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577 651 laughed a great deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of life frankly. “But I shouldn’t think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,” whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not have said so for the Avery Scholarship. She could not help thinking, too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem the sort of person with whom such could be _^^profitably discussed. There was no silly sentiment in Anne’s ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys were to her, _^^{when she thought about them at all,} merely possible good comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a

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fit on and for her part she didn’t think it any fun to be bothering about books and that sort of thing when you didn’t have to. Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go, but then he wasn’t half as good-looking as Gilbert, and she really couldn’t decide which she liked best!

In the college Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about her. _^^T18 With the “rose-red” girl, Stella Maynard and the “dream girl,” Priscilla Grant, she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale, spiritual-looking maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heart ful of wistful dreams and fancies, as aerial and rainbow like as Anne’s own.

After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home

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in the Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty_^^U18 Ethel Marr was admitted _^^{by all competent judges} to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing and Jane Andrews—plain, plodding, _^^{conscientious} Jane—carried off the honours in the domestic science course. Even Josie Pye attained a certain pre-eminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in attendance at Queen’s. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy’s old pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.

Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense as it had ever been in Avonlea school, but somehow although it was not known in the class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no longer

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girls—there is such a provoking _^^{and eternal} sameness about them. Anne has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts. I don’t know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them! V18

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeking _^^pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; But and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Quen Queen’s St students thought and talked only of examinations.

“It doesn’t seem possible that the term is nearly over,” said Anne. “Why, last fall it seemed so long to look

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worry. Worrying helps you some—it seems as if you were doing something while you’re worrying. It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Quens Queen’s all winter and spending so much money.”

“I don’t care,” said Josie Pye. “If I don’t pass this year I’m coming back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship.”

“That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie,” laughed Anne, “but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out _^^{all purple} down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are poking up their heads in Lovers’ Lane, it’s not a great deal of difference