`` Changes ai n't totally pleasant but they 're excellent things , '' said Mr. Harrison philosophically . `` Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same . If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy . '' Mr. Harrison was smoking on his veranda . His wife had self-sacrificingly told that he might smoke in the house if he took care to sit by an open window . Mr. Harrison rewarded this concession by going outdoors altogether to smoke in fine weather , and so mutual goodwill reigned . Anne had come over to ask Mrs. Harrison for some of her yellow dahlias . She and Diana were going through to Echo Lodge that evening to help Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth with their final preparations for the morrow 's bridal . Miss Lavendar herself never had dahlias ; she did not like them and they would not have suited the fine retirement of her old-fashioned garden . But flowers of any kind were rather scarce in Avonlea and the neighboring districts that summer , thanks to Uncle Abe 's storm ; and Anne and Diana thought that a certain old cream-colored stone jug , usually kept sacred to doughnuts , brimmed over with yellow dahlias , would be just the thing to set in a dim angle of the stone house stairs , against the dark background of red hall paper . `` I s ` pose you 'll be starting off for college in a fortnight 's time ? '' continued Mr. Harrison . `` Well , we 're going to miss you an awful lot , Emily and me . To be sure , Mrs. Lynde 'll be over there in your place . There ai n't nobody but a substitute can be found for them . '' The irony of Mr. Harrison 's tone is quite untransferable to paper . In spite of his wife 's intimacy with Mrs. Lynde , the best that could be said of the relationship between her and Mr. Harrison even under the new regime , was that they preserved an armed neutrality . `` Yes , I 'm going , '' said Anne . `` I 'm very glad with my head ... and very sorry with my heart . '' `` I s ` pose you 'll be scooping up all the honors that are lying round loose at Redmond . ''
`` I may try for one or two XXXXX them , '' confessed Anne , `` but I do n't care so much for things like that as I did two years ago .
If at by for of on over that up with