pient of gifts from
romantic, aspiring young poets?

V. The September Chapter

In September the Old Lady looked back on the summer and owned to herself
that it had been a strangely happy one, with Sundays and Sewing Circle
days standing out like golden punctuation marks in a poem of life.
She felt like an utterly different woman; and other people thought her
different also. The Sewing Circle women found her so pleasant, and even
friendly, that they began to think they had misjudged her, and that
perhaps it was eccentricity after all, and not meanness, which accounted
for her peculiar mode of living. Sylvia Gray always came and talked to
her on Circle afternoons now, and the Old Lady treasured every word she
said in her heart and repeated them over and over to her lonely self in
the watches of the night.

Sylvia never talked of herself or her plans, unless asked about them;
and the Old Lady's self-consciousness prevented her from asking any
personal questions: so their conversation kept to the surface of things,
and it was not from Sylvia, but from the minister's wife that the Old
Lady finally discovered what her darling's dearest ambition was.

The minister's wife had dropped in at the old Lloyd place one evening
late in September, when a chilly wind was blowing up from the northeast
and moaning about the eaves of the house, as if the burden of its
lay were "harvest is ended and summer is gone." The Old Lady had been
listening to it, as she plaited a little basket of sweet grass for
Sylvia. She had walked all the way to Avonlea sand-hills for it the
day before, and she was very tired. And her heart was sad. This summer,
which had so enriched her life, was almost over; and she knew that
Sylvia Gray talked of leaving Spencervale at the end of October. The
Old Lady's heart felt like very lead within her at the thought, and
she almost welcomed the advent of the minister's wife as a distraction,
although she was desperately afraid that the minister's wife had called
to ask for a subscription for the new vestry carpet, and the Old Lady
simply could not afford to give one cent.

But the minister's wife had merely dropped in on her way home from the
Spencers' and she did not make any embarrassing requests. Instead, she
talked about Sylvia Gray, and her words fell on the Old Lady's ears like
separate pearl notes of unutterably sweet music. The minister's wife
had nothing but praise for Sylvia--she was so sweet and bea