rry a nameless nobody like Mary Vance."

Susan returned to her mutton, feeling that she had got the best of it
in this passage of arms, and read another "note."

"'We are pleased to hear that Miss Oliver has been engaged as teacher
for another year. Miss Oliver will spend her well-earned vacation at
her home in Lowbridge.'"

"I'm so glad Gertrude is going to stay," said Mrs. Blythe. "We would
miss her horribly. And she has an excellent influence over Rilla who
worships her. They are chums, in spite of the difference in their ages."

"I thought I heard she was going to be married?"

"I believe it was talked of but I understand it is postponed for a
year."

"Who is the young man?"

"Robert Grant. He is a young lawyer in Charlottetown. I hope Gertrude
will be happy. She has had a sad life, with much bitterness in it, and
she feels things with a terrible keenness. Her first youth is gone and
she is practically alone in the world. This new love that has come into
her life seems such a wonderful thing to her that I think she hardly
dares believe in its permanence. When her marriage had to be put off
she was quite in despair--though it certainly wasn't Mr. Grant's fault.
There were complications in the settlement of his father's estate--his
father died last winter--and he could not marry till the tangles were
unravelled. But I think Gertrude felt it was a bad omen and that her
happiness would somehow elude her yet."

"It does not do, Mrs. Dr. dear, to set your affections too much on a
man," remarked Susan solemnly.

"Mr. Grant is quite as much in love with Gertrude as she is with him,
Susan. It is not he whom she distrusts--it is fate. She has a little
mystic streak in her--I suppose some people would call her
superstitious. She has an odd belief in dreams and we have not been
able to laugh it out of her. I must own, too, that some of her
dreams--but there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such
heresy. What have you found of much interest, Susan?"

Susan had given an exclamation.

"Listen to this, Mrs. Dr. dear. 'Mrs. Sophia Crawford has given up her
house at Lowbridge and will make her home in future with her niece,
Mrs. Albert Crawford.' Why that is my own cousin Sophia, Mrs. Dr. dear.
We quarrelled when we were children over who should get a Sunday-school
card with the words 'God is Love,' wreathed in rosebuds, on it, and
have never spoken to each other since. And now she is coming to live
right