or me."

Softly and clearly, while the seawind blew in on them, Anne repeated
the beautiful lines of Tennyson's wonderful swan song--"Crossing the
Bar." The old captain kept time gently with his sinewy hand.

"Yes, yes, Mistress Blythe," he said, when she had finished, "that's
it, that's it. He wasn't a sailor, you tell me--I dunno how he could
have put an old sailor's feelings into words like that, if he wasn't
one. He didn't want any 'sadness o' farewells' and neither do I,
Mistress Blythe--for all will be well with me and mine beyant the bar."

CHAPTER 36

BEAUTY FOR ASHES

"Any news from Green Gables, Anne?"

"Nothing very especial," replied Anne, folding up Marilla's letter.
"Jake Donnell has been there shingling the roof. He is a full-fledged
carpenter now, so it seems he has had his own way in regard to the
choice of a life-work. You remember his mother wanted him to be a
college professor. I shall never forget the day she came to the school
and rated me for failing to call him St. Clair."

"Does anyone ever call him that now?"

"Evidently not. It seems that he has completely lived it down. Even
his mother has succumbed. I always thought that a boy with Jake's chin
and mouth would get his own way in the end. Diana writes me that Dora
has a beau. Just think of it--that child!"

"Dora is seventeen," said Gilbert. "Charlie Sloane and I were both mad
about you when you were seventeen, Anne."

"Really, Gilbert, we must be getting on in years," said Anne, with a
half-rueful smile, "when children who were six when we thought
ourselves grown up are old enough now to have beaux. Dora's is Ralph
Andrews--Jane's brother. I remember him as a little, round, fat,
white-headed fellow who was always at the foot of his class. But I
understand he is quite a fine-looking young man now."

"Dora will probably marry young. She's of the same type as Charlotta
the Fourth--she'll never miss her first chance for fear she might not
get another."

"Well; if she marries Ralph I hope he will be a little more
up-and-coming than his brother Billy," mused Anne.

"For instance," said Gilbert, laughing, "let us hope he will be able to
propose on his own account. Anne, would you have married Billy if he
had asked you himself, instead of getting Jane to do it for him?"

"I might have." Anne went off into a shriek of laughter over the
recollection of her first proposal. "The shock of the whole thing
might have