and Anne could hear them laughing and talking gaily as
they loitered along in the still, crisp autumn air. They were evidently
having the best of good times, while she was horribly bored by Charlie
Sloane, who talked unbrokenly on, and never, even by accident, said one
thing that was worth listening to. Anne gave an occasional absent "yes"
or "no," and thought how beautiful Ruby had looked that night, how
very goggly Charlie's eyes were in the moonlight--worse even than by
daylight--and that the world, somehow, wasn't quite such a nice place as
she had believed it to be earlier in the evening.

"I'm just tired out--that is what is the matter with me," she said, when
she thankfully found herself alone in her own room. And she honestly
believed it was. But a certain little gush of joy, as from some secret,
unknown spring, bubbled up in her heart the next evening, when she saw
Gilbert striding down through the Haunted Wood and crossing the old log
bridge with that firm, quick step of his. So Gilbert was not going to
spend this last evening with Ruby Gillis after all!

"You look tired, Anne," he said.

"I am tired, and, worse than that, I'm disgruntled. I'm tired because
I've been packing my trunk and sewing all day. But I'm disgruntled
because six women have been here to say good-bye to me, and every one of
the six managed to say something that seemed to take the color right
out of life and leave it as gray and dismal and cheerless as a November
morning."

"Spiteful old cats!" was Gilbert's elegant comment.

"Oh, no, they weren't," said Anne seriously. "That is just the trouble.
If they had been spiteful cats I wouldn't have minded them. But they are
all nice, kind, motherly souls, who like me and whom I like, and that is
why what they said, or hinted, had such undue weight with me. They let
me see they thought I was crazy going to Redmond and trying to take
a B.A., and ever since I've been wondering if I am. Mrs. Peter Sloane
sighed and said she hoped my strength would hold out till I got through;
and at once I saw myself a hopeless victim of nervous prostration at the
end of my third year; Mrs. Eben Wright said it must cost an awful lot
to put in four years at Redmond; and I felt all over me that it was
unpardonable of me to squander Marilla's money and my own on such a
folly. Mrs. Jasper Bell said she hoped I wouldn't let college spoil me,
as it did some people; and I felt in my bones that the end of my four
Redmo