ora's elfin face peering around the point, watching for him
wistfully? But it was a very sober Paul who came back from the shore in
the twilight.

"Didn't you find your Rock People?" asked Anne.

Paul shook his chestnut curls sorrowfully.

"The Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady never came at all," he said. "Nora
was there--but Nora is not the same, teacher. She is changed."

"Oh, Paul, it is you who are changed," said Anne. "You have grown too
old for the Rock People. They like only children for playfellows. I
am afraid the Twin Sailors will never again come to you in the pearly,
enchanted boat with the sail of moonshine; and the Golden Lady will play
no more for you on her golden harp. Even Nora will not meet you much
longer. You must pay the penalty of growing-up, Paul. You must leave
fairyland behind you."

"You two talk as much foolishness as ever you did," said old Mrs.
Irving, half-indulgently, half-reprovingly.

"Oh, no, we don't," said Anne, shaking her head gravely. "We are getting
very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting
when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal
our thoughts."

"But it isn't--it is given us to exchange our thoughts," said Mrs.
Irving seriously. She had never heard of Tallyrand and did not
understand epigrams.

Anne spent a fortnight of halcyon days at Echo Lodge in the golden prime
of August. While there she incidentally contrived to hurry Ludovic Speed
in his leisurely courting of Theodora Dix, as related duly in another
chronicle of her history.(1) Arnold Sherman, an elderly friend of the
Irvings, was there at the same time, and added not a little to the
general pleasantness of life.

(1 Chronicles of Avonlea.)

"What a nice play-time this has been," said Anne. "I feel like a giant
refreshed. And it's only a fortnight more till I go back to Kingsport,
and Redmond and Patty's Place. Patty's Place is the dearest spot, Miss
Lavendar. I feel as if I had two homes--one at Green Gables and one
at Patty's Place. But where has the summer gone? It doesn't seem a day
since I came home that spring evening with the Mayflowers. When I
was little I couldn't see from one end of the summer to the other. It
stretched before me like an unending season. Now, ''tis a handbreadth,
'tis a tale.'"

"Anne, are you and Gilbert Blythe as good friends as you used to be?"
asked Miss Lavendar quietly.

"I am just as much Gilbert's friend as