hope he’s brought the mail. It’s three days since we got it. I want to see what
them pesky Grits are doing. I’m a Conservative, Anne. And I tell you, you have
to keep your eye on them Grits.”
Mr. Harrison had brought the mail, and merry letters from Stella and Priscilla
and Phil soon dissipated Anne’s blues. Aunt Jamesina, too, had written, saying
that she was keeping the hearth-fire alight, and that the cats were all well, and
the house plants doing fine.
“The weather has been real cold,” she wrote, “so I let the cats sleep in the
house—Rusty and Joseph on the sofa in the living-room, and the Sarah-cat on
the foot of my bed. It’s real company to hear her purring when I wake up in the
night and think of my poor daughter in the foreign field. If it was anywhere but
in India I wouldn’t worry, but they say the snakes out there are terrible. It takes
all the Sarah-cats’s purring to drive away the thought of those snakes. I have
enough faith for everything but the snakes. I can’t think why Providence ever
made them. Sometimes I don’t think He did. I’m inclined to believe the Old
Harry had a hand in making THEM.”
Anne had left a thin, typewritten communication till the last, thinking it
unimportant. When she had read it she sat very still, with tears in her eyes.
“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Marilla.
“Miss Josephine Barry is dead,” said Anne, in a low tone.
“So she has gone at last,” said Marilla. “Well, she has been sick for over a
year, and the Barrys have been expecting to hear of her death any time. It is well
she is at rest for she has suffered dreadfully, Anne. She was always kind to you.”
“She has been kind to the last, Marilla. This letter is from her lawyer. She has
left me a thousand dollars in her will.”
“Gracious, ain’t that an awful lot of money,” exclaimed Davy. “She’s the
woman you and Diana lit on when you jumped into the spare room bed, ain’t
she? Diana told me that story. Is that why she left you so much?”
“Hush, Davy,” said Anne gently. She slipped away to the porch gable with a
full heart, leaving Marilla and Mrs. Lynde to talk over the news to their hearts’
content.
“Do you s’pose Anne will ever get married now?” speculated Davy anxiously.
“When Dorcas Sloane got married last summer she said if she’d had enough
money to live on she’d never have been bothered with a man, but even a
widower with eight children was better’n living with a sister-in-law.”
“Davy Keith, do hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Rachel severely. “The way you