Anne of the Island

Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing across theshorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking apples in the GreenGables orchard, but were now resting from their labors in a sunny corner, whereairy fleets of thistledown drifted by on the wings of a wind that was still summersweet with the incense of ferns in the Haunted Wood. But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea wasroaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed with goldenrod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was blue-blue-blue; not the changeful blue ofspring, nor the pale azure of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if thewater were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to atranquility unbroken by fickle dreams