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 . `` Anne , '' she said very solemnly , `` I want to tell you something . May I '' Anne was feeling rather sleepy after the party Ruby Gillis had given the night before . She would much rather have gone to sleep than listen to Jane 's confidences , which she was sure would bore her . She had no prophetic inkling of what was coming . Probably Jane was engaged , too ; rumor averred that Ruby Gillis was engaged to the Spencervale schoolteacher , about whom all the girls were said to be quite wild . `` I 'll soon be the only fancy-free maiden of our old quartet , '' thought Anne , drowsily . Aloud she said , `` Of course . '' `` Anne , '' said Jane , still more solemnly , `` what do you think of my brother Billy ? ''
Anne gasped over this unexpected question , and floundered helplessly XXXXX her thoughts .
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