`` Just at the conventional moment , when all hope had fled , and the conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me , I suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm . I had n't swallowed it after all . I meekly fished it out of the index finger of my glove and poked it in the box . I smiled at everybody and felt that it was a beautiful world . '' The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least pleasant of many pleasant holiday outings . Anne and Diana went back to it by the old way of the beech woods , carrying a lunch basket with them . Echo Lodge , which had been closed ever since Miss Lavendar 's wedding , was briefly thrown open to wind and sunshine once more , and firelight glimmered again in the little rooms . The perfume of Miss Lavendar 's rose bowl still filled the air . It was hardly possible to believe that Miss Lavendar would not come tripping in presently , with her brown eyes a-star with welcome , and that Charlotta the Fourth , blue of bow and wide of smile , would not pop through the door . Paul , too , seemed hovering around , with his fairy fancies . `` It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the old time glimpses of the moon , '' laughed Anne . `` Let 's go out and see if the echoes are at home . Bring the old horn . It is still behind the kitchen door . '' The echoes were at home , over the white river , as silver-clear and multitudinous as ever ; and when they had ceased to answer the girls locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in the perfect half hour that follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset . Chapter VIII Anne 's First Proposal The old year did not slip away in a green twilight , with a pinky-yellow sunset . Instead , it went out with a wild , white bluster and blow . It was one of the nights when the storm-wind hurtles over the frozen meadows and black hollows , and moans around the eaves like a lost creature , and drives the snow sharply against the shaking panes . `` Just the sort of night people like to cuddle down between their blankets and count their mercies , '' said Anne to Jane Andrews , who had come up to spend the afternoon and stay all night . But when they were cuddled between their blankets , in Anne 's little porch room , it was not her mercies of which Jane was thinking .
`` XXXXX , '' she said very solemnly , `` I want to tell you something .
Anne Fourth Lavendar Lodge eaves hour hurtles night nights outings