boy, couldn't be
altogether right in his mind.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw Emmeline driving away one day
alone. As soon as she was out of sight I whisked over, and Anne Shirley
and Diana Barry went with me.

They were visiting me that afternoon. Diana's mother was my second
cousin, and, as we visited back and forth frequently, I'd often seen
Diana. But I'd never seen her chum, Anne Shirley, although I'd heard
enough about her to drive anyone frantic with curiosity. So when she
came home from Redmond College that summer I asked Diana to take pity on
me and bring her over some afternoon.

I wasn't disappointed in her. I considered her a beauty, though some
people couldn't see it. She had the most magnificent red hair and the
biggest, shiningest eyes I ever saw in a girl's head. As for her laugh,
it made me feel young again to hear it. She and Diana both laughed
enough that afternoon, for I told them, under solemn promise of secrecy,
all about poor Prissy's love affair. So nothing would do them but they
must go over with me.

The appearance of the house amazed me. All the shutters were closed and
the door locked. I knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. Then I
walked around the house to the only window that hadn't shutters--a tiny
one upstairs. I knew it was the window in the closet off the room where
the girls slept. I stopped under it and called Prissy. Before long
Prissy came and opened it. She was so pale and woe-begone looking that I
pitied her with all my heart.

"Prissy, where has Emmeline gone?" I asked.

"Down to Avonlea to see the Roger Pyes. They're sick with measles, and
Emmeline couldn't take me because I've never had measles."

Poor Prissy! She had never had anything a body ought to have.

"Then you just come and unfasten a shutter, and come right over to my
house," I said exultantly. "We'll have Stephen and the minister here in
no time."

"I can't--Em'line has locked me in here," said Prissy woefully.

I was posed. No living mortal bigger than a baby could have got in or
out of that closet window.

"Well," I said finally, "I'll put the signal up for Stephen anyhow, and
we'll see what can be done when he gets here."

I didn't know how I was ever to get the signal up on that ventilator,
for it was one of the days I take dizzy spells; and if I took one up on
the ladder there'd probably be a funeral instead of a wedding. But Anne
Shirley said she'd put it up for me, and she