This page has been validated.
AN AVONLEA SCANDAL
 

woman like her and an old fellow like me. I tell you I thought at first I was in luck. Well, we were married and took a little wedding trip to St. John for a fortnight and then we went home. We got home at ten o’clock at night, and I give you my word, Anne, that in half an hour that woman was at work housecleaning. Oh, I know you’re thinking my house needed it . . . you’ve got a very expressive face, Anne; your thoughts just come out on it like print . . . but it didn’t, not that bad. It had got pretty mixed up while I was keeping bachelor’s hall, I admit, but I’d got a woman to come in and clean it up before I was married and there’d been considerable painting and fixing done. I tell you if you took Emily into a brand new white marble palace she’d be into the scrubbing as soon as she could get an old dress on. Well, she cleaned house till one o’clock that night and at four she was up and at it again. And she kept on that way . . . far’s I could see she never stopped. It was scour and sweep and dust everlasting, except on Sundays, and then she was just longing for Monday to begin again. But it was her way of amusing herself and I could have reconciled myself to it if she’d left me alone. But that she wouldn’t do. She’d set out to make me over but she hadn’t caught me young enough. I wasn’t allowed to come into the house unless I changed my boots for slippers at the door. I darsn’t smoke a pipe for my life unless I went to the barn. And I didn’t use good enough grammar. Emily’d been a schoolteacher in her early

293