“Why, it seems like drinking the month of October,” he told her; and at this the hostess reached over, protesting that the striped mug was too narrow to hold what it ought, and filled it up again.

“Oh, Joe Laneway, to think that I see you at last, after all these years!” she said.  “How rich I shall feel with this evening to live over!  I’ve always wanted to see somebody that I’d read about, and now I’ve got that to remember; but I’ve always known I should see you again, and I believe ’t was the Lord’s will.”

Early the next morning they said good-by.  The early breakfast had to be hurried, and Marilla was to drive Mr. Laneway to the station, three miles away.  It was Saturday morning, and she was free from school.

Mr. Laneway strolled down the lane before breakfast was ready, and came back with a little bunch of pink anemones in his hand.  Marilla thought that he meant to give them to her, but he laid them beside her grandmother’s plate.  “You mustn’t put those in your desk,” he said with a smile, and Abby Hender blushed like a girl.

“I’ve got those others now, dried and put away somewhere in one of my books,” she said quietly, and Marilla wondered what they meant.

The two old friends shook hands warmly at parting.  “I wish you could have stayed another day, so I could have had the minister come and see you,” urged Mrs. Hender regretfully.

“You couldn’t have done any more for me.  I have had the best visit in the world,” he answered, a little shaken, and holding her hand a moment longer, while Marilla sat, young and impatient, in the high wagon.  “You’re a dear good woman, Abby.  Sometimes when things have gone wrong I’ve been sorry that I ever had to leave Winby.”

The woman’s clear eyes looked straight into his; then fell.  “You wouldn’t have done everything you have for the country,” she said.

“Give me a kiss; we’re getting to be old folks now,” said the General; and they kissed each other gravely.

A moment later Abby Hender stood alone in her dooryard, watching and waving her hand again and again, while the wagon rattled away down the lane and turned into the high-road.

Two hours after Marilla returned from the station, and rushed into the kitchen.

“Grandma!” she exclaimed, “you never did see such a crowd in Winby as there was at the depot!  Everybody in town had got word about General Laneway, and they were pushing up to shake hands, and cheering same as at election, and the cars waited much as ten minutes, and all the folks was lookin’ out of the windows, and came out on the platforms when they heard who it was.  Folks say that he’d been to see the selectmen yesterday before he came to school, and he’s goin’ to build an elegant town hall, and have the names put up in it of all the Winby men that went to the war.”  Marilla sank into a chair, flushed with excitement.  “Everybody was asking me about his being here last night and what he said to the school.  I wished that you’d gone down to the depot instead of me.”