`` It has all such a heart-broken , reproachful look , has n't it ? '' said Anne . `` Oh , I shall be so homesick at the Glen tonight ! '' `` We have been very happy here , have n't we , Anne-girl ? '' said Gilbert , his voice full of feeling . Anne choked , unable to answer . Gilbert waited for her at the fir-tree gate , while she went over the house and said farewell to every room . She was going away ; but the old house would still be there , looking seaward through its quaint windows . The autumn winds would blow around it mournfully , and the gray rain would beat upon it and the white mists would come in from the sea to enfold it ; and the moonlight would fall over it and light up the old paths where the schoolmaster and his bride had walked . There on that old harbor shore the charm of story would linger ; the wind would still whistle alluringly over the silver sand-dunes ; the waves would still call from the red rock-coves . `` But we will be gone , '' said Anne through her tears . She went out , closing and locking the door behind her . Gilbert was waiting for her with a smile . The lighthouse star was gleaming northward . The little garden , where only marigolds still bloomed , was already hooding itself in shadows . Anne knelt down and kissed the worn old step which she had crossed as a bride . I An Irate Neighbor A tall , slim girl , `` half-past sixteen , '' with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn , had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August , firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil . But an August afternoon , with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes , little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars , and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard , was fitter for dreams than dead languages . The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground , and Anne , her chin propped on her clasped hands , and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison 's house like a great white mountain , was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work , shaping the destinies of future statesmen , and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions . To be sure , if you came down to harsh facts ... which , it must be confessed , Anne seldom did until she had to ... it did not seem likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school ; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good .
Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it ; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene , forty years hence , with a famous personage ... just exactly what he was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness , but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier ... bowing low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his ambition , and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago XXXXX Avonlea school .
around for in on over that through to upon while