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By Root 475 0

getting old, Cornelia,” he said, “and I’ve no chick or child of my own. Leslie won’t take a gift from a living man, but mebbe she will from a dead one.” So it will be all right as far as that goes. I wish everything else might be settled as satisfactorily. As for that wretch of a Dick, he’s been awful these last few days. The devil was in him, believe me! Leslie and I couldn’t get on with our work for the tricks he’d play. He chased all her ducks one day around the yard till most of them died. And not one thing would he do for us. Sometimes, you know, he’ll make himself quite handy, bringing in pails of water and wood. But this week if we sent him to the well he’d try to climb down into it. I thought once, “If you’d only shoot down there headfirst everything would be nicely settled.”’

‘Oh, Miss Cornelia!’

‘Now, you needn’t Miss Cornelia me, Anne, dearie. Anybody would have thought the same. If the Montreal doctors can make a rational creature out of Dick Moore they’re wonders.’

Leslie took Dick to Montreal early in May. Gilbert went with her, to help her and make the necessary arrangements for her. He came home with the report that the Montreal surgeon whom they had consulted agreed with him that there was a good chance of Dick’s restoration.

‘Very comforting,’ was Miss Cornelia’s sarcastic comment.

Anne only sighed. Leslie had been very distant at their parting. But she had promised to write. Ten days after Gilbert’s return the letter came. Leslie wrote that the operation had been successfully performed and that Dick was making a good recovery.

‘What does she mean by “successfully”?’ asked Anne. ‘Does she mean that Dick’s memory is really restored?’

‘Not likely – since she says nothing of it,’ said Gilbert. ‘She uses the word “successfully” from the surgeon’s point of view. The operation has been performed and followed by normal results. But it is too soon to know whether Dick’s faculties will be eventually restored, wholly or in part. His memory would not be likely to return to him all at once. The process will be gradual, if it occurs at all. Is that all she says?’

‘Yes – there’s her letter. It’s very short. Poor girl, she must be under a terrible strain. Gilbert Blythe, there are heaps of things I long to say to you, only it would be mean.’

‘Miss Cornelia says them for you,’ said Gilbert with a rueful smile. ‘She combs me down every time I encounter her. She makes it plain to me that she regards me as little better than a murderer, and that she thinks it a great pity that Dr Dave ever let me step into his shoes. She even told me that the Methodist doctor over the harbour was to be preferred before me. With Miss Cornelia the force of condemnation can no farther go.’

‘If Cornelia Bryant was sick it would not be Doctor Dave or the Methodist doctor she would send for,’ sniffed Susan. ‘She would have you out of your hard-earned bed in the middle of the night, doctor, dear, if she took a spell of misery, that she would. And then she would likely say your bill was past all reason. But do not mind her, doctor, dear. It takes all kinds of people to make a world.’

No further word came from Leslie for some time. The May days crept away in a sweet succession and the shores of Four Winds Harbour greened and bloomed and purpled. One day in late May, Gilbert came home to be met by Susan in the stable-yard.

‘I am afraid something has upset Mrs Doctor, doctor, dear,’ she said mysteriously. ‘She got a letter this afternoon and since then she has just been walking round the garden and talking to herself. You know it is not good for her to be on her feet so much, doctor, dear. She did not see fit to tell me what her news was, and I am no pry, doctor, dear, and never was, but it is plain something has upset her. And it is not good for her to be upset.’

Gilbert hurried rather anxiously to the garden. Had anything happened at Green Gables? But Anne, sitting on the rustic seat by the brook, did not look troubled, though she was certainly much excited. Her eyes were their greyest, and scarlet spots burned on her cheeks.

‘What has