ught it a most
beautiful and lovely thing that they should be so.

And so it was. You're rather too young to be thinking of such things,
Nora May, but you'll remember my words when the time comes.

Another nephew of mine, James Ebenezer Lawson--he calls himself James
E. back there in town, and I don't blame him, for I never could stand
Ebenezer for a name myself; but that's neither here nor there. Well,
he said their love was idyllic, I ain't very sure what that means. I
looked it up in the dictionary after James Ebenezer left--I wouldn't
display my ignorance afore him--but I can't say that I was much the
wiser for it. Anyway, it meant something real nice; I was sure of that
by the way James Ebenezer spoke and the wistful look in his eyes.
James Ebenezer isn't married; he was to have been, and she died a
month afore the wedding day. He was never the same man again.

Well, to get back to Gilbert and Anne. When Anne's school year ended
in June she resigned and went home to get ready to be married. The
wedding was to be in September, and I promised Anne faithful I'd go
over to Montrose in August for two weeks and help her to get her
quilts ready. Anne thought that nobody could quilt like me. I was as
tickled as a girl at the thought of visiting with Anne for two weeks,
but I never went; things happened before August.

I don't know rightly how the trouble began. Other folks--jealous
folks--made mischief. Anne was thirty miles away and Gilbert couldn't
see her every day to keep matters clear and fair. Besides, as I've
said, they were both proud and high-sperrited. The upshot of it was
they had a terrible quarrel and the engagement was broken.

When two people don't care overly much for each other, Nora May, a
quarrel never amounts to much between them, and it's soon made up. But
when they love each other better than life it cuts so deep and hurts
so much that nine times out of ten they won't ever forgive each other.
The more you love anybody, Nora May, the more he can hurt you. To be
sure, you're too young to be thinking of such things.

It all came like a thunderclap on Gil's friends here at Greendale,
because we hadn't ever suspected things were going wrong. The first
thing we knew was that Anne had gone up west to teach school again at
St. Mary's, eighty miles away, and Gilbert, he went out to Manitoba on
a harvest excursion and stayed there. It just about broke his parents'
hearts. He was their only child and they