a little shawl on her.  There was a lot of snow on the walks and I feel sure she got a chill, ma’am.  Ever since then I’ve noticed her acting tired and lonesome like.  She don’t seem to take an interest in anything, ma’am.  She never pretends company’s coming, nor fixes up for it, nor nothing, ma’am.  It’s only when you come she seems to chirk up a bit.  And the worst sign of all, Miss Shirley, ma’am . . .”  Charlotta the Fourth lowered her voice as if she were about to tell some exceedingly weird and awful symptom indeed . . . “is that she never gets cross now when I breaks things.  Why, Miss Shirley, ma’am, yesterday I bruk her green and yaller bowl that’s always stood on the bookcase.  Her grandmother brought it out from England and Miss Lavendar was awful choice of it.  I was dusting it just as careful, Miss Shirley, ma’am, and it slipped out, so fashion, afore I could grab holt of it, and bruk into about forty millyun pieces.  I tell you I was sorry and scared.  I thought Miss Lavendar would scold me awful, ma’am; and I’d ruther she had than take it the way she did.  She just come in and hardly looked at it and said, ’It’s no matter, Charlotta.  Take up the pieces and throw them away.’  Just like that, Miss Shirley, ma’am . . . ’take up the pieces and throw them away,’ as if it wasn’t her grandmother’s bowl from England.  Oh, she isn’t well and I feel awful bad about it.  She’s got nobody to look after her but me.”

Charlotta the Fourth’s eyes brimmed up with tears.  Anne patted the little brown paw holding the cracked pink cup sympathetically.

“I think Miss Lavendar needs a change, Charlotta.  She stays here alone too much.  Can’t we induce her to go away for a little trip?”

Charlotta shook her head, with its rampant bows, disconsolately.

“I don’t think so, Miss Shirley, ma’am.  Miss Lavendar hates visiting.  She’s only got three relations she ever visits and she says she just goes to see them as a family duty.  Last time when she come home she said she wasn’t going to visit for family duty no more.  ’I’ve come home in love with loneliness, Charlotta,’ she says to me, ’and I never want to stray from my own vine and fig tree again.  My relations try so hard to make an old lady of me and it has a bad effect on me.’  Just like that, Miss Shirley, ma’am.  ‘It has a very bad effect on me.’  So I don’t think it would do any good to coax her to go visiting.”

“We must see what can be done,” said Anne decidedly, as she put the last possible berry in her pink cup.  “Just as soon as I have my vacation I’ll come through and spend a whole week with you.  We’ll have a picnic every day and pretend all sorts of interesting things, and see if we can’t cheer Miss Lavendar up.”

“That will be the very thing, Miss Shirley, ma’am,” exclaimed Charlotta the Fourth in rapture.  She was glad for Miss Lavendar’s sake and for her own too.  With a whole week in which to study Anne constantly she would surely be able to learn how to move and behave like her.