holds his horse's bridle while he goes in to see his patients, and is
ready with merry talk or serious questions when he reappears. And one
dark night she listens from her window to the demand of a messenger,
and softly creeps down stairs and is ready to take her place by his
side, and drive him across the hills as if it were the best fun in the
world, with the frightened country-boy clattering behind on his
bare-backed steed. The moon rises late and they come home just before
daybreak, and though the doctor tries to be stern as he says he cannot
have such a piece of mischief happen again, he wonders how the girl
knew that he had dreaded for once in his life the drive in the dark,
and had felt a little less strong than usual.

Marilla still reigns in noble state. She has some time ago accepted a
colleague after a preliminary show of resentment, and Nan has little
by little infused a different spirit into the housekeeping; and when
her friends come to pay visits in the vacations they find the old home
a very charming place, and fall quite in love with both the doctor and
Mrs. Graham before they go away. Marilla always kept the large east
parlor for a sacred shrine of society, to be visited chiefly by
herself as guardian priestess; but Nan has made it a pleasanter room
than anybody ever imagined possible, and uses it with a freedom which
appears to the old housekeeper to lack consideration and respect. Nan
makes the most of her vacations, while the neighbors are all glad to
see her come back, and some of them are much amused because in summer
she still clings to her childish impatience at wearing any head
covering, and no matter how much Marilla admires the hat which is
decorously worn to church every Sunday morning, it is hardly seen
again, except by chance, during the week, and the brown hair is sure
to be faded a little before the summer sunshine is past. Nan goes
about visiting when she feels inclined, and seems surprisingly