August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes,
little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor
of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a
corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages.
The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin
propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of
fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house
like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a
certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies
of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high
and lofty ambitions.

To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts . . . which, it must be
confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to . . . it did not seem likely
that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea
school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used
her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a
teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and
she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a
famous personage . . . just exactly what he was to be famous for was left
in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have
him a college president or a Canadian premier . . . bowing low over her
wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his
ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she
had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was
shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.

A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five seconds
later Mr. Harrison arrived . . . if "arrived" be not too mild a term to
describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.

He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily
confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking
at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand
neighbor and she had never met him before, although she had seen him
once or twice.

In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen's, Mr. Robert Bell,
whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the west, had sold out and
moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A.
Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, w