The following Monday Anne surprised Marilla by coming down from her room with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into a line of determination . `` I 'm going back to school , '' she announced . `` That is all there is left in life for me , now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me . In school I can look at her and muse over days departed . '' `` You 'd better muse over your lessons and sums , '' said Marilla , concealing her delight at this development of the situation . `` If you 're going back to school I hope we 'll hear no more of breaking slates over people 's heads and such carryings on . Behave yourself and do just what your teacher tells you . '' `` I 'll try to be a model pupil , '' agreed Anne dolefully . `` There wo n't be much fun in it , I expect . Mr. Phillips said Minnie Andrews was a model pupil and there is n't a spark of imagination or life in her . She is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time . But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now . I 'm going round by the road . I could n't bear to go by the Birch Path all alone . I should weep bitter tears if I did . '' Anne was welcomed back to school with open arms . Her imagination had been sorely missed in games , her voice in the singing and her dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour . Ruby Gillis smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading ; Ella May MacPherson gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a floral catalogue -- a species of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea school . Sophia Sloane offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace , so nice for trimming aprons . Katie Boulter gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in , and Julia Bell copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the following effusion : When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far .
`` It 's so nice to be appreciated , '' sighed Anne rapturously XXXXX Marilla that night .
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