whole
summer. Aunt Jamesina says I'll ruin Jo's career if I marry him. But
I won't. I know I haven't much sense or sobriety, but I've got what is
ever so much better--the knack of making people like me. There is a
man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting.
He says, 'If you can't thine like an electric thtar thine like a
candlethtick.' I'll be Jo's little candlestick."

"Phil, you're incorrigible. Well, I love you so much that I can't make
nice, light, congratulatory little speeches. But I'm heart-glad of your
happiness."

"I know. Those big gray eyes of yours are brimming over with real
friendship, Anne. Some day I'll look the same way at you. You're going
to marry Roy, aren't you, Anne?"

"My dear Philippa, did you ever hear of the famous Betty Baxter, who
'refused a man before he'd axed her'? I am not going to emulate that
celebrated lady by either refusing or accepting any one before he 'axes'
me."

"All Redmond knows that Roy is crazy about you," said Phil candidly.
"And you DO love him, don't you, Anne?"

"I--I suppose so," said Anne reluctantly. She felt that she ought to be
blushing while making such a confession; but she was not; on the other
hand, she always blushed hotly when any one said anything about Gilbert
Blythe or Christine Stuart in her hearing. Gilbert Blythe and Christine
Stuart were nothing to her--absolutely nothing. But Anne had given up
trying to analyze the reason of her blushes. As for Roy, of course she
was in love with him--madly so. How could she help it? Was he not her
ideal? Who could resist those glorious dark eyes, and that pleading
voice? Were not half the Redmond girls wildly envious? And what a
charming sonnet he had sent her, with a box of violets, on her birthday!
Anne knew every word of it by heart. It was very good stuff of its kind,
too. Not exactly up to the level of Keats or Shakespeare--even Anne
was not so deeply in love as to think that. But it was very tolerable
magazine verse. And it was addressed to HER--not to Laura or Beatrice or
the Maid of Athens, but to her, Anne Shirley. To be told in rhythmical
cadences that her eyes were stars of the morning--that her cheek had
the flush it stole from the sunrise--that her lips were redder than the
roses of Paradise, was thrillingly romantic. Gilbert would never have
dreamed of writing a sonnet to her eyebrows. But then, Gilbert could
see a joke. She had once told Roy a funny story--and he had not