butcher’s shop and chased them through the village. Nobody has molested Monday since.
“Kenneth Ford has gone back to Toronto. He came up two evenings ago to say good-bye. I wasn’t home—some clothes had to be made for the baby and Mrs. Meredith offered to help me, so I was over at the manse, and I didn’t see Kenneth. Not that it matters; he told Nan to say good-bye to Spider for him and tell me not to forget him wholly in my absorbing maternal duties. If he could leave such a frivolous, insulting message as that for me it shows plainly that our beautiful hour on the sandshore meant nothing to him and I am not going to think about him or it again.
“Fred Arnold was at the manse and walked home with me. He is the new Methodist minister’s son and very nice and clever, and would be quite handsome if it were not for his nose. It is a really dreadful nose. When he talks of common-place things it does not matter so much, but when he talks of poetry and ideals the contrast between his nose and his conversation is too much for me and I want to shriek with laughter. It is really not fair, because everything he said was perfectly charming and if somebody like Kenneth had said it I would have been enraptured. When I listened to him with my eyes cast down I was quite fascinated; but as soon as I looked up and saw his nose the spell was broken. He wants to enlist, too, but can’t because he is only seventeen. Mrs. Elliott met us as we were walking through the village and could not have looked more horrified if she had caught me walking with the Kaiser himself. Mrs. Elliott detests the Methodists and all their works. Father says it is an obsession with her.”
