he snow comes and I mean to stay all night. Diana
can't go because she has company, and I'm sure Miss Lavendar will be
looking for me tonight. It's a whole fortnight since I was there."

Anne had paid many a visit to Echo Lodge since that October day.
Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road; sometimes they walked
through the woods. When Diana could not go Anne went alone. Between
her and Miss Lavendar had sprung up one of those fervent, helpful
friendships possible only between a woman who has kept the freshness of
youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose imagination and intuition
supplied the place of experience. Anne had at last discovered a real
"kindred spirit," while into the little lady's lonely, sequestered life
of dreams Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of
the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar, "the world forgetting, by the
world forgot," had long ceased to share; they brought an atmosphere of
youth and reality to the little stone house. Charlotta the Fourth always
greeted them with her very widest smile . . . and Charlotta's smiles WERE
fearfully wide . . . loving them for the sake of her adored mistress as
well as for their own. Never had there been such "high jinks" held in
the little stone house as were held there that beautiful, late-lingering
autumn, when November seemed October over again, and even December aped
the sunshine and hazes of summer.

But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that
it was time for winter and had turned suddenly dull and brooding, with
a windless hush predictive of coming snow. Nevertheless, Anne keenly
enjoyed her walk through the great gray maze of the beechlands; though
alone she never found it lonely; her imagination peopled her path
with merry companions, and with these she carried on a gay, pretended
conversation that was wittier and more fascinating than conversations
are apt to be in real life, where people sometimes fail most lamentably
to talk up to the requirements. In a "make believe" assembly of choice
spirits everybody says just the thing you want her to say and so gives
you the chance to say just what YOU want to say. Attended by this
invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir lane
just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly.

At the first bend she came upon Miss Lavendar, standing under a big,
broad-branching fir. She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and he