lves when she could find nothing else to
do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Marilla did. Then
she went out and raked the yard.

When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Anne. A
tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.

"Come down to your dinner, Anne."

"I don't want any dinner, Marilla," said Anne, sobbingly. "I couldn't
eat anything. My heart is broken. You'll feel remorse of conscience
someday, I expect, for breaking it, Marilla, but I forgive you. Remember
when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don't ask me to eat
anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are
so unromantic when one is in affliction."

Exasperated, Marilla returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale
of woe to Matthew, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful
sympathy with Anne, was a miserable man.

"Well now, she shouldn't have taken the brooch, Marilla, or told stories
about it," he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic
pork and greens as if he, like Anne, thought it a food unsuited to
crises of feeling, "but she's such a little thing--such an interesting
little thing. Don't you think it's pretty rough not to let her go to the
picnic when she's so set on it?"

"Matthew Cuthbert, I'm amazed at you. I think I've let her off entirely
too easy. And she doesn't appear to realize how wicked she's been at
all--that's what worries me most. If she'd really felt sorry it wouldn't
be so bad. And you don't seem to realize it, neither; you're making
excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that."

"Well now, she's such a little thing," feebly reiterated Matthew. "And
there should be allowances made, Marilla. You know she's never had any
bringing up."

"Well, she's having it now" retorted Marilla.

The retort silenced Matthew if it did not convince him. That dinner was
a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote,
the hired boy, and Marilla resented his cheerfulness as a personal
insult.

When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed
Marilla remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black
lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning
from the Ladies' Aid.

She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As
Marilla lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that
clustered thickly about the window,