Chronicles of Avonlea | Page 9

of silk dresses which had belonged to her mother. She wore
them morning, noon, and night, and Spencervale people considered it
an additional evidence of her pride. As for the fashion of them, it was,
of course, just because she was too mean to have them made over. They
did not dream that the Old Lady never put on one of the silk dresses
without agonizing over its unfashionableness, and that even the eyes of
Crooked Jack cast on her antique flounces and overskirts was almost
more than her feminine vanity could endure.
In spite of the fact that the Old Lady had not welcomed the new day, its
beauty charmed her when she went out for a walk after her dinner--or,
rather, after her mid-day biscuit. It was so fresh, so sweet, so virgin;
and the spruce woods around the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy
spring doings and all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows.
Some of their delight found its way into the Old Lady's bitter heart as
she wandered through them, and when she came out at the little plank
bridge over the brook down under the beeches, she felt almost gentle
and tender once more. There was one big beech there, in particular,
which the Old Lady loved for reasons best known to herself--a great,
tall beech with a trunk like the shaft of a gray marble column and a
leafy spread of branches over the still, golden-brown pool made

beneath it by the brook. It had been a young sapling in the days that
were haloed by the vanished glory of the Old Lady's life.
The Old Lady heard childish voices and laughter afar up the lane which
led to William Spencer's place just above the woods. William Spencer's
front lane ran out to the main road in a different direction, but this
"back lane" furnished a short cut and his children always went to
school that way.
The Old Lady shrank hastily back behind a clump of young spruces.
She did not like the Spencer children because they always seemed so
afraid of her. Through the spruce screen she could see them coming
gaily down the lane--the two older ones in front, the twins behind,
clinging to the hands of a tall, slim, young girl-- the new music teacher,
probably. The Old Lady had heard from the egg pedlar that she was
going to board at William Spencer's, but she had not heard her name.
She looked at her with some curiosity as they drew near--and then, all
at once, the Old Lady's heart gave a great bound and began to beat as it
had not beaten for years, while her breath came quickly and she
trembled violently. Who--WHO could this girl be?
Under the new music teacher's straw hat were masses of fine chestnut
hair of the very shade and wave that the Old Lady remembered on
another head in vanished years; from under those waves looked large,
violet-blue eyes with very black lashes and brows--and the Old Lady
knew those eyes as well as she knew her own; and the new music
teacher's face, with all its beauty of delicate outline and dainty
colouring and glad, buoyant youth, was a face from the Old Lady's
past--a perfect resemblance in every respect save one; the face which
the Old Lady remembered had been weak, with all its charm; but this
girl's face possessed a fine, dominant strength compact of sweetness
and womanliness. As she passed by the Old Lady's hiding place she
laughed at something one of the children said; and oh, but the Old Lady
knew that laughter well. She had heard it before under that very beech
tree.
She watched them until they disappeared over the wooded hill beyond

the bridge; and then she went back home as if she walked in a dream.
Crooked Jack was delving vigorously in the garden; ordinarily the Old
Lady did not talk much with Crooked Jack, for she disliked his
weakness for gossip; but now she went into the garden, a stately old
figure in her purple, gold-spotted silk, with the sunshine gleaming on
her white hair.
Crooked Jack had seen her go out and had remarked to himself that the
Old Lady was losing ground; she was pale and peaked-looking. He now
concluded that he had been mistaken. The Old Lady's cheeks were pink
and her eyes shining. Somewhere in her walk she had shed ten years at
least. Crooked Jack leaned on his spade and decided that there weren't
many finer looking women anywhere than Old Lady Lloyd. Pity she
was such an old miser!
"Mr. Spencer," said the Old Lady graciously--she always spoke very
graciously to her inferiors when she talked to them at all--"can you tell
me the name