. Pendexter said
little; she merely smiled with her lovely eyes and lips, and ate chicken
and fruit cake and preserves with such exquisite grace that she conveyed
the impression of dining on ambrosia and honeydew. But then, as Anne
said to Diana later on, anybody so divinely beautiful as Mrs. Pendexter
didn't need to talk; it was enough for her just to LOOK.

After dinner they all had a walk through Lover's Lane and Violet Vale
and the Birch Path, then back through the Haunted Wood to the Dryad's
Bubble, where they sat down and talked for a delightful last half hour.
Mrs. Morgan wanted to know how the Haunted Wood came by its name, and
laughed until she cried when she heard the story and Anne's dramatic
account of a certain memorable walk through it at the witching hour of
twilight.

"It has indeed been a feast of reason and flow of soul, hasn't it?" said
Anne, when her guests had gone and she and Diana were alone again. "I
don't know which I enjoyed more . . . listening to Mrs. Morgan or gazing
at Mrs. Pendexter. I believe we had a nicer time than if we'd known they
were coming and been cumbered with much serving. You must stay to tea
with me, Diana, and we'll talk it all over."

"Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter's husband's sister is married to an
English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves,"
said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

"I daresay even the English earl himself wouldn't have turned up his
aristocratic nose at Marilla's plum preserves," said Anne proudly.

Anne did not mention the misfortune which had befallen HER nose when
she related the day's history to Marilla that evening. But she took the
bottle of freckle lotion and emptied it out of the window.

"I shall never try any beautifying messes again," she said, darkly
resolute. "They may do for careful, deliberate people; but for anyone so
hopelessly given over to making mistakes as I seem to be it's tempting
fate to meddle with them."

XXI

Sweet Miss Lavendar

School opened and Anne returned to her work, with fewer theories but
considerably more experience. She had several new pupils, six- and
seven-year-olds just venturing, round-eyed, into a world of wonder.
Among them were Davy and Dora. Davy sat with Milty Boulter, who had been
going to school for a year and was therefore quite a man of the world.
Dora had made a compact at Sunday School the previous Sunday to sit
with Lily Sloane; but Lily