one son, whom she worshipped; "she never wanted a daughter, but
she pitied and despised all sonless women." She demanded
absolute obedience from Chester--not only obedience, but also
utter affection, and she hated his dog because the boy loved him:
"She could not share her love even with a dumb brute." When
Chester falls in love, she is relentless toward the beautiful
young girl and forces Chester to give her up. But a terrible
sorrow brings the old woman and the young girl into sympathy, and
unspeakable joy is born of the trial.

Happiness also comes to "The Brother who Failed." The Monroes
had all been successful in the eyes of the world except Robert:
one is a millionaire, another a college president, another a
famous singer. Robert overhears the old aunt, Isabel, call him a
total failure, but, at the family dinner, one after another
stands up and tells how Robert's quiet influence and unselfish
aid had started them in their brilliant careers, and the old
aunt, wiping the tears from her eyes, exclaims: "I guess there's
a kind of failure that's the best success."

In one story there is an element of the supernatural, when
Hester, the hard older sister, comes between Margaret and her
lover and, dying, makes her promise never to become Hugh Blair's
wife, but she comes back and unites them. In this, Margaret,
just like the delightful Anne, lives up to the dictum that
"nothing matters in all God's universe except love." The story
of the revival at Avonlea has also a good moral.

There is something in these continued Chronicles of Avonlea,
like the delicate art which has made "Cranford" a classic: the