the long Saturday afternoons. From early dinner until
teatime, they amused themselves as they pleased, indoors or on the
'Home' grounds, under the general oversight of a pupil-teacher.

CHAPTER XIV

One Saturday afternoon in July, while the other girls were playing and
chattering on a shady porch, Anne slipped with Honey-Sweet through a
hole in the hedge and sauntered toward an old brown-stone house set in
spacious grounds near the 'Home.' Anne had long been wanting to explore
the place. She had never seen any one there--the house was closed for
the summer--and in her stories it figured as an enchanted castle. As she
walked ankle-deep in the unclipped grass under the catalpa and
elm-trees, she looked around with eager interest.

She liked everything about the place, even the clump of great rough dock
which had grown up around the back door. A frog hopped under the broad
leaves as she passed. She almost expected to see it come forth changed
to a fairy. Of course she didn't believe in fairies now, but this looked
like a place where they would stay if there were any.

At last she wandered toward a great clump of boxwood near a side gate.
It made such a mass of greenery that Anne pulled aside a branch to see
if it were green inside too. She gave a gasp of delight. The tall,
close-growing stems were thickly leaved on the outside and bare within;
in the centre there was a hollow space, like a little room. There must
be fairies, after all, to make such a beautiful place as this.

Anne pulled aside a branch and crept in. One might have passed a yard
away and never suspected that she was there. After a while, she put
Honey-Sweet down and set to work as a tidy housekeeper should. With a
broom of twigs, she swept up the dead leaves. Then she went out and
pulled handfuls of grass to make a carpet, which she patterned over
with blue stars of periwinkle. For chairs she brought two or three flat
stones. How time flew! While she was looking for green moss to cover
these stones, she was startled to see the sun setting, a red ball on the
horizon. She hurried back to the 'Home.' As she slipped through the
hedge, Emma, the pupil-teacher in charge, hurried across the yard.

"Where on earth have you been, Anne?" she asked crossly. "The
supper-bell rang long ago. I've looked for you everywhere. Where've you
been, I say?"

"Over there," Anne answered, nodding vaguely toward the lawn.

"Out of bounds!" exclaimed Emma. "You knew