an
sixteen, having her first escort home," Anne told the girls at Patty's
Place later on.

"Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas," she said stiffly.

Mr. Douglas nodded and said, "I was looking at you in prayer-meeting,
miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were."

Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have
annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made
her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment.
She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the
moonlit road.

So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of a
wife--cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It would
be a flagrant waste on Nature's part to keep her a permanent old maid.

"John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother," said Janet
the next day. "She's bed-rid a lot of the time and never goes out of
the house. But she's powerful fond of company and always wants to see my
boarders. Can you go up this evening?"

Anne assented; but later in the day Mr. Douglas called on his mother's
behalf to invite them up to tea on Saturday evening.

"Oh, why didn't you put on your pretty pansy dress?" asked Anne, when
they left home. It was a hot day, and poor Janet, between her excitement
and her heavy black cashmere dress, looked as if she were being broiled
alive.

"Old Mrs. Douglas would think it terrible frivolous and unsuitable, I'm
afraid. John likes that dress, though," she added wistfully.

The old Douglas homestead was half a mile from "Wayside" cresting a
windy hill. The house itself was large and comfortable, old enough to be
dignified, and girdled with maple groves and orchards. There were big,
trim barns behind it, and everything bespoke prosperity. Whatever the
patient endurance in Mr. Douglas' face had meant it hadn't, so Anne
reflected, meant debts and duns.

John Douglas met them at the door and took them into the sitting-room,
where his mother was enthroned in an armchair.

Anne had expected old Mrs. Douglas to be tall and thin, because Mr.
Douglas was. Instead, she was a tiny scrap of a woman, with soft
pink cheeks, mild blue eyes, and a mouth like a baby's. Dressed in a
beautiful, fashionably-made black silk dress, with a fluffy white shawl
over her shoulders, and her snowy hair surmounted by a dainty lace cap,
she might have posed as a grandmother doll.

"How do you do, Janet dear?"