were as alluring as stars of evening.  Anne was never attended by the crowd of willing victims who hovered around Philippa’s conquering march through her Freshman year; but there was a lanky, brainy Freshie, a jolly, little, round Sophomore, and a tall, learned Junior who all liked to call at Thirty-eight, St. John’s, and talk over ’ologies and ’isms, as well as lighter subjects, with Anne, in the becushioned parlor of that domicile.  Gilbert did not love any of them, and he was exceedingly careful to give none of them the advantage over him by any untimely display of his real feelings Anne-ward.  To her he had become again the boy-comrade of Avonlea days, and as such could hold his own against any smitten swain who had so far entered the lists against him.  As a companion, Anne honestly acknowledged nobody could be so satisfactory as Gilbert; she was very glad, so she told herself, that he had evidently dropped all nonsensical ideas—­though she spent considerable time secretly wondering why.

Only one disagreeable incident marred that winter.  Charlie Sloane, sitting bolt upright on Miss Ada’s most dearly beloved cushion, asked Anne one night if she would promise “to become Mrs. Charlie Sloane some day.”  Coming after Billy Andrews’ proxy effort, this was not quite the shock to Anne’s romantic sensibilities that it would otherwise have been; but it was certainly another heart-rending disillusion.  She was angry, too, for she felt that she had never given Charlie the slightest encouragement to suppose such a thing possible.  But what could you expect of a Sloane, as Mrs. Rachel Lynde would ask scornfully?  Charlie’s whole attitude, tone, air, words, fairly reeked with Sloanishness.  “He was conferring a great honor—­no doubt whatever about that.  And when Anne, utterly insensible to the honor, refused him, as delicately and considerately as she could—­for even a Sloane had feelings which ought not to be unduly lacerated—­Sloanishness still further betrayed itself.  Charlie certainly did not take his dismissal as Anne’s imaginary rejected suitors did.  Instead, he became angry, and showed it; he said two or three quite nasty things; Anne’s temper flashed up mutinously and she retorted with a cutting little speech whose keenness pierced even Charlie’s protective Sloanishness and reached the quick; he caught up his hat and flung himself out of the house with a very red face; Anne rushed upstairs, falling twice over Miss Ada’s cushions on the way, and threw herself on her bed, in tears of humiliation and rage.  Had she actually stooped to quarrel with a Sloane?  Was it possible anything Charlie Sloane could say had power to make her angry?  Oh, this was degradation, indeed—­worse even than being the rival of Nettie Blewett!

“I wish I need never see the horrible creature again,” she sobbed vindictively into her pillows.