oint was as beautiful as
ever--and Miss Maria laughed. If I were to say to Miss Maria, 'My father
has hanged himself, my mother has taken poison, my brother is in the
penitentiary, and I am in the last stages of consumption,' Miss Maria
would laugh. She can't help it--she was born so; but is very sad and
awful.

"The fifth old lady is Mrs. Grant. She is a sweet old thing; but
she never says anything but good of anybody and so she is a very
uninteresting conversationalist.

"And now for Jonas, Anne.

"That first day I came I saw a young man sitting opposite me at the
table, smiling at me as if he had known me from my cradle. I knew, for
Uncle Mark had told me, that his name was Jonas Blake, that he was a
Theological Student from St. Columbia, and that he had taken charge of
the Point Prospect Mission Church for the summer.

"He is a very ugly young man--really, the ugliest young man I've ever
seen. He has a big, loose-jointed figure with absurdly long legs. His
hair is tow-color and lank, his eyes are green, and his mouth is big,
and his ears--but I never think about his ears if I can help it.

"He has a lovely voice--if you shut your eyes he is adorable--and he
certainly has a beautiful soul and disposition.

"We were good chums right way. Of course he is a graduate of Redmond,
and that is a link between us. We fished and boated together; and we
walked on the sands by moonlight. He didn't look so homely by moonlight
and oh, he was nice. Niceness fairly exhaled from him. The old
ladies--except Mrs. Grant--don't approve of Jonas, because he laughs and
jokes--and because he evidently likes the society of frivolous me better
than theirs.

"Somehow, Anne, I don't want him to think me frivolous. This is
ridiculous. Why should I care what a tow-haired person called Jonas,
whom I never saw before thinks of me?

"Last Sunday Jonas preached in the village church. I went, of course,
but I couldn't realize that Jonas was going to preach. The fact that he
was a minister--or going to be one--persisted in seeming a huge joke to
me.

"Well, Jonas preached. And, by the time he had preached ten minutes, I
felt so small and insignificant that I thought I must be invisible to
the naked eye. Jonas never said a word about women and he never
looked at me. But I realized then and there what a pitiful, frivolous,
small-souled little butterfly I was, and how horribly different I must
be from Jonas' ideal woman. SHE would be grand and