things only through prose.

"When's the wedding to be?" she asked after a pause.

"The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the garden
under the honeysuckle trellis . . . the very spot where Mr. Irving
proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that IS romantic, even
in prose. There's to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul and
Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar's cousins. And they will
leave on the six o'clock train for a trip to the Pacific coast. When
they come back in the fall Paul and Charlotta the Fourth are to go up to
Boston to live with them. But Echo Lodge is to be left just as it is. . .
only of course they'll sell the hens and cow, and board up the windows
. . . and every summer they're coming down to live in it. I'm so glad. It
would have hurt me dreadfully next winter at Redmond to think of that
dear stone house all stripped and deserted, with empty rooms . . . or far
worse still, with other people living in it. But I can think of it now,
just as I've always seen it, waiting happily for the summer to bring
life and laughter back to it again."

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to
the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled
suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the
wood cut and came out into the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred Wright
were standing together under the big willow. Diana was leaning against
the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks. One hand
was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent toward her, stammering
something in low earnest tones. There were no other people in the world
except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither of them saw
Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped
noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained
her own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and
tried to collect her scattered wits.

"Diana and Fred are in love with each other," she gasped. "Oh, it does
seem so . . . so . . . so HOPELESSLY grown up."

Anne, of late, had not been without her suspicions that Diana was
proving false to the melancholy Byronic hero of her early dreams. But
as "things seen are mightier than things heard," or suspected, the
realization that it was actually so came to her with almost the shock of
perfect surprise. This was succeeded by a queer, little lonely feeling
.