THE WINTER AT QUEEN’S
tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favourite with the critical old lady.
“That Anne-girl improves all the time,” she said. “I get tired of other 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. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.”
Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the “mist of green” was on the woods and in the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen’s 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 forward to—a whole winter of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don’t seem half so important.”
Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it. To them the coming ex-
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