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I just lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again.

That's one splendid thing about such affairs-it's so lovely to look back to them."

Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove and took up its old interests.

To be sure, the concert left traces.

Ruby Gillis and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising friendship of three years was broken up.

Josie Pye and Julia Bell did not "speak" for three months, because Josie Pye had told Bessie Wright that Julia Bell's bow when she got up to recite made her think of a chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia.

None of the Sloanes would have any dealings with the Bells, because the Bells had declared that the Sloanes had too much to do in the program, and the Sloanes had retorted that the Bells were not capable of doing the little they had to do properly.

Finally, Charlie Sloane fought Moody Spurgeon MacPherson, because Moody Spurgeon had said that Anne Shirley put on airs about her recitations, and Moody Spurgeon was "licked"; consequently Moody Spurgeon's sister, Ella May, would not "speak" to Anne Shirley all the rest of the winter.

With the exception of these trifling frictions, work in Miss Stacy's little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.

The winter weeks slipped by.

It was an unusually mild winter, with so little snow that Anne and Diana could go to school nearly every day by way of the Birch Path.

On Anne's birthday they were tripping lightly down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss Stacy had told them that they must soon write a composition on "A Winter's Walk in the Woods," and it behooved them to be observant.

"Just think, Diana, I'm thirteen years old today," remarked Anne in an awed voice.

"I can scarcely realize that I'm in my teens.

When I woke this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different.

You've been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn't seem such a novelty to you as it does to me.

It makes life seem so much more interesting.

In two more years I'll be really grown up.

It's a great comfort to think that I'll be able to use big words then without being laughed at."

"Ruby Gillis says she means to have a beau as soon as she's fifteen," said Diana.

"Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but beaus," said Anne disdainfully.

"She's actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad.

But I'm afraid that is an uncharitable speech.

Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don't they? I simply can't talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech, so I never mention her at all.

You may have noticed that.

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