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Lavendar, "you may tell me anything I ought to know about Mrs. Richie." The doctor looked at him with a start, and a half-spoken question. "Yes; she told me. But I want to ask you about the man. She didn't say much about him." This was Sunday evening; David had gone to bed, and Danny had climbed up into Dr. Lavendar's chair, and been gently deposited on the hearth- rug.
It was so disappointing to meet someone who ought to be a hero and find him bald or stooped, or otherwise lacking in manly beauty. Anne would have thought it dreadful if the object of Miss Lavendar's romance had not looked the part. "So this is my little son's 'beautiful teacher, of whom I have heard so much," said Mr. Irving with a hearty handshake.
But alas, the morning did look unpropitious. Below the window Miss Lavendar's garden, which should have been a glory of pale virgin sunshine, lay dim and windless; and the sky over the firs was dark with moody clouds. "Isn't it too mean!" said Diana. "We must hope for the best," said Anne determinedly.
Lavendar and Danny, awaiting his pleasure, could hear a murmur of voices from the depths of the eccentric vehicle which put up a hood on such a day; when suddenly Dr. Lavendar's eye fell on the hind legs of the other horse. "That's Cipher's trotter," he said to himself, and leaning out, cried: "Hi! Cy?"
Lavendar's humming broke out into singing; he sang scraps of songs and hymns, and teased David about being sleepy. "I believe he's lost his tongue, Jonas; he hasn't said boo! since we left Mercer. I suppose he won't have a thing to tell Mrs. Richie, not a thing!" "Well, now, there!" said Jonas, "her George gimme a letter for you, and I'll be kicked if I ain't forgot it!"
Yet to-day, her anger had been stirred by an incident so small that its very triviality annoyed her pride. It was Mark Lavendar's custom, when his visits to Stoke Revel included a Sunday, cheerfully to evade church-going. His Sundays in the country were few, he said, and he preferred to enjoy them in the temple of nature, generally taking a long walk before lunch.
I can smell it now! that I am glad to be the first to send you pleasant news. "Sincerely yours, "ROBINETTA LORING." Lavendar's blunt refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical.
Lavendar's side to reach up and whisper in his ear, oh, if he would but put his cheek against hers, and whisper in her ear! The result of that secret colloquy was that David knelt down in front of the dining-room fire, and made a slice of smoky toast for Dr. Lavendar. "After supper you might roast an apple for Mrs. Richie," the old minister suggested. And David's eyes shone with silent joy.
"When's the wedding to be?" she asked after a pause. "The last Wednesday in August. They are to be married in the garden under the honeysuckle trellis . . . the very spot where Mr. Irving proposed to her twenty-five years ago. Marilla, that IS romantic, even in prose. There's to be nobody there except Mrs. Irving and Paul and Gilbert and Diana and I, and Miss Lavendar's cousins.
"Won't you come again to see me?" pleaded Miss Lavendar. Tall Anne put her arm about the little lady. "Indeed we shall," she promised. "Now that we have discovered you we'll wear out our welcome coming to see you. Yes, we must go . . . 'we must tear ourselves away, as Paul Irving says every time he comes to Green Gables." "Paul Irving?" There was a subtle change in Miss Lavendar's voice.
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