e it would be to be doing
something you didn't like every day for . . . well, say forty years. Anne
was of two minds whether to have her cry out then and there, or wait
till she was safely in her own white room at home. Before she could
decide there was a click of heels and a silken swish on the porch floor,
and Anne found herself confronted by a lady whose appearance made her
recall a recent criticism of Mr. Harrison's on an overdressed female he
had seen in a Charlottetown store. "She looked like a head-on collision
between a fashion plate and a nightmare."

The newcomer was gorgeously arrayed in a pale blue summer silk, puffed,
frilled, and shirred wherever puff, frill, or shirring could possibly
be placed. Her head was surmounted by a huge white chiffon hat, bedecked
with three long but rather stringy ostrich feathers. A veil of pink
chiffon, lavishly sprinkled with huge black dots, hung like a flounce
from the hat brim to her shoulders and floated off in two airy streamers
behind her. She wore all the jewelry that could be crowded on one small
woman, and a very strong odor of perfume attended her.

"I am Mrs. DonNELL . . . Mrs. H. B. DonNELL," announced this vision, "and
I have come in to see you about something Clarice Almira told me when
she came home to dinner today. It annoyed me EXCESSIVELY."

"I'm sorry," faltered Anne, vainly trying to recollect any incident of
the morning connected with the Donnell children.

"Clarice Almira told me that you pronounced our name DONnell. Now, Miss
Shirley, the correct pronunciation of our name is DonNELL . . . accent on
the last syllable. I hope you'll remember this in future."

"I'll try to," gasped Anne, choking back a wild desire to laugh. "I know
by experience that it's very unpleasant to have one's name SPELLED wrong
and I suppose it must be even worse to have it pronounced wrong."

"Certainly it is. And Clarice Almira also informed me that you call my
son Jacob."

"He told me his name was Jacob," protested Anne.

"I might well have expected that," said Mrs. H. B. Donnell, in a tone
which implied that gratitude in children was not to be looked for in
this degenerate age. "That boy has such plebeian tastes, Miss Shirley.
When he was born I wanted to call him St. Clair . . . it sounds SO
aristocratic, doesn't it? But his father insisted he should be called
Jacob after his uncle. I yielded, because Uncle Jacob was a rich old
bachelor. And what do you think, Miss