this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. And that night when Anne had gone to prayer meeting with Diana Marilla sat alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through her tears.
“I was thinking about Anne,” she explained. “She’s got to be such a big girl—and she’ll probably be away from us next winter. I’ll miss her terrible.”
“She’ll be able to come home often,” comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home from Bright River on that June evening four years before. “The branch railroad will be built to Carmody by that time.”
“It won’t be the same thing as having her here all the time,” sighed Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted. “But there—men can’t understand these things!”
There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on this also.
“You don’t chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big words. What has come over you?”
Anne coloured and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.