"But there'll be so many clever girls at Redmond," sighed Diana,
"and I'm only a stupid little country girl who says `I seen'
sometimes. . .though I really know better when I stop to think.
Well, of course these past two years have really been too pleasant
to last. I know somebody who is glad you are going to Redmond anyhow.
Anne, I'm going to ask you a question. . .a serious question. Don't be
vexed and do answer seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?"
"Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean," said Anne
calmly and decidedly; she also thought she was speaking sincerely.
Diana sighed. She wished, somehow, that Anne had answered differently.
"Don't you mean ever to be married, Anne?"
"Perhaps. . .some day. . .when I meet the right one," said Anne,
smiling dreamily up at the moonlight.
"But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?" persisted Diana.
"Oh, I should know him. . .something would tell me. You know what my
ideal is, Diana."
"But people's ideals change sometimes."
"Mine won't. And I couldn't care for any man who didn't fulfill it."
"What if you never meet him?"
"Then I shall die an old maid," was the cheerful response. "I daresay
it isn't the hardest death by any means."
"Oh, I suppose the dying would be easy enough; it's the living an
old maid I shouldn't like," said Diana, with no intention of being
humorous. "Although I wouldn't mind being an old maid VERY much if
I could be one like Miss Lavendar. But I never could be. When I'm
forty-five I'll be horribly fat. And while there might be some
romance about a thin old maid there couldn't possibly be any about
a fat one. Oh, mind you, Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis
three weeks ago. Ruby told me all about it. She says she never
had any intention of taking him, because any one who married him
will have to go in with the old folks; but Ruby says that he made
such a perfectly beautiful and romantic proposal that it simply
swept her off her feet. But she didn't want to do anything rash so
she asked for a week to consider; and two days later she was at a
meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother's and there was a book
called `The Complete Guide to Etiquette,' lying on the parlor
table. Ruby said she simply couldn't describe her feelings when in
a section of it headed, `The Deportment of Courtship and Marriage,'
she found the very proposal Nelson had made, word for word. She
went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal; and she says
his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for
fear he'll drown himself in the river; but Ruby says they needn't
be afraid; for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told
how a rejected lover should behave and there's nothing about
drowning in THAT. And she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining
away for her but she's perfectly helpless in the matter."
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