your wife," she said, "and I'll pack up every stitch she
owns and send it after her; and I never want to see her or you again as
long as I live."

Then she turned to me and Thomas.

"As for you that have aided and abetted that weakminded fool in this,
take yourselves out of my yard and never darken my door again."

"Goodness, who wants to, you old spitfire?" said Thomas.

It wasn't just the thing for him to say, perhaps, but we are all human,
even elders.

The girls didn't escape. Emmeline looked daggers at them.

"This will be something for you to carry back to Avonlea," she said.
"You gossips down there will have enough to talk about for a spell.
That's all you ever go out of Avonlea for--just to fetch and carry
tales."

Finally she finished up with the minister.

"I'm going to the Baptist church in Spencervale after this," she said.
Her tone and look said a hundred other things. She whirled into the
house and slammed the door.

Mr. Leonard looked around on us with a pitying smile as Stephen put
poor, half-fainting Prissy into the buggy.

"I am very sorry," he said in that gently, saintly way of his, "for the
Baptists."

XI. The Miracle at Carmody

Salome looked out of the kitchen window, and a pucker of distress
appeared on her smooth forehead.

"Dear, dear, what has Lionel Hezekiah been doing now?" she murmured
anxiously.

Involuntarily she reached out for her crutch; but it was a little beyond
her reach, having fallen on the floor, and without it Salome could not
move a step.

"Well, anyway, Judith is bringing him in as fast as she can," she
reflected. "He must have been up to something terrible this time; for
she looks very cross, and she never walks like that unless she is angry
clear through. Dear me, I am sometimes tempted to think that Judith and
I made a mistake in adopting the child. I suppose two old maids don't
know much about bringing up a boy properly. But he is NOT a bad child,
and it really seems to me that there must be some way of making him
behave better if we only knew what it was."

Salome's monologue was cut short by the entrance of her sister Judith,
holding Lionel Hezekiah by his chubby wrist with a determined grip.

Judith Marsh was ten years older than Salome, and the two women were
as different in appearance as night and day. Salome, in spite of her
thirty-five years, looked almost girlish. She was small and pink and
flower-like, with little rings of pale go