“I can’t picture you as being unforgiving for long,” said Stella.

“Oh, I used to be.  But holding spite doesn’t seem worth while when you get along in years.”

“That reminds me,” said Anne, and told the tale of John and Janet.

“And now tell us about that romantic scene you hinted so darkly at in one of your letters,” demanded Phil.

Anne acted out Samuel’s proposal with great spirit.  The girls shrieked with laughter and Aunt Jamesina smiled.

“It isn’t in good taste to make fun of your beaux,” she said severely; “but,” she added calmly, “I always did it myself.”

“Tell us about your beaux, Aunty,” entreated Phil.  “You must have had any number of them.”

“They’re not in the past tense,” retorted Aunt Jamesina.  “I’ve got them yet.  There are three old widowers at home who have been casting sheep’s eyes at me for some time.  You children needn’t think you own all the romance in the world.”

“Widowers and sheep’s eyes don’t sound very romantic, Aunty.”

“Well, no; but young folks aren’t always romantic either.  Some of my beaux certainly weren’t.  I used to laugh at them scandalous, poor boys.  There was Jim Elwood—­he was always in a sort of day-dream—­never seemed to sense what was going on.  He didn’t wake up to the fact that I’d said ‘no’ till a year after I’d said it.  When he did get married his wife fell out of the sleigh one night when they were driving home from church and he never missed her.  Then there was Dan Winston.  He knew too much.  He knew everything in this world and most of what is in the next.  He could give you an answer to any question, even if you asked him when the Judgment Day was to be.  Milton Edwards was real nice and I liked him but I didn’t marry him.  For one thing, he took a week to get a joke through his head, and for another he never asked me.  Horatio Reeve was the most interesting beau I ever had.  But when he told a story he dressed it up so that you couldn’t see it for frills.  I never could decide whether he was lying or just letting his imagination run loose.”

“And what about the others, Aunty?”

“Go away and unpack,” said Aunt Jamesina, waving Joseph at them by mistake for a needle.  “The others were too nice to make fun of.  I shall respect their memory.  There’s a box of flowers in your room, Anne.  They came about an hour ago.”

After the first week the girls of Patty’s Place settled down to a steady grind of study; for this was their last year at Redmond and graduation honors must be fought for persistently.  Anne devoted herself to English, Priscilla pored over classics, and Philippa pounded away at Mathematics.  Sometimes they grew tired, sometimes they felt discouraged, sometimes nothing seemed worth the struggle for it.  In one such mood Stella wandered up to the blue room one rainy November evening.  Anne sat on the floor in a little circle of light cast by the lamp beside her, amid a surrounding snow of crumpled manuscript.