. . stories there couldn't be a word of truth
in, you know. I told Gracie not to believe them, and she said Paul
didn't intend her to. But if he didn't what did he tell them to her
for?"

"Anne says Paul is a genius," said Mrs. Sloane.

"He may be. You never know what to expect of them Americans," said Mrs.
Andrews. Mrs. Andrews' only acquaintance with the word "genius" was
derived from the colloquial fashion of calling any eccentric individual
"a queer genius." She probably thought, with Mary Joe, that it meant a
person with something wrong in his upper story.

Back in the schoolroom Anne was sitting alone at her desk, as she had
sat on the first day of school two years before, her face leaning on her
hand, her dewy eyes looking wistfully out of the window to the Lake of
Shining Waters. Her heart was so wrung over the parting with her pupils
that for a moment college had lost all its charm. She still felt the
clasp of Annetta Bell's arms about her neck and heard the childish
wail, "I'll NEVER love any teacher as much as you, Miss Shirley, never,
never."

For two years she had worked earnestly and faithfully, making many
mistakes and learning from them. She had had her reward. She had taught
her scholars something, but she felt that they had taught her much
more . . . lessons of tenderness, self-control, innocent wisdom, lore
of childish hearts. Perhaps she had not succeeded in "inspiring" any
wonderful ambitions in her pupils, but she had taught them, more by her
own sweet personality than by all her careful precepts, that it was good
and necessary in the years that were before them to live their lives
finely and graciously, holding fast to truth and courtesy and kindness,
keeping aloof from all that savored of falsehood and meanness and
vulgarity. They were, perhaps, all unconscious of having learned such
lessons; but they would remember and practice them long after they had
forgotten the capital of Afghanistan and the dates of the Wars of the
Roses.

"Another chapter in my life is closed," said Anne aloud, as she locked
her desk. She really felt very sad over it; but the romance in the idea
of that "closed chapter" did comfort her a little.

Anne spent a fortnight at Echo Lodge early in her vacation and everybody
concerned had a good time.

She took Miss Lavendar on a shopping expedition to town and persuaded
her to buy a new organdy dress; then came the excitement of cutting
and making it together, while t