ar on one foot when Jane couldn't even hop around the garden."

Marilla was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when
she saw Mr. Barry coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs.
Barry beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after
him. In his arms he carried Anne, whose head lay limply against his
shoulder.

At that moment Marilla had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that
pierced her very heart she realized what Anne had come to mean to her.
She would have admitted that she liked Anne--nay, that she was very fond
of Anne. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Anne
was dearer to her than anything else on earth.

"Mr. Barry, what has happened to her?" she gasped, more white and shaken
than the self-contained, sensible Marilla had been for many years.

Anne herself answered, lifting her head.

"Don't be very frightened, Marilla. I was walking the ridgepole and I
fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Marilla, I might have
broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things."

"I might have known you'd go and do something of the sort when I let you
go to that party," said Marilla, sharp and shrewish in her very relief.
"Bring her in here, Mr. Barry, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the
child has gone and fainted!"

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Anne had one more
of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.

Matthew, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway
dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the
injury was more serious than they had supposed. Anne's ankle was broken.

That night, when Marilla went up to the east gable, where a white-faced
girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.

"Aren't you very sorry for me, Marilla?"

"It was your own fault," said Marilla, twitching down the blind and
lighting a lamp.

"And that is just why you should be sorry for me," said Anne, "because
the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I
could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would
you have done, Marilla, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?"

"I'd have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such
absurdity!" said Marilla.

Anne sighed.

"But you have such strength of mind, Marilla. I haven't. I just felt
that I couldn't bear Josie Pye's scorn. She would have crowed