Anne of Avonlea

A tall, slim girl, "half-past sixteen," with serious gray eyes and hair which herfriends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of aPrince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved toconstrue so many lines of Virgil. But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little windswhispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflamingagainst the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitterfor 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 splendidmass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison's house like agreat white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certainschoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of futurestatesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions