ried to praise it as much
as it deserved, and finally gave a cheerful laugh, such as he had not
laughed for many a day.

"Why, it seems like drinking the month of October," he told her; and
at this the hostess reached over, protesting that the striped mug was
too narrow to hold what it ought, and filled it up again.

"Oh, Joe Laneway, to think that I see you at last, after all these
years!" she said. "How rich I shall feel with this evening to live
over! I've always wanted to see somebody that I'd read about, and now
I've got that to remember; but I've always known I should see you
again, and I believe 't was the Lord's will."

Early the next morning they said good-by. The early breakfast had to
be hurried, and Marilla was to drive Mr. Laneway to the station,
three miles away. It was Saturday morning, and she was free from
school.

Mr. Laneway strolled down the lane before breakfast was ready, and
came back with a little bunch of pink anemones in his hand. Marilla
thought that he meant to give them to her, but he laid them beside her
grandmother's plate. "You mustn't put those in your desk," he said
with a smile, and Abby Hender blushed like a girl.

"I've got those others now, dried and put away somewhere in one of my
books," she said quietly, and Marilla wondered what they meant.

The two old friends shook hands warmly at parting. "I wish you could
have stayed another day, so I could have had the minister come and see
you," urged Mrs. Hender regretfully.

"You couldn't have done any more for me. I have had the best visit in
the world," he answered, a little shaken, and holding her hand a
moment longer, while Marilla sat, young and impatient, in the high
wagon. "You're a dear good woman, Abby. Sometimes when things have
gone wrong I've been sorry that I ever had to leave Winby."

The woman's clear eyes looked straight into his; then fell. "You
wouldn't have done everything you have for the country," she said.

"Give me a kiss; we're getting to be old folks now," said the General;
and they kissed each other gravely.

A moment later Abby Hender stood alone in her dooryard, watching and
waving her hand again and again, while the wagon rattled away down the
lane and turned into the high-road.

Two hours after Marilla returned from the station, and rushed into the
kitchen.

"Grandma!" she exclaimed, "you never did see such a crowd in Winby as
there was at the depot! Everybody in town had got word about Gene