loane,

"'Roses red and vi'lets blue,
Sugar's sweet, and so are you"

and that 'spresses my feelings for you ezackly, Anne."

XXVI

Around the Bend

Thomas Lynde faded out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as he had
lived it. His wife was a tender, patient, unwearied nurse. Sometimes
Rachel had been a little hard on her Thomas in health, when his slowness
or meekness had provoked her; but when he became ill no voice could be
lower, no hand more gently skillful, no vigil more uncomplaining.

"You've been a good wife to me, Rachel," he once said simply, when she
was sitting by him in the dusk, holding his thin, blanched old hand
in her work-hardened one. "A good wife. I'm sorry I ain't leaving you
better off; but the children will look after you. They're all smart,
capable children, just like their mother. A good mother . . . a good
woman . . . ."

He had fallen asleep then, and the next morning, just as the white dawn
was creeping up over the pointed firs in the hollow, Marilla went softly
into the east gable and wakened Anne.

"Anne, Thomas Lynde is gone . . . their hired boy just brought the word.
I'm going right down to Rachel."

On the day after Thomas Lynde's funeral Marilla went about Green Gables
with a strangely preoccupied air. Occasionally she looked at Anne,
seemed on the point of saying something, then shook her head and
buttoned up her mouth. After tea she went down to see Mrs. Rachel; and
when she returned she went to the east gable, where Anne was correcting
school exercises.

"How is Mrs. Lynde tonight?" asked the latter.

"She's feeling calmer and more composed," answered Marilla, sitting
down on Anne's bed . . . a proceeding which betokened some unusual mental
excitement, for in Marilla's code of household ethics to sit on a
bed after it was made up was an unpardonable offense. "But she's very
lonely. Eliza had to go home today . . . her son isn't well and she felt
she couldn't stay any longer."

"When I've finished these exercises I'll run down and chat awhile with
Mrs. Lynde," said Anne. "I had intended to study some Latin composition
tonight but it can wait."

"I suppose Gilbert Blythe is going to college in the fall," said Marilla
jerkily. "How would you like to go too, Anne?"

Anne looked up in astonishment.

"I would like it, of course, Marilla. But it isn't possible."

"I guess it can be made possible. I've always felt that you should go.
I've never fel