She sat in the poet’s beautiful garden at work on some lace, the pillow on her knee. The fragrance of apple blossoms was on the warm breeze that brushed her face. “‛Sumer is icumen in,’” thought Anne, skilfully catching her thread into a knot on her needle point. She felt more than usual pity for Richard, recalling his patient face, to know that he, of all men best fitted to dwell with enchanted eyes on summer’s loveliness, never again would see it. “Miss Dallas! Miss Dallas! Miss Anne! Miss Anne Dallas! Anne! Anne!” shouted someone in such rapid-fire calling that reply was impossible. It could be but one person, and Anne Dallas looked up expectantly to see little Anne coming flying down the garden. Her long, thin legs, in their long, brown stockings, her brown, straight frock, her bobbed hair standing out around her head, all combined to give her the effect of a forked branch of a tree which had been snapped off and blown along the path by a higher wind than that which was actually blowing. Behind her ran the beagle, Cricket, his black-and-tan ears streaming backward, his tongue out, his eyes excitedly rolling, his breath visibly short. He did not venture with Anne into most of her explorations, but he had learned that the Latham garden was safe for timid bow-legged dogs, and hither he confidently came. “What is it, Anne, dear?” asked Anne Dallas, guarding her work against little Anne’s imminent onslaught. “Glad to see you.” “Guess what!” cried little Anne, throwing herself upon Anne. As she spoke she waved papers held together by a fastener. “I never could guess!” declared Anne with conviction. “Are you appointed Queen of the Birds, or are you sentenced to exile in an ant hill, you little quicksilver creature?” “Oh, you are nice!” panted little Anne, appreciatively. “This isn’t a--a--an appointing dockerment. What do you s’pose?” Anne shook her head, and little Anne cried triumphantly: “It’s these is; Peter’s!” “These _is_? These _are_, Anne. And what are Peter’s? That isn’t English.” Anne looked puzzled. “That’s just what it is; his English class; he said so,” little Anne insisted. “Peter-two said he’d bet I couldn’t make him mad, a child like me! That’s when I got kind of mad with Peter-two, and I said so’d he be, and he said I couldn’t make him mad, ’cause I wasn’t ’nough importance. And he had his these is--these are--but, Miss Anne, I know, at least I pretty near know, Peter said these is--and he had to have it in school this morning, and I got it, and hid it, and here ’tis, and he’s gone without it, and I guess he will be good’n mad, won’t he?” In spite of herself Anne laughed, then she arose to her duty. “Anne, that is poor Peter’s thesis!” she cried. “Let me see it. Of course it is that! And you have sent Peter to school without it! Don’t you know, dear, that Peter will be reprimanded for his carelessness, and receive bad marks besides? You should not play tricks on Peter that will get him into trouble at school.”