seeing; but I've got several carefully hidden gray hairs and a horrible
conviction that grammar isn't one of the essential things in life after
all. Well, I'm not going to moon out here in the dew any longer. I'm
going in to read the smartest, frilliest, frothiest society novel in my
trunk."

In the week that followed Nancy enjoyed herself after her own fashion.
She read and swung in the garden, having a hammock hung under the firs.
She went far afield, in rambles to woods and lonely uplands.

"I like it much better than meeting people," she said, when Louisa
suggested going to see this one and that one, "especially the Avonlea
people. All my old chums are gone, or hopelessly married and changed,
and the young set who have come up know not Joseph, and make me feel
uncomfortably middle-aged. It's far worse to feel middle-aged than old,
you know. Away there in the woods I feel as eternally young as Nature
herself. And oh, it's so nice not having to fuss with thermometers and
temperatures and other people's whims. Let me indulge my own whims,
Louisa dear, and punish me with a cold bite when I come in late for
meals. I'm not even going to church again. It was horrible there
yesterday. The church is so offensively spick-and-span brand new and
modern."

"It's thought to be the prettiest church in these parts," protested
Louisa, a little sorely.

"Churches shouldn't be pretty--they should at least be fifty years old
and mellowed into beauty. New churches are an abomination."

"Did you see Peter Wright in church?" asked Louisa. She had been
bursting to ask it.

Nancy nodded.

"Verily, yes. He sat right across from me in the corner pew. I didn't
think him painfully changed. Iron-gray hair becomes him. But I was
horribly disappointed in myself. I had expected to feel at least a
romantic thrill, but all I felt was a comfortable interest, such as I
might have taken in any old friend. Do my utmost, Louisa, I couldn't
compass a thrill."

"Did he come to speak to you?" asked Louisa, who hadn't any idea what
Nancy meant by her thrills.

"Alas, no. It wasn't my fault. I stood at the door outside with the
most amiable expression I could assume, but Peter merely sauntered away
without a glance in my direction. It would be some comfort to my vanity
if I could believe it was on account of rankling spite or pride. But the
honest truth, dear Weezy, is that it looked to me exactly as if he never
thought of it. He was more intereste