its little shadow of
sorrow. During the three Summerside years Anne had been home often for
vacations and weekends; but, after this, a bi-annual visit would be as
much as could be hoped for.

"You needn't let what Mrs. Harmon says worry you," said Diana, with the
calm assurance of the four-years matron. "Married life has its ups and
downs, of course. You mustn't expect that everything will always go
smoothly. But I can assure you, Anne, that it's a happy life, when
you're married to the right man."

Anne smothered a smile. Diana's airs of vast experience always amused
her a little.

"I daresay I'll be putting them on too, when I've been married four
years," she thought. "Surely my sense of humor will preserve me from
it, though."

"Is it settled yet where you are going to live?" asked Diana, cuddling
Small Anne Cordelia with the inimitable gesture of motherhood which
always sent through Anne's heart, filled with sweet, unuttered dreams
and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure and half a strange,
ethereal pain.

"Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I 'phoned to you to come
down today. By the way, I can't realize that we really have telephones
in Avonlea now. It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and modernish
for this darling, leisurely old place."

"We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them," said Diana. "We should never
have got the line if they hadn't taken the matter up and carried it
through. There was enough cold water thrown to discourage any society.
But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid thing for
Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne. What fun we did have at
our meetings! Will you ever forget the blue hall and Judson Parker's
scheme for painting medicine advertisements on his fence?"

"I don't know that I'm wholly grateful to the A. V. I. S. in the
matter of the telephone," said Anne. "Oh, I know it's most
convenient--even more so than our old device of signalling to each
other by flashes of candlelight! And, as Mrs. Rachel says, 'Avonlea
must keep up with the procession, that's what.' But somehow I feel as
if I didn't want Avonlea spoiled by what Mr. Harrison, when he wants to
be witty, calls 'modern inconveniences.' I should like to have it kept
always just as it was in the dear old years. That's foolish--and
sentimental--and impossible. So I shall immediately become wise and
practical and possible. The telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is 'a