aid,

"I saw Mr. Harrison chasing your Jersey out of his oats today when I was
coming home from Carmody. I thought he looked pretty mad. Did he make
much of a rumpus?"

Anne and Marilla furtively exchanged amused smiles. Few things in
Avonlea ever escaped Mrs. Lynde. It was only that morning Anne had said,

"If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down
the blind, and SNEEZED, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your
cold was!"

"I believe he did," admitted Marilla. "I was away. He gave Anne a piece
of his mind."

"I think he is a very disagreeable man," said Anne, with a resentful
toss of her ruddy head.

"You never said a truer word," said Mrs. Rachel solemnly. "I knew
there'd be trouble when Robert Bell sold his place to a New Brunswick
man, that's what. I don't know what Avonlea is coming to, with so many
strange people rushing into it. It'll soon not be safe to go to sleep in
our beds."

"Why, what other strangers are coming in?" asked Marilla.

"Haven't you heard? Well, there's a family of Donnells, for one thing.
They've rented Peter Sloane's old house. Peter has hired the man to run
his mill. They belong down east and nobody knows anything about them.
Then that shiftless Timothy Cotton family are going to move up from
White Sands and they'll simply be a burden on the public. He is
in consumption . . . when he isn't stealing . . . and his wife is a
slack-twisted creature that can't turn her hand to a thing. She washes
her dishes SITTING DOWN. Mrs. George Pye has taken her husband's orphan
nephew, Anthony Pye. He'll be going to school to you, Anne, so you may
expect trouble, that's what. And you'll have another strange pupil, too.
Paul Irving is coming from the States to live with his grandmother.
You remember his father, Marilla . . . Stephen Irving, him that jilted
Lavendar Lewis over at Grafton?"

"I don't think he jilted her. There was a quarrel . . . I suppose there
was blame on both sides."

"Well, anyway, he didn't marry her, and she's been as queer as possible
ever since, they say . . . living all by herself in that little stone
house she calls Echo Lodge. Stephen went off to the States and went
into business with his uncle and married a Yankee. He's never been home
since, though his mother has been up to see him once or twice. His wife
died two years ago and he's sending the boy home to his mother for a
spell. He's ten years old and I don't know if he'll be a v