end at all. He painted
my house for me last spring. It looks real nice now, don't you think?"

Anne was saved by the clock striking five.

"Lord, is it that late?" exclaimed Miss Cornelia. "How time does slip
by when you're enjoying yourself! Well, I must betake myself home."

"No, indeed! You are going to stay and have tea with us," said Anne
eagerly.

"Are you asking me because you think you ought to, or because you
really want to?" demanded Miss Cornelia.

"Because I really want to."

"Then I'll stay. YOU belong to the race that knows Joseph."

"I know we are going to be friends," said Anne, with the smile that
only they of the household of faith ever saw.

"Yes, we are, dearie. Thank goodness, we can choose our friends. We
have to take our relatives as they are, and be thankful if there are no
penitentiary birds among them. Not that I've many--none nearer than
second cousins. I'm a kind of lonely soul, Mrs. Blythe."

There was a wistful note in Miss Cornelia's voice.

"I wish you would call me Anne," exclaimed Anne impulsively. "It would
seem more HOMEY. Everyone in Four Winds, except my husband, calls me
Mrs. Blythe, and it makes me feel like a stranger. Do you know that
your name is very near being the one I yearned after when I was a
child. I hated 'Anne' and I called myself 'Cordelia' in imagination."

"I like Anne. It was my mother's name. Old-fashioned names are the
best and sweetest in my opinion. If you're going to get tea you might
send the young doctor to talk to me. He's been lying on the sofa in
that office ever since I came, laughing fit to kill over what I've been
saying."

"How did you know?" cried Anne, too aghast at this instance of Miss
Cornelia's uncanny prescience to make a polite denial.

"I saw him sitting beside you when I came up the lane, and I know men's
tricks," retorted Miss Cornelia. "There, I've finished my little
dress, dearie, and the eighth baby can come as soon as it pleases."

CHAPTER 9

AN EVENING AT FOUR WINDS POINT

It was late September when Anne and Gilbert were able to pay Four Winds
light their promised visit. They had often planned to go, but
something always occurred to prevent them. Captain Jim had "dropped
in" several times at the little house.

"I don't stand on ceremony, Mistress Blythe," he told Anne. "It's a
real pleasure to me to come here, and I'm not going to deny myself jest
because you haven't got down to see me. T