im and Miss Cornelia came to dinner. Leslie and Dick had been
invited, but Leslie made excuse; they always went to her Uncle Isaac
West's for Christmas, she said.

"She'd rather have it so," Miss Cornelia told Anne. "She can't bear
taking Dick where there are strangers. Christmas is always a hard time
for Leslie. She and her father used to make a lot of it."

Miss Cornelia and Mrs. Rachel did not take a very violent fancy to each
other. "Two suns hold not their courses in one sphere." But they did
not clash at all, for Mrs. Rachel was in the kitchen helping Anne and
Marilla with the dinner, and it fell to Gilbert to entertain Captain
Jim and Miss Cornelia,--or rather to be entertained by them, for a
dialogue between those two old friends and antagonists was assuredly
never dull.

"It's many a year since there was a Christmas dinner here, Mistress
Blythe," said Captain Jim. "Miss Russell always went to her friends in
town for Christmas. But I was here to the first Christmas dinner that
was ever eaten in this house--and the schoolmaster's bride cooked it.
That was sixty years ago today, Mistress Blythe--and a day very like
this--just enough snow to make the hills white, and the harbor as blue
as June. I was only a lad, and I'd never been invited out to dinner
before, and I was too shy to eat enough. I've got all over THAT."

"Most men do," said Miss Cornelia, sewing furiously. Miss Cornelia was
not going to sit with idle hands, even on Christmas.

Babies come without any consideration for holidays, and there was one
expected in a poverty-stricken household at Glen St. Mary. Miss
Cornelia had sent that household a substantial dinner for its little
swarm, and so meant to eat her own with a comfortable conscience.

"Well, you know, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach,
Cornelia," explained Captain Jim.

"I believe you--when he HAS a heart," retorted Miss Cornelia. "I
suppose that's why so many women kill themselves cooking--just as poor
Amelia Baxter did. She died last Christmas morning, and she said it
was the first Christmas since she was married that she didn't have to
cook a big, twenty-plate dinner. It must have been a real pleasant
change for her. Well, she's been dead a year, so you'll soon hear of
Horace Baxter taking notice."

"I heard he was taking notice already," said Captain Jim, winking at
Gilbert. "Wasn't he up to your place one Sunday lately, with his
funeral blacks on, an