that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's
all-seeing eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The
sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard
on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-
white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Thomas Lynde--
a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel
Lynde's husband"--was sowing his late turnip seed on the
hill field beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to
have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by
Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew that he ought because she
had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening before in
William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to
sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of
course, for Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to
volunteer information about anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three
on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the
hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collar and
his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was
going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare,
which betokened that he was going a considerable distance.
Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel,
deftly putting this and that together, might have given a
pretty good guess as to both questions. But Matthew so
rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and