Annes House of Dreams | Page 4

my sense of humor will preserve me from
it, though."
"Is it settled yet where you are going to live?" asked Diana, cuddling
Small Anne Cordelia with the inimitable gesture of motherhood which
always sent through Anne's heart, filled with sweet, unuttered dreams
and hopes, a thrill that was half pure pleasure and half a strange,
ethereal pain.
"Yes. That was what I wanted to tell you when I 'phoned to you to
come down today. By the way, I can't realize that we really have
telephones in Avonlea now. It sounds so preposterously up-to-date and
modernish for this darling, leisurely old place."
"We can thank the A. V. I. S. for them," said Diana. "We should never
have got the line if they hadn't taken the matter up and carried it
through. There was enough cold water thrown to discourage any
society. But they stuck to it, nevertheless. You did a splendid thing for

Avonlea when you founded that society, Anne. What fun we did have
at our meetings! Will you ever forget the blue hall and Judson Parker's
scheme for painting medicine advertisements on his fence?"
"I don't know that I'm wholly grateful to the A. V. I. S. in the matter of
the telephone," said Anne. "Oh, I know it's most convenient-- even
more so than our old device of signalling to each other by flashes of
candlelight! And, as Mrs. Rachel says, `Avonlea must keep up with the
procession, that's what.' But somehow I feel as if I didn't want Avonlea
spoiled by what Mr. Harrison, when he wants to be witty, calls `modern
inconveniences.' I should like to have it kept always just as it was in the
dear old years. That's foolish--and sentimental--and impossible. So I
shall immediately become wise and practical and possible. The
telephone, as Mr. Harrison concedes, is `a buster of a good thing'--even
if you do know that probably half a dozen interested people are
listening along the line."
"That's the worst of it," sighed Diana. "It's so annoying to hear the
receivers going down whenever you ring anyone up. They say Mrs.
Harmon Andrews insisted that their `phone should be put in their
kitchen just so that she could listen whenever it rang and keep an eye
on the dinner at the same time. Today, when you called me, I distinctly
heard that queer clock of the Pyes' striking. So no doubt Josie or Gertie
was listening."
"Oh, so that is why you said, `You've got a new clock at Green Gables,
haven't you?' I couldn't imagine what you meant. I heard a vicious click
as soon as you had spoken. I suppose it was the Pye receiver being
hung up with profane energy. Well, never mind the Pyes. As Mrs.
Rachel says, `Pyes they always were and Pyes they always will be,
world without end, amen.' I want to talk of pleasanter things. It's all
settled as to where my new home shall be."
"Oh, Anne, where? I do hope it's near here."
"No-o-o, that's the drawback. Gilbert is going to settle at Four Winds
Harbor--sixty miles from here."

"Sixty! It might as well be six hundred," sighed Diana. "I never can get
further from home now than Charlottetown."
"You'll have to come to Four Winds. It's the most beautiful harbor on
the Island. There's a little village called Glen St. Mary at its head, and
Dr. David Blythe has been practicing there for fifty years. He is
Gilbert's great-uncle, you know. He is going to retire, and Gilbert is to
take over his practice. Dr. Blythe is going to keep his house, though, so
we shall have to find a habitation for ourselves. I don't know yet what it
is, or where it will be in reality, but I have a little house o'dreams all
furnished in my imagination--a tiny, delightful castle in Spain."
"Where are you going for your wedding tour?" asked Diana.
"Nowhere. Don't look horrified, Diana dearest. You suggest Mrs.
Harmon Andrews. She, no doubt, will remark condescendingly that
people who can't afford wedding `towers' are real sensible not to take
them; and then she'll remind me that Jane went to Europe for hers. I
want to spend MY honeymoon at Four Winds in my own dear house of
dreams."
"And you've decided not to have any bridesmaid?"
"There isn't any one to have. You and Phil and Priscilla and Jane all
stole a march on me in the matter of marriage; and Stella is teaching in
Vancouver. I have no other `kindred soul' and I won't have a
bridesmaid who isn't."
"But you are going to wear a veil, aren't you?" asked Diana, anxiously.
"Yes, indeedy. I shouldn't feel like a bride without one. I remember
telling Matthew, that evening when he brought me to