Nan had already found plenty of wild flowers in the world; there were no entertainments provided for her except those the fields and pastures kindly spread before her admiring eyes.  Old Mrs. Thacher had been brought up to consider the hard work of this life, and though she had taken her share of enjoyment as she went along, it was of a somewhat grim and sober sort.  She believed that a certain amount of friskiness was as necessary to young human beings as it is to colts, but later both must be harnessed and made to work.  As for pleasure itself she had little notion of that.  She liked fair weather, and certain flowers were to her the decorations of certain useful plants, but if she had known that her grand-daughter could lie down beside the anemones and watch them move in the wind and nod their heads, and afterward look up into the blue sky to watch the great gulls above the river, or the sparrows flying low, or the crows who went higher, Mrs. Thacher would have understood almost nothing of such delights, and thought it a very idle way of spending one’s time.

But as Nan sat in the old summer-house in the doctor’s garden, she thought of many things that she must remember to tell her grandmother about this delightful day.  The bees were humming in the vines, and as she looked down the wide garden-walk it seemed like the broad aisle in church, and the congregation of plants and bushes all looked at her as if she were in the pulpit.  The church itself was not far away, and the windows were open, and sometimes Nan could hear the preacher’s voice, and by and by the people began to sing, and she rose solemnly, as if it were her own parishioners in the garden who lifted up their voices.  A cheerful robin began a loud solo in one of Dr. Leslie’s cherry-trees, and the little girl laughed aloud in her make-believe meeting-house, and then the gate was opened and shut, and the doctor himself appeared, strolling along, and smiling as he came.

He was looking to the right and left at his flowers and trees, and once he stopped and took out his pocket knife to trim a straying branch of honeysuckle, which had wilted and died.  When he came to the summer-house, he found his guest sitting there demurely with her hands folded in her lap.  She had gathered some little sprigs of box and a few blossoms of periwinkle and late lilies of the valley, and they lay on the bench beside her.  “So you did not go to church with Marilla?” the doctor said.  “I dare say one sermon a day is enough for so small a person as you.”  For Nan’s part, no sermon at all would have caused little sorrow, though she liked the excitement of the Sunday drive to the village.  She only smiled when the doctor spoke, and gave a little sigh of satisfaction a minute afterward when he seated himself beside her.

“We must be off presently,” he told her.  “I have a long drive to take before night.  I would let you go with me, but I am afraid I should keep you too long past your bedtime.”