absence. For one thing, there was a new family in the manse.
And such a family! Miss Cornelia shook her head over them several
times as she walked briskly along.

Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw her coming, as
they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside, enjoying the charm of
the cat's light, the sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among
the twilit maples, and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils
blowing against the old, mellow, red brick wall of the lawn.

Anne was sitting on the steps, her hands clasped over her knee,
looking, in the kind dusk, as girlish as a mother of many has any
right to be; and the beautiful gray-green eyes, gazing down the
harbour road, were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as
ever. Behind her, in the hammock, Rilla Blythe was curled up, a
fat, roly-poly little creature of six years, the youngest of the
Ingleside children. She had curly red hair and hazel eyes that
were now buttoned up after the funny, wrinkled fashion in which
Rilla always went to sleep.

Shirley, "the little brown boy," as he was known in the family
"Who's Who," was asleep in Susan's arms. He was brown-haired,
brown-eyed and brown-skinned, with very rosy cheeks, and he was
Susan's especial love. After his birth Anne had been very ill
for a long time, and Susan "mothered" the baby with a passionate
tenderness which none of the other children, dear as they were to
her, had ever called out. Dr. Blythe had said that but for her
he would never have lived.

"I gave him life just as much as you did, Mrs. Dr. dear," Susan