important note was written and Anne herself carried it to the Grafton post office, where she waylaid the mail carrier and asked him to leave it at the Avonlea office.
“It’s so very important,” Anne assured him anxiously. The mail carrier was a rather grumpy old personage who did not at all look the part of a messenger of Cupid; and Anne was none too certain that his memory was to be trusted. But he said he would do his best to remember and she had to be contented with that.
Charlotta the Fourth felt that some mystery pervaded the stone house that afternoon … a mystery from which she was excluded. Miss Lavendar roamed about the garden in a distracted fashion. Anne, too, seemed possessed by a demon of unrest, and walked to and fro and went up and down. Charlotta the Fourth endured it till patience ceased to be a virtue; then she confronted Anne on the occasion of that romantic young person’s third aimless peregrination through the kitchen.
“Please, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” said Charlotta the Fourth, with an indignant toss of her very blue bows, “it’s plain to be seen you and Miss Lavendar have got a secret and I think, begging your pardon if I’m too forward, Miss Shirley, ma’am, that it’s real mean not to tell me when we’ve all been such chums.”
“Oh, Charlotta dear, I’d have told you all about it if it were my secret … but it’s Miss Lavendar’s, you see. However, I’ll tell you this much … and if nothing comes of it you must never breathe a word about it to a living soul. You see, Prince Charming is coming tonight. He came long ago, but in a foolish moment went away and wandered afar and forgot the secret of the magic pathway to the enchanted castle, where the princess was weeping her faithful heart out for him. But at last he remembered it again and the princess is waiting still… because nobody but her own dear prince could carry her off.”
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am, what is that in prose?” gasped the mystified Charlotta.
Anne laughed.
“In prose, an old friend of Miss Lavendar’s is coming to see her tonight.”
“Do you mean an old beau of hers?” demanded the literal Charlotta.
“That is probably what I do mean … in prose,” answered Anne gravely. “It is Paul’s father … Stephen Irving. And goodness knows what will come of it, but let us hope for the best, Charlotta.”
“I hope that he’ll marry Miss Lavendar,” was Charlotta’s unequivocal response. “Some women’s intended from the start to be old maids, and I’m afraid I’m one of them, Miss Shirley, ma’am, because I’ve awful little patience with the men. But Miss Lavendar never was. And I’ve been awful worried, thinking what on earth she’d do when I got so big I’d HAVE to go to Boston. There ain’t any more girls in our family and dear knows what she’d do if she got some stranger that might laugh at her pretendings and leave things lying round out of their place and not be willing to be called Charlotta the Fifth. She might get someone who wouldn’t be as unlucky as me in breaking dishes but she’d never get anyone who’d love her better.”
And the faithful little handmaiden dashed to the oven door with a sniff.
They went through the form of having tea as usual that night at Echo Lodge; but nobody really ate anything. After tea Miss Lavendar went to her room and put on her new forget-me-not organdy, while Anne did her hair for her. Both were dreadfully excited; but Miss Lavendar pretended to be very calm and indifferent.
“I must really mend that rent in the curtain tomorrow,” she said anxiously, inspecting it as if it were the only thing of any importance just then. “Those curtains have not worn as well as they should, considering the price I paid. Dear me, Charlotta has forgotten to dust the stair railing AGAIN. I really MUST speak to her about it.”
Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down the lane and across the garden.
“This is the one place where time stands still,” he said, looking around him with delighted eyes. “There is nothing changed about this house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago. It makes me feel young again.”
“You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace,” said Anne seriously. “It is only when the prince comes that things begin to happen.”
Mr. Irving smiled a little sadly into her uplifted face, all astar with its youth and promise.
“Sometimes the prince comes too late,” he said. He did not ask Anne to translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he “understood.”
“Oh, no, not if he is the real prince coming to the true princess,” said Anne, shaking her red head decidedly, as she opened the parlor door. When he had gone in she shut it tightly behind him and turned to confront Charlotta the Fourth, who was in the hall, all “nods and becks and wreathed smiles.”
“Oh, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” she breathed, “I peeked from the kitchen window … and he’s awful handsome … and just the right age