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"I think I'll take a walk through to Echo Lodge this evening," said Anne, one Friday afternoon in December

"It looks like snow," said Marilla dubiously

"I'll be there before the snow coo because she has coht It's a whole fortnight since I was there"

Anne had paid e since that October day

Sometimes she and Diana drove around by the road; soo Anne went alone Between her and Miss Lavendar had sprung up one of those fervent, helpful friendships possible only between a woman who has kept the freshness of youth in her heart and soul, and a girl whose iination and intuition supplied the place of experience Anne had at last discovered a real "kindred spirit," while into the little lady's lonely, sequestered life of dreams Anne and Diana came with the wholesome joy and exhilaration of the outer existence, which Miss Lavendar, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," had long ceased to share; they brought an atmosphere of youth and reality to the little stone house Charlotta the Fourth always greeted them with her very widest smileand Charlotta's s them for the sake of her adored mistress as well as for their own Never had there been such "high jinks" held in the little stone house as were held there that beautiful, late-lingering autuain, and even December aped the sunshine and hazes of summer

But on this particular day it seemed as if December had remembered that it was ti, with a windless hush predictive of coh the great gray h alone she never found it lonely; her iination peopled her path with ay, pretended conversation that ittier andthan conversations are apt to be in real life, where people sometimes fail most lamentably to talk up to the requirements In a "make believe" asse you want her to say and so gives you the chance to say just what YOU want to say Attended by this invisible company, Anne traversed the woods and arrived at the fir lane just as broad, feathery flakes began to flutter down softly

At the first bend she ca fir She wore a gown of warm, rich red, and her head and shoulders rapped in a silvery gray silk shawl