It was a clear, apple-green evening in May, and Four
Winds Harbour was mirroring back the clouds of the
golden west between its softly dark shores.
The sea moaned eerily on the sand-bar, sorrowful even
in spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down
the red harbour road along which Miss Cornelia’s
comfortable, matronly figure was making its way towards
the village of Glen St. Mary. Miss Cornelia
was rightfully Mrs. Marshall Elliott, and had been
Mrs. Marshall Elliott for thirteen years, but even
yet more people referred to her as Miss Cornelia than
as Mrs. Elliott. The old name was dear to her
old friends, only one of them contemptuously dropped
it. Susan Baker, the gray and grim and faithful
handmaiden of the Blythe family at Ingleside, never
lost an opportunity of calling her “Mrs. Marshall
Elliott,” with the most killing and pointed
emphasis, as if to say “You wanted to be Mrs.
and Mrs. you shall be with a vengeance as far as I
am concerned.”
Miss Cornelia was going up to Ingleside to see Dr.
and Mrs. Blythe, who were just home from Europe.
They had been away for three months, having left
in February to attend a famous medical congress in
London; and certain things, which Miss Cornelia was
anxious to discuss, had taken place in the Glen during
their absence. For one thing, there was a new
family in the manse. And such a family!
Miss Cornelia shook her head over them several times
as she walked briskly along.
Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw
her coming, as they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside,
enjoying the charm of the cat’s light, the sweetness
of sleepy robins whistling among the twilit maples,
and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing
against the old, mellow, red brick wall of the lawn.
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.
Shirley, “the little brown boy,” as he
was known in the family “Who’s Who,”
was asleep in Susan’s arms. He was brown-haired,
brown-eyed and brown-skinned, with very rosy cheeks,
and he was Susan’s especial love. After
his birth Anne had been very ill for a long time,
and Susan “mothered” the baby with a passionate
tenderness which none of the other children, dear as
they were to her, had ever called out. Dr. Blythe
had said that but for her he would never have lived.
