win her.
But she has changed. Perhaps I'll change too. But I won't . . . and
I'm determined I won't. Oh, I think these engagements are dreadfully
unsettling things when they happen to your intimate friends."

XXX

A Wedding at the Stone House

The last week in August came. Miss Lavendar was to be married in it.
Two weeks later Anne and Gilbert would leave for Redmond College. In a
week's time Mrs. Rachel Lynde would move to Green Gables and set up
her lares and penates in the erstwhile spare room, which was already
prepared for her coming. She had sold all her superfluous household
plenishings by auction and was at present reveling in the congenial
occupation of helping the Allans pack up. Mr. Allan was to preach his
farewell sermon the next Sunday. The old order was changing rapidly to
give place to the new, as Anne felt with a little sadness threading all
her excitement and happiness.

"Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things," said Mr.
Harrison philosophically. "Two years is about long enough for things
to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow
mossy."

Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda. His wife had self-sacrificingly
told that he might smoke in the house if he took care to sit by an
open window. Mr. Harrison rewarded this concession by going outdoors
altogether to smoke in fine weather, and so mutual goodwill reigned.

Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for some of her yellow dahlias.
She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help Miss
Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations for the
morrow's bridal. Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias; she did not
like them and they would not have suited the fine retirement of her
old-fashioned garden. But flowers of any kind were rather scarce in
Avonlea and the neighboring districts that summer, thanks to Uncle Abe's
storm; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain old cream-colored stone
jug, usually kept sacred to doughnuts, brimmed over with yellow dahlias,
would be just the thing to set in a dim angle of the stone house stairs,
against the dark background of red hall paper.

"I s'pose you'll be starting off for college in a fortnight's time?"
continued Mr. Harrison. "Well, we're going to miss you an awful lot,
Emily and me. To be sure, Mrs. Lynde'll be over there in your place.
There ain't nobody but a substitute can be found for them."

The irony of M