get ready
for housekeeping, for I haven't a speck of fancy work made yet. But I'm
going to begin crocheting doilies tomorrow. Myra Gillis had thirty-seven
doilies when she was married and I'm determined I shall have as many as
she had."

"I suppose it would be perfectly impossible to keep house with only
thirty-six doilies," conceded Anne, with a solemn face but dancing eyes.

Diana looked hurt.

"I didn't think you'd make fun of me, Anne," she said reproachfully.

"Dearest, I wasn't making fun of you," cried Anne repentantly. "I
was only teasing you a bit. I think you'll make the sweetest little
housekeeper in the world. And I think it's perfectly lovely of you to be
planning already for your home o'dreams."

Anne had no sooner uttered the phrase, "home o'dreams," than it
captivated her fancy and she immediately began the erection of one of
her own. It was, of course, tenanted by an ideal master, dark, proud,
and melancholy; but oddly enough, Gilbert Blythe persisted in hanging
about too, helping her arrange pictures, lay out gardens, and accomplish
sundry other tasks which a proud and melancholy hero evidently
considered beneath his dignity. Anne tried to banish Gilbert's image
from her castle in Spain but, somehow, he went on being there, so
Anne, being in a hurry, gave up the attempt and pursued her aerial
architecture with such success that her "home o'dreams" was built and
furnished before Diana spoke again.

"I suppose, Anne, you must think it's funny I should like Fred so well
when he's so different from the kind of man I've always said I would
marry . . . the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn't want Fred to be
tall and slender . . . because, don't you see, he wouldn't be Fred then.
Of course," added Diana rather dolefully, "we will be a dreadfully pudgy
couple. But after all that's better than one of us being short and fat
and the other tall and lean, like Morgan Sloane and his wife. Mrs. Lynde
says it always makes her think of the long and short of it when she sees
them together."

"Well," said Anne to herself that night, as she brushed her hair before
her gilt framed mirror, "I am glad Diana is so happy and satisfied.
But when my turn comes . . . if it ever does . . . I do hope there'll be
something a little more thrilling about it. But then Diana thought so
too, once. I've heard her say time and again she'd never get engaged any
poky commonplace way . . . he'd HAVE to do something splendid to