-WERE they the same hairpins?--still stuck through it. But her
expression was very different; the something about the mouth which had
hinted at a sense of humor had developed wonderfully; her eyes were
gentler and milder, her smile more frequent and tender.

Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped but not unhappy
childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her
girlhood, the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life
that followed. And the coming of Anne--the vivid, imaginative, impetuous
child with her heart of love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her
color and warmth and radiance, until the wilderness of existence had
blossomed like the rose. Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she
had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne. And Anne
would be home tomorrow night.

The kitchen door opened. Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lynde.
Anne stood before her, tall and starry-eyed, with her hands full of
Mayflowers and violets.

"Anne Shirley!" exclaimed Marilla. For once in her life she was
surprised out of her reserve; she caught her girl in her arms and
crushed her and her flowers against her heart, kissing the bright hair
and sweet face warmly. "I never looked for you till tomorrow night. How
did you get from Carmody?"

"Walked, dearest of Marillas. Haven't I done it a score of times in
the Queen's days? The mailman is to bring my trunk tomorrow; I just got
homesick all at once, and came a day earlier. And oh! I've had such a
lovely walk in the May twilight; I stopped by the barrens and picked
these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale; it's just a big bowlful
of violets now--the dear, sky-tinted things. Smell them, Marilla--drink
them in."

Marilla sniffed obligingly, but she was more interested in Anne than in
drinking violets.

"Sit down, child. You must be real tired. I'm going to get you some
supper."

"There's a darling moonrise behind the hills tonight, Marilla, and oh,
how the frogs sang me home from Carmody! I do love the music of the
frogs. It seems bound up with all my happiest recollections of old
spring evenings. And it always reminds me of the night I came here
first. Do you remember it, Marilla?"

"Well, yes," said Marilla with emphasis. "I'm not likely to forget it
ever."

"They used to sing so madly in the marsh and brook that year. I would
listen to them at my window in the dusk, and wonder how they could