.

"What's come over you?" Milly asked. "You don't act like the same girl
you used to be. Why, you're downright bad."

Anne smiled knowingly. "That I am," she agreed.

"How come?" Milly inquired.

Anne hesitated, then she poured out the whole story. 'She wanted so much
to go back to Miss Drayton. And didn't Milly think she was 'most bad
enough now?'

Milly threw back her head and laughed till she cried.

"Oh, you Anne! you Anne!" she exclaimed. At last she got breath enough
to explain that Emma had only said that because she was provoked. It was
not true. Anne would not be sent away. Indeed, there was nowhere to send
her. Miss Farlow took charge of her and would keep her because there was
no one else to care for her. She would stay there till she was large
enough to go out and work for herself, as Milly did.

Anne was much disappointed. She had set her heart on going back to Miss
Drayton. Still it was disagreeable to be naughty and in disgrace all the
time. Louise used to say, too, that no one loved naughty girls, and Anne
loved to be loved. She didn't care to be large if she had to make
dresses like Milly, when she went away from the 'Home.' She did hate to
sew! She cried a little while, then she washed her face, brushed her
hair, learned the hymn set her as an afternoon task, and went downstairs
to tea, a meek, well-behaved girl again.

CHAPTER XV

The weeks went by, one as like another as the blue-clad children. A
September Saturday afternoon found Anne, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her
arms, in a secluded corner near the boundary hedge. She had told
Honey-Sweet all the happenings of the week--that she was head in
reading, that she would have cut Lucy down in spelling-class if the girl
next above her had not spelt 'scissors' on her fingers--that Miss 'Liza
had not found a wrinkle in her bed-clothes all the week. She cuddled and
kissed Honey-Sweet to her heart's content, crooning over and over her
old lullaby:--

"Honey, honey! Sweet, sweet, sweet!
Honey, honey! Honey-Sweet!"

Then she wandered into her world of 'make believe.' Once upon a time,
there was a fair, forlorn princess on a milk-white steed. She was lost
in a forest. It was, though the princess did not know it, an enchanted
forest. And there was a cruel giant who had seized twenty-seven fair,
forlorn princesses whom he had made his serving-maids. They could be
freed only by a magic ring worn by a gallant knight who d