“Janet told me I could have the use of the parlor when any young men called!  I don’t think there are many to call.  I haven’t seen a young man in Valley Road yet, except the next-door hired boy—­Sam Toliver, a very tall, lank, tow-haired youth.  He came over one evening recently and sat for an hour on the garden fence, near the front porch where Janet and I were doing fancy-work.  The only remarks he volunteered in all that time were, ’Hev a peppermint, miss!  Dew now-fine thing for carARRH, peppermints,’ and, ‘Powerful lot o’ jump-grasses round here ternight.  Yep.’

“But there is a love affair going on here.  It seems to be my fortune to be mixed up, more or less actively, with elderly love affairs.  Mr. and Mrs. Irving always say that I brought about their marriage.  Mrs. Stephen Clark of Carmody persists in being most grateful to me for a suggestion which somebody else would probably have made if I hadn’t.  I do really think, though, that Ludovic Speed would never have got any further along than placid courtship if I had not helped him and Theodora Dix out.

“In the present affair I am only a passive spectator.  I’ve tried once to help things along and made an awful mess of it.  So I shall not meddle again.  I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.”

Chapter XXXII

Tea with Mrs. Douglas

On the first Thursday night of Anne’s sojourn in Valley Road Janet asked her to go to prayer-meeting.  Janet blossomed out like a rose to attend that prayer-meeting.  She wore a pale-blue, pansy-sprinkled muslin dress with more ruffles than one would ever have supposed economical Janet could be guilty of, and a white leghorn hat with pink roses and three ostrich feathers on it.  Anne felt quite amazed.  Later on, she found out Janet’s motive in so arraying herself—­a motive as old as Eden.

Valley Road prayer-meetings seemed to be essentially feminine.  There were thirty-two women present, two half-grown boys, and one solitary man, beside the minister.  Anne found herself studying this man.  He was not handsome or young or graceful; he had remarkably long legs—­so long that he had to keep them coiled up under his chair to dispose of them—­and he was stoop-shouldered.  His hands were big, his hair wanted barbering, and his moustache was unkempt.  But Anne thought she liked his face; it was kind and honest and tender; there was something else in it, too—­just what, Anne found it hard to define.  She finally concluded that this man had suffered and been strong, and it had been made manifest in his face.  There was a sort of patient, humorous endurance in his expression which indicated that he would go to the stake if need be, but would keep on looking pleasant until he really had to begin squirming.

When prayer-meeting was over this man came up to Janet and said,

“May I see you home, Janet?”

Janet took his arm—­“as primly and shyly as if she were no more than sixteen, having her first escort home,” Anne told the girls at Patty’s Place later on.