he was having, and the
parties she went to, and the new dresses she got. New dresses! When I
read that letter of Anne's, I knew that all the purple and fine linen
in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long
as Gilbert was sulking out on a prairie farm.

Well, I wiped my eyes and polished up my specs, but I might have
spared myself the trouble, for in five minutes, Nora May, there was I
sobbing again; over Gilbert's letter. By the most curious coincidence
he had opened his heart to me too. Being a man, he wasn't so
discursive as Anne; he said his say in four pages, but I could read
the heartache between the lines. He wrote that he was going to
Klondike and would start in a month's time. He was sick of living now
that he'd lost Anne. He said he loved her better than his life and
always would, and could never forget her, but he knew she didn't care
anything about him now after the way she'd acted, and he wanted to get
as far away from her and the torturing thought of her as he could. So
he was going to Klondike--going to Klondike, Nora May, when his mother
was writing to him to come home every week and Anne was breaking her
heart for him at St. Mary's.

Well, I folded up them letters and, says I, "Grandpa Holland, I guess
my birthday celebration is here ready to hand." I thought real hard. I
couldn't write myself to explain to those two people that they each
thought the world of each other still--my hands are too stiff; and I
couldn't get anyone else to write because I couldn't let out what
they'd told me in confidence. So I did a mean, dishonourable thing,
Nora May. I sent Anne's letter to Gilbert and Gilbert's to Anne. I
asked Emma Matilda to address them, and Emma Matilda did it and asked
no questions. I brought her up that way.

Then I settled down to wait. In less than a month Gilbert's mother had
a letter from him saying that he was coming home to settle down and
marry Anne. He arrived home yesterday and last night Anne came to
Springdale on her way home from St. Mary's. They came to see me this
morning and said things to me I ain't going to repeat because they
would sound fearful vain. They were so happy that they made me feel as
if it was a good thing to have lived eighty years in a world where
folks could be so happy. They said their new joy was my birthday gift
to them. The wedding is to be in September and I'm going to Montrose
in August to help Anne with her quilts. I don't think an