It was two o’clock before the tired girls finished the two rooms.  They got a dreary bite in the kitchen and intended to wash the dishes at once.  But Faith happened to pick up a new story-book Di Blythe had lent her and was lost to the world until sunset.  Una took a cup of rank tea up to Carl but found him asleep; so she curled herself up on Jerry’s bed and went to sleep too.  Meanwhile, a weird story flew through Glen St. Mary and folks asked each other seriously what was to be done with those manse youngsters.

“That is past laughing at, believe me,” said Miss Cornelia to her husband, with a heavy sigh.  “I couldn’t believe it at first.  Miranda Drew brought the story home from the Methodist Sunday School this afternoon and I simply scoffed at it.  But Mrs. Elder Abraham says she and the Elder saw it with their own eyes.”

“Saw what?” asked Marshall.

“Faith and Una Meredith stayed home from Sunday School this morning and cleaned house,” said Miss Cornelia, in accents of despair.  “When Elder Abraham went home from the church—­he had stayed behind to straighten out the library books—­he saw them shaking rugs in the Methodist graveyard.  I can never look a Methodist in the face again.  Just think what a scandal it will make!”

A scandal it assuredly did make, growing more scandalous as it spread, until the over-harbour people heard that the manse children had not only cleaned house and put out a washing on Sunday, but had wound up with an afternoon picnic in the graveyard while the Methodist Sunday School was going on.  The only household which remained in blissful ignorance of the terrible thing was the manse itself; on what Faith and Una fondly believed to be Tuesday it rained again; for the next three days it rained; nobody came near the manse; the manse folk went nowhere; they might have waded through the misty Rainbow Valley up to Ingleside, but all the Blythe family, save Susan and the doctor, were away on a visit to Avonlea.

“This is the last of our bread,” said Faith, “and the ditto is done.  If Aunt Martha doesn’t get better soon what will we do?”

“We can buy some bread in the village and there’s the codfish Mary dried,” said Una.  “But we don’t know how to cook it.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” laughed Faith.  “You just boil it.”

Boil it they did; but as it did not occur to them to soak it beforehand it was too salty to eat.  That night they were very hungry; but by the following day their troubles were over.  Sunshine returned to the world; Carl was well and Aunt Martha’s misery left her as suddenly as it had come; the butcher called at the manse and chased famine away.  To crown all, the Blythes returned home, and that evening they and the manse children and Mary Vance kept sunset tryst once more in Rainbow Valley, where the daisies were floating upon the grass like spirits of the dew and the bells on the Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the scented twilight.