“I think you had the most to forgive. I was an ungrateful little wretch—and after you had really saved my life that day on the pond, too. How I loathed that load of obligation at first! I don’t deserve the happiness that has come to me.”
Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his ring. Anne’s engagement ring was a circlet of pearls. She had refused to wear a diamond.
“I’ve never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren’t the lovely purple I had dreamed. They will always suggest my old disappointment.”
“But pearls are for tears, the old legend says,” Gilbert had objected.
“I’m not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I’ll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy.”
But tonight our lovers thought only of joy and never of sorrow. For the morrow was their wedding day, and their house of dreams awaited them on the misty, purple shore of Four Winds Harbor.
CHAPTER 4
THE FIRST BRIDE OF GREEN GABLES
Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find the sunshine winking in at the window of the little porch gable and a September breeze frolicking with her curtains.