had.  She was too meek for Norman.  He needed a woman who could stand up to him.  Ellen would have kept him in fine order and he would have liked her all the better for it.  He despised Hester, that is the truth, just because she always gave in to him.  I used to hear him say many a time, long ago when he was a young fellow ’Give me a spunky woman—­spunk for me every time.’  And then he went and married a girl who couldn’t say boo to a goose—­man-like.  That family of Reeses were just vegetables.  They went through the motions of living, but they didn’t live.”

“Russell Reese used his first wife’s wedding-ring to marry his second,” said Susan reminiscently.  “That was too economical in my opinion, Mrs. Dr. dear.  And his brother John has his own tombstone put up in the over-harbour graveyard, with everything on it but the date of death, and he goes and looks at it every Sunday.  Most folks would not consider that much fun, but it is plain he does.  People do have such different ideas of enjoyment.  As for Norman Douglas, he is a perfect heathen.  When the last minister asked him why he never went to church he said “Too many ugly women there, parson—­too many ugly women!” I should like to go to such a man, Mrs. Dr. dear, and say to him solemnly, ’There is a hell!’”

“Oh, Norman doesn’t believe there is such a place,” said Miss Cornelia.  “I hope he’ll find out his mistake when he comes to die.  There, Mary, you’ve knit your three inches and you can go and play with the children for half an hour.”

Mary needed no second bidding.  She flew to Rainbow Valley with a heart as light as her heels, and in the course of conversation told Faith Meredith all about Mrs. Alec Davis.

“And Mrs. Elliott says that she’ll turn all the Douglases against your father and then he’ll have to leave the Glen because his salary won’t be paid,” concluded Mary. “I don’t know what is to be done, honest to goodness.  If only old Norman Douglas would come back to church and pay, it wouldn’t be so bad.  But he won’t—­and the Douglases will leave—­and you all will have to go.”

Faith carried a heavy heart to bed with her that night.  The thought of leaving the Glen was unbearable.  Nowhere else in the world were there such chums as the Blythes.  Her little heart had been wrung when they had left Maywater—­she had shed many bitter tears when she parted with Maywater chums and the old manse there where her mother had lived and died.  She could not contemplate calmly the thought of such another and harder wrench.  She couldn’t leave Glen St. Mary and dear Rainbow Valley and that delicious graveyard.

“It’s awful to be minister’s family,” groaned Faith into her pillow.  “Just as soon as you get fond of a place you are torn up by the roots.  I’ll never, never, never marry a minister, no matter how nice he is.”