spruces in this hollow, with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart,
opening on the bank of the brook. By the brook grew a silver
birch-tree, a young, incredibly straight thing which Walter had
named the "White Lady." In this glade, too, were the "Tree
Lovers," as Walter called a spruce and maple which grew so
closely together that their boughs were inextricably intertwined.
Jem had hung an old string of sleigh-bells, given him by the Glen
blacksmith, on the Tree Lovers, and every visitant breeze called
out sudden fairy tinkles from it.

"How nice it is to be back!" said Nan. "After all, none of the
Avonlea places are quite as nice as Rainbow Valley."

But they were very fond of the Avonlea places for all that. A
visit to Green Gables was always considered a great treat. Aunt
Marilla was very good to them, and so was Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who
was spending the leisure of her old age in knitting cotton-warp
quilts against the day when Anne's daughters should need a
"setting-out." There were jolly playmates there, too--"Uncle"
Davy's children and "Aunt" Diana's children. They knew all the
spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at old Green
Gables--the long Lover's Lane, that was pink-hedged in wild-rose
time, the always neat yard, with its willows and poplars, the
Dryad's Bubble, lucent and lovely as of yore, the Lake of Shining
Waters, and Willowmere. The twins had their mother's old
porch-gable room, and Aunt Marilla used to come in at night, when
she thought they were asleep, to gloat over them. But they all
knew she loved Jem the best.

Jem was at present busily occupied in frying a mess of small