Anne Of Ingleside √ (Project K.)

CHAPTER 2

"Such a lovely day . . . made for us," said Diana. "I'm afraid it's a pet day, though . . . there'll be rain tomorrow."

"Never mind. We'll drink its beauty today, even if its sunshine is gone tomorrow. We'll enjoy each other's friendship today even if we are to be parted tomorrow. Look at those long, golden-green hills . . . those mist-blue valleys. They're ours, Diana . . . I don't care if that furthest hill is registered in Abner Sloan's name . . . it's ours today. There's a west wind blowing . . . I always feel adventurous when a west wind blows . . . and we're going to have a perfect ramble."

They had. All the old dear spots were revisited: Lover's Lane, the Haunted Wood, Idlewild, Violet Vale, the Birch Path, Crystal Lake. There were some changes. The little ring of birch saplings in Idlewild, where they had had a playhouse long ago, had grown into big trees; the Birch Path, long untrodden, was matted with bracken; the Crystal Lake had entirely disappeared, leaving only a damp mossy hollow. But Violet Vale was purple with violets and the seedling apple tree Gilbert had once found far back in the woods was a huge tree peppered over with tiny, crimson-tipped blossom-buds.

They walked bareheaded. Anne's hair still gleamed like polished mahogany in the sunlight and Diana's was still glossy black. They exchanged gay and understanding, warm and friendly, glances. Sometimes they walked in silence . . . Anne always maintained that two people as sympathetic as she and Diana could feel each other's thoughts. Sometimes they peppered their conversation with do-you-remembers. "Do you remember the day you fell through the Cobb duckhouse on the Tory Road?" . . . "Do you remember when we jumped on Aunt Josephine?" . . . "Do you remember our Story Club?" . . . "Do you remember Mrs. Morgan's visit when you stained your nose red?" . . . "Do you remember how we signalled to each other from our windows with candles?" . . . "Do you remember the fun we had at Miss Lavender's wedding and Charlotta's blue bows?" . . . "Do you remember the Improvement Society?" It almost seemed to them they could hear their old peals of laughter echoing down the years.

The A. V. I. S. was, it seemed, dead. It had petered out soon after Anne's marriage.

"They just couldn't keep it up, Anne. The young people in Avonlea now are not what they were in our day."

"Don't talk as if 'our day' were ended, Diana. We're only fifteen years old and kindred spirits. The air isn't just full of light . . . it is light. I'm not sure that I haven't sprouted wings."

"I feel just that way, too," said Diana, forgetting that she had tipped the scale at one hundred and fifty-five that morning. "I often feel that I'd love to be turned into a bird for a little while. It must be wonderful to fly."

Beauty was all around them. Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways. The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves. Gay trills of song were everywhere. There were little hollows where you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold. At every turn some fresh spring scent struck their faces . . . spice ferns . . . fir balsam . . . the wholesome odour of newly ploughed fields. There was a lane curtained with wild-cherry blossoms . . . a grassy old field full of tiny spruce trees just starting in life and looking like elvish things that had squatted down among the grasses . . . brooks not yet "too broad for leaping" . . . star-flowers under the firs . . . sheets of curly young ferns . . . and a birch tree whence some vandal had torn away the white-skin wrapper in several places, exposing the tints of the bark below. Anne looked at it so long that Diana wondered. She did not see what Anne did . . . tints ranging from purest creamy white, through exquisite golden tones, growing deeper and deeper until the inmost layer revealed the deepest richest brown as if to tell that all birches, so maiden-like and cool exteriorly, had yet warm-hued feelings.