Jem Blythe had slipped into the graveyard and sat down beside the
girls. He had been prowling about Rainbow Valley and had
succeeded in finding the first little star-white cluster of
arbutus for his mother. The manse children were rather silent
after his coming. Jem was beginning to grow away from them
somewhat this spring. He was studying for the entrance
examination of Queen's Academy and stayed after school with the
older pupils for extra lessons. Also, his evenings were so full
of work that he seldom joined the others in Rainbow Valley now.
He seemed to be drifting away into grown-up land.

"What is the matter with you all to-night?" he asked. "There's
no fun in you."

"Not much," agreed Faith dolefully. "There wouldn't be much fun
in you either if YOU knew you were disgracing your father and
making people talk about you."

"Who's been talking about you now?"

"Everybody--so Mary Vance says." And Faith poured out her
troubles to sympathetic Jem. "You see," she concluded dolefully,
"we've nobody to bring us up. And so we get into scrapes and
people think we're bad."

"Why don't you bring yourselves up?" suggested Jem. "I'll tell
you what to do. Form a Good-Conduct Club and punish yourselves
every time you do anything that's not right."