“Miss Josephine Barry has one.  I’ll write and ask her if she’ll lend it for the occasion,” said Anne.

“Well, I wish you would.  I guess we’ll have the supper in about a fortnight’s time.  Uncle Abe Andrews is prophesying rain and storms for about that time; and that’s a pretty sure sign we’ll have fine weather.”

The said “Uncle Abe,” it may be mentioned, was at least like other prophets in that he had small honor in his own country.  He was, in fact, considered in the light of a standing joke, for few of his weather predictions were ever fulfilled.  Mr. Elisha Wright, who labored under the impression that he was a local wit, used to say that nobody in Avonlea ever thought of looking in the Charlottetown dailies for weather probabilities.  No; they just asked Uncle Abe what it was going to be tomorrow and expected the opposite.  Nothing daunted, Uncle Abe kept on prophesying.

“We want to have the fair over before the election comes off,” continued Mrs. Lynde, “for the candidates will be sure to come and spend lots of money.  The Tories are bribing right and left, so they might as well be given a chance to spend their money honestly for once.”

Anne was a red-hot Conservative, out of loyalty to Matthew’s memory, but she said nothing.  She knew better than to get Mrs. Lynde started on politics.  She had a letter for Marilla, postmarked from a town in British Columbia.

“It’s probably from the children’s uncle,” she said excitedly, when she got home.  “Oh, Marilla, I wonder what he says about them.”

“The best plan might be to open it and see,” said Marilla curtly.  A close observer might have thought that she was excited also, but she would rather have died than show it.

Anne tore open the letter and glanced over the somewhat untidy and poorly written contents.

“He says he can’t take the children this spring . . . he’s been sick most of the winter and his wedding is put off.  He wants to know if we can keep them till the fall and he’ll try and take them then.  We will, of course, won’t we Marilla?”

“I don’t see that there is anything else for us to do,” said Marilla rather grimly, although she felt a secret relief.  “Anyhow they’re not so much trouble as they were . . . or else we’ve got used to them.  Davy has improved a great deal.”

“His manners are certainly much better,” said Anne cautiously, as if she were not prepared to say as much for his morals.

Anne had come home from school the previous evening, to find Marilla away at an Aid meeting, Dora asleep on the kitchen sofa, and Davy in the sitting room closet, blissfully absorbing the contents of a jar of Marilla’s famous yellow plum preserves . . . “company jam,” Davy called it . . . which he had been forbidden to touch.  He looked very guilty when Anne pounced on him and whisked him out of the closet.

“Davy Keith, don’t you know that it is very wrong of you to be eating that jam, when you were told never to meddle with anything in that closet?”