e with
him if he doesn't. He is really full of wickedness, I think."
"And has Nora found out about the Golden Lady yet?"
"No; but I think she suspects. I'm almost sure she watched me the last
time I went to the cave. _I_ don't mind if she finds out . . . it is only
for HER sake I don't want her to . . . so that her feelings won't be hurt.
But if she is DETERMINED to have her feelings hurt it can't be helped."
"If I were to go to the shore some night with you do you think I could
see your rock people too?"
Paul shook his head gravely.
"No, I don't think you could see MY rock people. I'm the only person who
can see them. But you could see rock people of your own. You're one of
the kind that can. We're both that kind. YOU know, teacher," he added,
squeezing her hand chummily. "Isn't it splendid to be that kind,
teacher?"
"Splendid," Anne agreed, gray shining eyes looking down into blue
shining ones. Anne and Paul both knew
"How fair the realm
Imagination opens to the view,"
and both knew the way to that happy land. There the rose of joy bloomed
immortal by dale and stream; clouds never darkened the sunny sky; sweet
bells never jangled out of tune; and kindred spirits abounded. The
knowledge of that land's geography . . . "east o' the sun, west o' the
moon" . . . is priceless lore, not to be bought in any market place. It
must be the gift of the good fairies at birth and the years can never
deface it or take it away. It is better to possess it, living in a
garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it.
The Avonlea graveyard was as yet the grass-grown solitude it had always
been. To be sure, the Improvers had an eye on it, and Priscilla Grant
had read a paper on cemeteries before the last meeting of the Society.
At some future time the Improvers meant to have the lichened, wayward
old board fence replaced by a neat wire railing, the grass mown and the
leaning monuments straightened up.
Anne put on Matthew's grave the flowers she had brought for it, and then
went over to the little poplar shaded corner where Hester Gray slept.
Ever since the day of the spring picnic Anne had put flowers on Hester's
grave when she visited Matthew's. The evening before she had made a
pilgrimage back to the little deserted garden in the woods and brought
therefrom some of Hester's own white roses.
"I thought you would like them better than any others, dear," she said
softly.
Anne was still sittin
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