unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive
and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place
where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a
white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that
didn't happen 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 as far away as he
possibly could from his fellow men without actually
retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead.
Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared
land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the
main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so
sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in