air athrill with the pipings of myriads of crickets, those glad little
pensioners of the summer hills; a plump brown pony ambling along the
road; two girls behind him, full to the lips with the simple, priceless
joy of youth and life.

"Oh, this is a day left over from Eden, isn't it, Diana?" . . . and Anne
sighed for sheer happiness. "The air has magic in it. Look at the purple
in the cup of the harvest valley, Diana. And oh, do smell the dying fir!
It's coming up from that little sunny hollow where Mr. Eben Wright has
been cutting fence poles. Bliss is it on such a day to be alive; but
to smell dying fir is very heaven. That's two thirds Wordsworth and one
third Anne Shirley. It doesn't seem possible that there should be dying
fir in heaven, does it? And yet it doesn't seem to me that heaven would
be quite perfect if you couldn't get a whiff of dead fir as you went
through its woods. Perhaps we'll have the odor there without the death.
Yes, I think that will be the way. That delicious aroma must be the
souls of the firs . . . and of course it will be just souls in heaven."

"Trees haven't souls," said practical Diana, "but the smell of dead fir
is certainly lovely. I'm going to make a cushion and fill it with fir
needles. You'd better make one too, Anne."

"I think I shall . . . and use it for my naps. I'd be certain to dream I
was a dryad or a woodnymph then. But just this minute I'm well content
to be Anne Shirley, Avonlea schoolma'am, driving over a road like this
on such a sweet, friendly day."

"It's a lovely day but we have anything but a lovely task before us,"
sighed Diana. "Why on earth did you offer to canvass this road, Anne?
Almost all the cranks in Avonlea live along it, and we'll probably be