Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to hurry off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a whirl of excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the professors by sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Anne intended taking up the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to do the same. This meant getting a First Class teacher’s license in one year instead of two, if they were successful; but it also meant much more and harder work. Jane, Ruby, Josie, Charlie, and Moody Spurgeon, not being troubled with the stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the Second Class work. Anne was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found herself in a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except the tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion she did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically. Yet she was undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old rivalry could still be carried on, and Anne would hardly have known what to do if it had been lacking.
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable without it,” she thought.“Gilbert looks awfully determined.I suppose he’s making up his mind, here and now,to win the medal. What a splendid chin he has!I never noticed it before.I do wish Jane and Ruby had gone in for First Class,too. I suppose I won’t feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I get acquainted, though. I wonder which of the girls here are going to be my friends. It’s really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised Diana that no Queen’s girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever be as dear to me as she is; but I’ve lots of second-best affections to bestow. I like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson waist. She looks vivid and red-rosy; there’s that pale, fair one gazing out of the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two about dreams. I’d like to know them both--know them well--well enough to walk with my arm about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just now I don’t know them and they don’t know me, and probably don’t want to know me particularly. Oh, it’s lonesome!”
It was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in her hall bedroom that night at twilight. She was not to board with the other girls, who all had relatives in town to take pity on them. Miss Josephine Barry would have liked to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the Academy that it was out of the question; so Miss Barry hunted up a boarding-house, assuring Matthew and Marilla that it was the very place for Anne.
“The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman,” explained Miss Barry.“Her husband was a British officer,and she is very careful what sort of boarders she takes.Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons under her roof.The table is good, and the house is near the Academy,in a quiet neighborhood.”
All this might be quite true, and indeed,proved to be so, but it did not materially help Anne in the first agony of homesickness that seized upon her. She looked dismally about her narrow little room, with its dull-papered, pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty bookcase; and a horrible choke came into her throat as she thought of her own white room at Green Gables, where she would have the pleasant consciousness of a great green still outdoors, of sweet peas growing in the garden, and moonlight falling on the orchard, of the brook below the slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind beyond it, of a vast starry sky, and the light from Diana’s window shining out through the gap in the trees. Here there was nothing of this; Anne knew that outside of her window was a hard street, with a network of telephone wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a thousand lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that she was going to cry, and fought against it.
“I _won’t_ cry. It’s silly--and weak--there’s the third tear splashing down by my nose. There are more coming!I must think of something funny to stop them.But there’s nothing funny except what is connected with Avonlea,and that only makes things worse--four--five--I’m going home next Friday,but that seems a hundred years away. Oh,Matthew is nearly home by now--and Marilla is at the gate,looking down the lane for him--six--seven--eight--oh,there’s no use in counting them!They’re coming in a flood presently.I can’t cheer up--I don’t _want_ to cheer up.It’s nicer to be miserable!”
The flood of tears would have come, no doubt,had not Josie Pye appeared at that moment.In the joy of seeing a familiar face Anne forgot that there had never been much love lost between her and Josie. As a part of Avonlea life even a Pye was welcome.
“I’m so glad you came up,” Anne said sincerely.
“You’ve been crying,” remarked Josie,with aggravating pity.“I suppose you’re homesick--some people have so little self-control in that respect. I’ve no intention of being homesick, I can tell you. Town’s too jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so long. You shouldn’t cry, Anne; it isn’t becoming, for your nose and eyes get red, and then you seem _all_ red. I’d a perfectly scrumptious time in the Academy today. Our French professor is simply a duck. His moustache would give you kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable around, Anne?I’m literally starving. Ah,I guessed likely Marilla ‘d load you up with cake.That’s why I called round.Otherwise I’d have gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley.He boards same place as I do, and he’s a sport.He noticed you in class today,and asked me who the red-headed girl was.I told him you were an orphan that the Cuthberts had adopted,and nobody knew very much about what you’d been before that. ”
Anne was wondering if, after all,solitude and tears were not more satisfactory than Josie Pye’s companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared, each with an inch of Queen’s color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned proudly to her coat. As Josie was not “speaking” to Jane just then she had to subside into comparative harmlessness.
“Well,” said Jane with a sigh,“I feel as if I’d lived many moons since the morning.I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply couldn’t settle down to study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the traces of tears. If you’ve been crying _do_ own up. It will restore my self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I don’t mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake?You’ll give me a teeny piece, won’t you?Thank you. It has the real Avonlea flavor.”
Ruby, perceiving the Queen’s calendar lying on the table,wanted to know if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.
Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.
“Oh, that reminds me,” said Josie,“Queen’s is to get one of the Avery scholarships after all.The word came today.Frank Stockley told me--his uncle is one of the board of governors,you know. It will be announced in the Academy tomorrow. ”
An Avery scholarship!Anne felt her heart beat more quickly,and the horizons of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic.Before Josie had told the news Anne’s highest pinnacle of aspiration had been a teacher’s provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and perhaps the medal!But now in one moment Anne saw herself winning the Avery scholarship,taking an Arts course at Redmond College,and graduating in a gown and mortar board,before the echo of Josie’s words had died away.For the Avery scholarship was in English,and Anne felt that here her foot was on native heath.