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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 colored 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.

"I don't know-I don't want to talk as much," she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger.

"It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures.

I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over.

And somehow I don't want to use big words any more.

It's almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really growing big enough to say them if I did want to.

It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla.

There's so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words.

Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much stronger and better.

She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible.

It was hard at first.

I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could think of-and I thought of any number of them.

But I've got used to it now and I see it's so much better."

"What has become of your story club? I haven't heard you speak of it for a long time."

"The story club isn't in existence any longer.

We hadn't time for it-and anyhow I think we had got tired of it.

It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries.

Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own too.

I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them myself.

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