there are so many puzzling things, too. Sometimes I feel as if being
grown-up just frightened me--and then I would give anything to be a
little girl again."

"I suppose we'll get used to being grownup in time," said Anne
cheerfully. "There won't be so many unexpected things about it by and
by--though, after all, I fancy it's the unexpected things that give
spice to life. We're eighteen, Diana. In two more years we'll be twenty.
When I was ten I thought twenty was a green old age. In no time you'll
be a staid, middle-aged matron, and I shall be nice, old maid Aunt Anne,
coming to visit you on vacations. You'll always keep a corner for me,
won't you, Di darling? Not the spare room, of course--old maids can't
aspire to spare rooms, and I shall be as 'umble as Uriah Heep, and quite
content with a little over-the-porch or off-the-parlor cubby hole."

"What nonsense you do talk, Anne," laughed Diana. "You'll marry somebody
splendid and handsome and rich--and no spare room in Avonlea will be
half gorgeous enough for you--and you'll turn up your nose at all the
friends of your youth."

"That would be a pity; my nose is quite nice, but I fear turning it up
would spoil it," said Anne, patting that shapely organ. "I haven't so
many good features that I could afford to spoil those I have; so, even
if I should marry the King of the Cannibal Islands, I promise you I
won't turn up my nose at you, Diana."

With another gay laugh the girls separated, Diana to return to Orchard
Slope, Anne to walk to the Post Office. She found a letter awaiting her
there, and when Gilbert Blythe overtook her on the bridge over the Lake
of Shining Waters she was sparkling with the excitement of it.