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.
She could not avoid seeing him again, but the outraged Charlie took care that it should not be at very close quarters.

Miss Ada's cushions were henceforth safe from his depredations, and when he met Anne on the street, or in Redmond's halls, his bow was icy in the extreme.

Relations between these two old schoolmates continued to be thus strained for nearly a year! Then Charlie transferred his blighted affections to a round, rosy, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, little Sophomore who appreciated them as they deserved, whereupon he forgave Anne and condescended to be civil to her again; in a patronizing manner intended to show her just what she had lost.
One day Anne scurried excitedly into Priscilla's room.
"Read that," she cried, tossing Priscilla a letter.

"It's from Stella--and she's coming to Redmond next year--and what do you think of her idea?
I think it's a perfectly splendid one, if we can only carry it out.