Anne was sitting on the steps her hands clasped over her knee looking in the kind dusk as girlish as a mother of many has any right to be; and the beautiful gray-green eyes gazing down the harbour road were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever. Behind her in the hammock Rilla Blythe was curled up a fat roly-poly little creature of six years the youngest of the Ingleside children. She had curly red hair and hazel eyes that were now buttoned up after the funny wrinkled fashion in which Rilla always went to sleep.