Read Online Anne of Windy Willows by Lucy Maud Montgomery - Free Book Online

as many as ours,’ said Miss Valentine jealously. ‘We’re
very
consumptive. Most of us died of a cough. This is Aunt Cora’s grave. She was a great beauty. A minister we had in Summerside then told her that just to see her made a poem of his day. That was a pretty speech, wasn’t it? Though I never felt it was just the thing for a minister to say. Aunt Cora married a Yankee and lived all her life in Boston, but when she come back to the Island for a visit and saw this old graveyard she turned and said to her husband, “You can bury me here, Thomas.” So he did – not immediately, of course, but three years later, when she died… This is my Aunt Bessie’s grave. She was a saint if ever there was one. But there’s no doubt her sister, Aunt Cecilia, was the more interesting to talk to. The last time I ever saw her she said to me, “Sit down, my dear, sit down. I’m going to die tonight at ten minutes past eleven, but that’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a real good gossip for the last.” The strange thing, Miss Shirley, is that she did die that night at ten minutes past eleven. Can you tell me how she knew it?’
    Anne couldn’t.
    ‘My great-great-grandfather Courtaloe is buried
here
. He came out in 1760, and he made spinning-wheels for a living. I’ve heard he made fourteen hundred in the course of his life. When he died the minister preached from the text, “Their works do follow them,” and old Myrom Pringle said in that case the road to heaven behind my great-great-grandfather would be choked with spinning-wheels. Do you think such a remark was in good taste, Miss Shirley?’
    Had anyone but a Pringle said it Anne might not have remarked so decidedly, ‘I certainly do not,’ looking at a gravestone adorned with a skull and crossbones, as if she questioned the good taste of that also.
    ‘Here is Uncle Jack’s grave. He was sort of absent-minded, so he married the wrong woman; but he never let her guess it. He was very gentlemanly… The man in this grave was my Cousin Dora’s first husband’s brother’s first wife’s first husband. I don’t know how he came to be buried in
our
plot, I’m sure.’
    Miss Valentine stooped to pull some weeds away from her absent-minded uncle’s grave, and Anne utilized the blank space in recovering from her dizziness over such a genealogical tangle.
    ‘My Cousin Dora is buried
here
. She had three husbands, but they all died very rapidly. Poor Dora didn’t seem to have any luck picking a healthy man. Her last one was Benjamin Banning –
not
buried here; buried in Lowvale beside
his
first wife – and he wasn’t reconciled to dying. Dora told him he was going to a better world. “Mebbe, mebbe,” says poor Ben, “but I’m sorter used to the imperfections of this one.” He took sixty-one different kinds of medicine, but in spite of that he lingered for a good while. All Uncle David Courtaloe’s family are
here
. There’s a cabbage-rose planted at the foot of every grave, and, my, don’t they bloom! I come here every summer and gather them for my rose jar. It would be a pity to let them go to waste, don’t you think?’
    ‘I – I suppose so.’
    ‘My poor young sister Harriet lies
here
,’ sighed Miss Valentine. ‘She had magnificent hair – about the colour of yours. Not so red, perhaps. It reached to her knees. She was engaged when she died. They tell me you’re engaged. I never much wanted to be married, but I think it would have been nice to be engaged. Oh, I’ve had some chances of course. Perhaps I was too fastidious. But a Courtaloe couldn’t marry
everybody
, could she?’
    It did not seem likely she could.
    ‘Frank Digby – over in that corner under the sumachs – wanted me. I
did
feel a little regretful over refusing him; but a Digby, my dear! He married Georgina Troop. She always went to church a little late to show off her clothes. My, she was fond of clothes! She was buried in such a pretty blue dress. I made it for her to