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 strong, and it had been made manifest in his face. There was a sort of patient, humorous endurance in his expression which indicated that he would go to the stake if need be, but would keep on looking pleasant until he really had to begin squirming.

When prayer-meeting was over this man came up to Janet and said,

“May I see you home, Janet?”

Janet took his arm—”as primly and shyly as if she were no more than sixteen, having her first escort home,” Anne told the girls at Patty’s Place later on.

“Miss Shirley, permit me to introduce Mr. Douglas,” she said stiffly.

Mr. Douglas nodded and said, “I was looking at you in prayer-meeting, miss, and thinking what a nice little girl you were.”

Such a speech from ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have annoyed Anne bitterly; but the way in which Mr. Douglas said it made her feel that she had received a very real and pleasing compliment. She smiled appreciatively at him and dropped obligingly behind on the moonlit road.

So Janet had a beau! Anne was delighted. Janet would make a paragon of a wife—cheery, economical, tolerant, and a very queen of cooks. It would be a flagrant waste on Nature’s part to keep her a permanent old maid.

“John Douglas asked me to take you up to see his mother,” said Janet the next day. “She’s bed-rid a lot of the time and never goes out of the house. But