that it's awful
hard to remember them all. Well, if I can't go to Miss Lavendar's I'll
go over and see Mrs. Harrison. Mrs. Harrison's an awful nice woman, I
tell you. She keeps a jar of cookies in her pantry a-purpose for little
boys, and she always gives me the scrapings out of a pan she's mixed
up a plum cake in. A good many plums stick to the sides, you see. Mr.
Harrison was always a nice man, but he's twice as nice since he got
married over again. I guess getting married makes folks nicer. Why don't
YOU get married, Marilla? I want to know."

Marilla's state of single blessedness had never been a sore point with
her, so she answered amiably, with an exchange of significant looks with
Anne, that she supposed it was because nobody would have her.

"But maybe you never asked anybody to have you," protested Davy.

"Oh, Davy," said Dora primly, shocked into speaking without being spoken
to, "it's the MEN that have to do the asking."

"I don't know why they have to do it ALWAYS," grumbled Davy. "Seems
to me everything's put on the men in this world. Can I have some more
pudding, Marilla?"

"You've had as much as was good for you," said Marilla; but she gave him
a moderate second helping.

"I wish people could live on pudding. Why can't they, Marilla? I want to
know."

"Because they'd soon get tired of it."

"I'd like to try that for myself," said skeptical Davy. "But I guess
it's better to have pudding only on fish and company days than none at
all. They never have any at Milty Boulter's. Milty says when company
comes his mother gives them cheese and cuts it herself . . . one little
bit apiece and one over for manners."

"If Milty Boulter talks like that about his mother at least you needn't
repeat it," said Marilla severely.

"Bless my soul," . . . Davy had picked this expression up from Mr.
Harrison and used it with great gusto . . . "Milty meant it as a
compelment. He's awful proud of his mother, cause folks say she could
scratch a living on a rock."

"I . . . I suppose them pesky hens are in my pansy bed again," said
Marilla, rising and going out hurriedly.

The slandered hens were nowhere near the pansy bed and Marilla did not
even glance at it. Instead, she sat down on the cellar hatch and laughed
until she was ashamed of herself.

When Anne and Paul reached the stone house that afternoon they found
Miss Lavendar and Charlotta the Fourth in the garden, weeding, raking,
clipping, and trimming as if