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ANNE OF AVONLEA

spread all over my face as they once were; but I do wish they hadn’t come . . . all Mrs. Morgan’s heroines have such perfect complexions. I can’t recall a freckled one among them.”

“Yours are not very noticeable,” comforted Diana. “Try a little lemon juice on them to-night.”

The next day Anne made her pies and lady fingers, did up her muslin dress, and swept and dusted every room in the house . . . a quite unnecessary proceeding, for Green Gables was, as usual, in the apple pie order dear to Marilla’s heart. But Anne felt that a fleck of dust would be a desecration in a house that was to be honoured by a visit from Charlotte E. Morgan. She even cleaned out the “catch-all” closet under the stairs, although there was not the remotest possibility of Mrs. Morgan’s seeing its interior.

“But I want to feel that it is in perfect order, even if she isn’t to see it,” Anne told Marilla. “You know, in her book, ‘Golden Keys,’ she makes her two heroines Alice and Louisa take for their motto that verse of Longfellow’s,

“ ‘In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods see everywhere,’

and so they always kept their cellar stairs scrubbed and never forgot to sweep under the beds. I should have a guilty conscience if I thought this closet was in disorder when Mrs. Morgan was in the house. Ever

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