often. Mrs. Rachel, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon's
enjoyment was spoiled.
"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla
where he's gone and why," the worthy woman finally concluded. "He
doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he NEVER visits; if he'd
run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more;
he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have
happened since last night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what,
and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has
taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea today."
Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the big,
rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a scant quarter
of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it
a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as shy and silent as his son
after him, had got a
