Anne followed them meekly home and slipped in by the back door . `` Well , you are a nice person to back me up , '' said Janet sarcastically . `` I could n't help it , Janet , '' said Anne repentantly . `` I just felt as if I had stood by and seen murder done . I HAD to run after him . '' `` Oh , I 'm just as glad you did . When I saw John Douglas making off down that road I just felt as if every little bit of joy and happiness that was left in my life was going with him . It was an awful feeling . '' `` Did he ask you why you did it ? '' asked Anne . `` No , he never said a word about it , '' replied Janet dully . Chapter XXXIV John Douglas Speaks at Last Anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of it after all . But nothing did . John Douglas came and took Janet driving , and walked home from prayer-meeting with her , as he had been doing for twenty years , and as he seemed likely to do for twenty years more . The summer waned . Anne taught her school and wrote letters and studied a little . Her walks to and from school were pleasant . She always went by way of the swamp ; it was a lovely place -- a boggy soil , green with the greenest of mossy hillocks ; a silvery brook meandered through it and spruces stood erectly , their boughs a-trail with gray-green mosses , their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses . Nevertheless , Anne found life in Valley Road a little monotonous . To be sure , there was one diverting incident .
She had not seen the lank , tow-headed Samuel of the peppermints since the evening XXXXX his call , save for chance meetings on the road .
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