atched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell
of the dusk was broken for her.

"I must go home," she exclaimed, with a rather overdone carelessness.
"Marilla had a headache this afternoon, and I'm sure the twins will be
in some dreadful mischief by this time. I really shouldn't have stayed
away so long."

She chattered ceaselessly and inconsequently until they reached the
Green Gables lane. Poor Gilbert hardly had a chance to get a word in
edgewise. Anne felt rather relieved when they parted. There had been a
new, secret self-consciousness in her heart with regard to Gilbert, ever
since that fleeting moment of revelation in the garden of Echo
Lodge. Something alien had intruded into the old, perfect, school-day
comradeship--something that threatened to mar it.

"I never felt glad to see Gilbert go before," she thought,
half-resentfully, half-sorrowfully, as she walked alone up the lane.
"Our friendship will be spoiled if he goes on with this nonsense.
It mustn't be spoiled--I won't let it. Oh, WHY can't boys be just
sensible!"

Anne had an uneasy doubt that it was not strictly "sensible" that
she should still feel on her hand the warm pressure of Gilbert's, as
distinctly as she had felt it for the swift second his had rested
there; and still less sensible that the sensation was far from being an
unpleasant one--very different from that which had attended a similar
demonstration on Charlie Sloane's part, when she had been sitting out a
dance with him at a White Sands party three nights before. Anne shivered
over the disagreeable recollection. But all problems connected with
infatuated swains vanished from her mind when she entered the
homely, unsentimental atmosphere of the Green Gables kitchen where an
eight-year-old boy was crying grievously on the sofa.

"What is the matter, Davy?" asked Anne, taking him up in her arms.
"Where are Marilla and Dora?"

"Marilla's putting Dora to bed," sobbed Davy, "and I'm crying 'cause
Dora fell down the outside cellar steps, heels over head, and scraped
all the skin off her nose, and--"

"Oh, well, don't cry about it, dear. Of course, you are sorry for her,
but crying won't help her any. She'll be all right tomorrow. Crying
never helps any one, Davy-boy, and--"

"I ain't crying 'cause Dora fell down cellar," said Davy, cutting short
Anne's wellmeant preachment with increasing bitterness. "I'm crying,
cause I wasn't there to see her fall. I'm always missing some fun or