Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different -- something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for;the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.
That good night in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again. The next night the A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party to Jane Andrews before her departure for the West. And, while light feet danced and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues chattered, there came a summons to a soul in Avonlea that might not be disregarded or evaded. The next morning the word went from house to house that Ruby Gillis was dead. She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face was a smile --as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after the funeral that Ruby Gillis was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes on. Her loveliness, as she lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers that Anne had placed about her, was remembered and talked of for years in Avonlea. Ruby had always been beautiful; but her beauty had been of the earth, earthy; it had had a certain insolent quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the beholder's eye;spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never refined it.
But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out delicate modelings and purity of outline never seen before -- doing what life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done for Ruby. Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old playfellow, thought she saw the face God had meant Ruby to have, and remembered it so always.
Mrs. Gillis called Anne aside into a vacant room before the funeral procession left the house, and gave her a small packet.
"I want you to have this," she sobbed. "Ruby would have liked you to have it. It's the embroidered centerpiece she was working at.
It isn't quite finished -- the needle is sticking in it just where her poor little fingers put it the last time she laid it down, the afternoon before she died.""There's always a piece of unfinished work left," said Mrs. Lynde, with tears in her eyes. "But I suppose there's always some one to finish it.""How difficult it is to realize that one we have always known can really be dead," said Anne, as she and Diana walked home.
"Ruby is the first of our schoolmates to go. One by one, sooner or later, all the rest of us must follow.""Yes, I suppose so," said Diana uncomfortably. She did not want to talk of that. She would have preferred to have discussed the details of the funeral -- the splendid white velvet casket Mr. Gillis had insisted on having for Ruby -- "the Gillises must always make a splurge, even at funerals," quoth Mrs. Rachel Lynde -- Herb Spencer's sad face, the uncontrolled, hysteric grief of one of Ruby's sisters -- but Anne would not talk of these things.
She seemed wrapped in a reverie in which Diana felt lonesomely that she had neither lot nor part.
"Ruby Gillis was a great girl to laugh," said Davy suddenly.
"Will she laugh as much in heaven as she did in Avonlea, Anne?
I want to know."
"Yes, I think she will," said Anne.
"Oh, Anne," protested Diana, with a rather shocked smile.
"Well, why not, Diana?" asked Anne seriously. "Do you think we'll never laugh in heaven?""Oh -- I -- I don't know" floundered Diana. "It doesn't seem just right, somehow. You know it's rather dreadful to laugh in church.""But heaven won't be like church -- all the time," said Anne.
"I hope it ain't," said Davy emphatically. "If it is I don't want to go. Church is awful dull. Anyway, I don't mean to go for ever so long. I mean to live to be a hundred years old, like Mr. Thomas Blewett of White Sands. He says he's lived so long 'cause he always smoked tobacco and it killed all the germs.
Can I smoke tobacco pretty soon, Anne?"
"No, Davy, I hope you'll never use tobacco," said Anne absently.
"What'll you feel like if the germs kill me then?" demanded Davy.
