seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as
if they had never been uttered before. Laughter and joy had their way;
and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as
driver, the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, in the throwing
of which Charlotta the Fourth and Mr. Harrison bore a valiant part.
Marilla stood at the gate and watched the carriage out of sight down
the long lane with its banks of goldenrod. Anne turned at its end to
wave her last good-bye. She was gone--Green Gables was her home no
more; Marilla's face looked very gray and old as she turned to the
house which Anne had filled for fourteen years, and even in her
absence, with light and life.

But Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and the Allans, had
stayed to help the two old ladies over the loneliness of the first
evening; and they contrived to have a quietly pleasant little supper
time, sitting long around the table and chatting over all the details
of the day. While they were sitting there Anne and Gilbert were
alighting from the train at Glen St. Mary.

CHAPTER 5

THE HOME COMING

Dr. David Blythe had sent his horse and buggy to meet them, and the
urchin who had brought it slipped away with a sympathetic grin, leaving
them to the delight of driving alone to their new home through the
radiant evening.

Anne never forgot the loveliness of the view that broke upon them when
they had driven over the hill behind the village. Her new home could
not yet be seen; but before her lay Four Winds Harbor like a great,
shining mirror of rose and silver. Far down, she saw its entrance
between the bar of sand dunes on one side and a steep, high, grim, red
sandstone cliff on the other. Beyond the bar the sea, calm and
austere, dreamed in the afterlight. The little fishing village,
nestled in the cove where the sand-dunes met the harbor shore, looked
like a great opal in the haze. The sky over them was like a jewelled
cup from which the dusk was pouring; the air was crisp with the
compelling tang of the sea, and the whole landscape was infused with
the subtleties of a sea evening. A few dim sails drifted along the
darkening, fir-clad harbor shores. A bell was ringing from the tower
of a little white church on the far side; mellowly and dreamily sweet,
the chime floated across the water blent with the moan of the sea. The
great revolving light on the cliff at the channel flashed warm and
golden agains