ng across
the aisle with Mary Bell. Anne wondered what sort of mother the child
had, to send her to school dressed as she was. She wore a faded pink
silk dress, trimmed with a great deal of cotton lace, soiled white
kid slippers, and silk stockings. Her sandy hair was tortured into
innumerable kinky and unnatural curls, surmounted by a flamboyant bow
of pink ribbon bigger than her head. Judging from her expression she was
very well satisfied with herself.

A pale little thing, with smooth ripples of fine, silky, fawn-colored
hair flowing over her shoulders, must, Anne thought, be Annetta Bell,
whose parents had formerly lived in the Newbridge school district, but,
by reason of hauling their house fifty yards north of its old site were
now in Avonlea. Three pallid little girls crowded into one seat were
certainly Cottons; and there was no doubt that the small beauty with
the long brown curls and hazel eyes, who was casting coquettish looks at
Jack Gills over the edge of her Testament, was Prillie Rogerson, whose
father had recently married a second wife and brought Prillie home from
her grandmother's in Grafton. A tall, awkward girl in a back seat, who
seemed to have too many feet and hands, Anne could not place at all, but
later on discovered that her name was Barbara Shaw and that she had come
to live with an Avonlea aunt. She was also to find that if Barbara ever
managed to walk down the aisle without falling over her own or somebody
else's feet the Avonlea scholars wrote the unusual fact up on the porch
wall to commemorate it.

But when Anne's eyes met those of the boy at the front desk facing
her own, a queer little thrill went over her, as if she had found her
genius. She knew this must be Paul Irving and that Mrs. Rachel Lynde
had been right for once when she prophesied that he would be unlike the
Avonlea children. More than that, Anne realized that he was unlike other
children anywhere, and that there was a soul subtly akin to her own
gazing at her out of the very dark blue eyes that were watching her so
intently.

She knew Paul was ten but he looked no more than eight. He had the most
beautiful little face she had ever seen in a child . . . features of
exquisite delicacy and refinement, framed in a halo of chestnut curls.
His mouth was delicious, being full without pouting, the crimson lips
just softly touching and curving into finely finished little corners
that narrowly escaped being dimpled. He had a sobe