onishing change.

"Then--then you live in that gray house up the brook," she stammered.

"Yes. I should have gone over to call on you long ago," said the
other. She did not offer any explanation or excuse for not having gone.

"I wish you WOULD come," said Anne, recovering herself somewhat.
"We're such near neighbors we ought to be friends. That is the sole
fault of Four Winds--there aren't quite enough neighbors. Otherwise it
is perfection."

"You like it?"

"LIKE it! I love it. It is the most beautiful place I ever saw."

"I've never seen many places," said Leslie Moore, slowly, "but I've
always thought it was very lovely here. I--I love it, too."

She spoke, as she looked, shyly, yet eagerly. Anne had an odd
impression that this strange girl--the word "girl" would persist--could
say a good deal if she chose.

"I often come to the shore," she added.

"So do I," said Anne. "It's a wonder we haven't met here before."

"Probably you come earlier in the evening than I do. It is generally
late--almost dark--when I come. And I love to come just after a
storm--like this. I don't like the sea so well when it's calm and
quiet. I like the struggle--and the crash--and the noise."

"I love it in all its moods," declared Anne. "The sea at Four Winds is
to me what Lover's Lane was at home. Tonight it seemed so free--so
untamed--something broke loose in me, too, out of sympathy. That was
why I danced along the shore in that wild way. I didn't suppose
anybody was looking, of course. If Miss Cornelia Bryant had seen me
she would have forboded a gloomy prospect for poor young Dr. Blythe."

"You know Miss Cornelia?" said Leslie, laughing. She had an exquisite
laugh; it bubbled up suddenly and unexpectedly with something of the
delicious quality of a baby's. Anne laughed, too.

"Oh, yes. She has been down to my house of dreams several times."

"Your house of dreams?"

"Oh, that's a dear, foolish little name Gilbert and I have for our
home. We just call it that between ourselves. It slipped out before I
thought."

"So Miss Russell's little white house is YOUR house of dreams," said
Leslie wonderingly. "_I_ had a house of dreams once--but it was a
palace," she added, with a laugh, the sweetness of which was marred by
a little note of derision.

"Oh, I once dreamed of a palace, too," said Anne. "I suppose all girls
do. And then we settle down contentedly in eight-room houses that seem
to fulfil