“Widowers and sheep’s eyes don’t sound very romantic, Aunty.”
“Well, no; but young folks aren’t always romantic either. Some of my beaux
certainly weren’t. I used to laugh at them scandalous, poor boys. There was Jim
Elwood—he was always in a sort of day-dream—never seemed to sense what
was going on. He didn’t wake up to the fact that I’d said ‘no’ till a year after I’d
said it. When he did get married his wife fell out of the sleigh one night when
they were driving home from church and he never missed her. Then there was
Dan Winston. He knew too much. He knew everything in this world and most of
what is in the next. He could give you an answer to any question, even if you
asked him when the Judgment Day was to be. Milton Edwards was real nice and
I liked him but I didn’t marry him. For one thing, he took a week to get a joke
through his head, and for another he never asked me. Horatio Reeve was the
most interesting beau I ever had. But when he told a story he dressed it up so that
you couldn’t see it for frills. I never could decide whether he was lying or just
letting his imagination run loose.”
“And what about the others, Aunty?”
“Go away and unpack,” said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by
mistake for a needle. “The others were too nice to make fun of. I shall respect
their memory. There’s a box of flowers in your room, Anne. They came about an
hour ago.”
After the first week the girls of Patty’s Place settled down to a steady grind of
study; for this was their last year at Redmond and graduation honors must be
fought for persistently. Anne devoted herself to English, Priscilla pored over
classics, and Philippa pounded away at Mathematics. Sometimes they grew
tired, sometimes they felt discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the
struggle for it. In one such mood Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy
November evening. Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the
lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.
“What in the world are you doing?”
“Just looking over some old Story Club yarns. I wanted something to cheer
AND inebriate. I’d studied until the world seemed azure. So I came up here and
dug these out of my trunk. They are so drenched in tears and tragedy that they
are excruciatingly funny.”
“I’m blue and discouraged myself,” said Stella, throwing herself on the couch.
“Nothing seems worthwhile. My very thoughts are old. I’ve thought them all
before. What is the use of living after all, Anne?”
“Honey, it’s just brain fag that makes us feel that way, and the weather. A