longing for that baby, and planning for it. Cannot anything be done
nohow, Miss Cuthbert?"

"I'm afraid not, Susan. Gilbert says there is no hope. He knew from
the first the little thing couldn't live."

"And it is such a sweet baby," sobbed Susan. "I never saw one so
white--they are mostly red or yallow. And it opened its big eyes as if
it was months old. The little, little thing! Oh, the poor, young Mrs.
Doctor!"

At sunset the little soul that had come with the dawning went away,
leaving heartbreak behind it. Miss Cornelia took the wee, white lady
from the kindly but stranger hands of the nurse, and dressed the tiny
waxen form in the beautiful dress Leslie had made for it. Leslie had
asked her to do that. Then she took it back and laid it beside the
poor, broken, tear-blinded little mother.

"The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, dearie," she said
through her own tears. "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone together with their
dead.

The next day, the small white Joy was laid in a velvet casket which
Leslie had lined with apple-blossoms, and taken to the graveyard of the
church across the harbor. Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little
love-made garments away, together with the ruffled basket which had
been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and downy head. Little
Joy was never to sleep there; she had found a colder, narrower bed.

"This has been an awful disappointment to me," sighed Miss Cornelia.
"I've looked forward to this baby--and I did want it to be a girl, too."

"I can only be thankful that Anne's life was spared," said Marilla,
with a shiver, recalling those hours of darkness when the girl she
loved was passing through the valley of the shadow.

"Poor, poor lamb! Her heart is broken," said Susan.

"I ENVY Anne," said Leslie suddenly and fiercely, "and I'd envy her
even if she had died! She was a mother for one beautiful day. I'd
gladly give my life for THAT!"

"I wouldn't talk like that, Leslie, dearie," said Miss Cornelia
deprecatingly. She was afraid that the dignified Miss Cuthbert would
think Leslie quite terrible.

Anne's convalescence was long, and made bitter for her by many things.
The bloom and sunshine of the Four Winds world grated harshly on her;
and yet, when the rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so
mercilessly down on that little grave across the harbor; and when the
wind blew around