Page:Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920).djvu/211

Rh “I couldn’t prevent him. Say what I could, he would go. He laughed when I spoke of danger. Oh, he’s changed from what he was! I know who has wrought the change, and I hate her for it!”

Carl shrugged his fat shoulders. He knew quite well that Thyra was at the bottom of the sudden coldness between Chester Carewe and Damarts Garland, about which Avonlea gossip was busying itself. He pitied Thyra, too. She had aged rapidly the past month.

“You're too hard on Chester, Thyra. He’s out of leading-strings now, or should be. You must just let me take an old friend’s privilege, and tell you that you're taking the wrong way with him. You're too jealous and exacting, Thyra.”

“You don't know anything about it. You have never had a son,” said Thyra, cruelly enough, for she knew that Carl’s sonlessness was a rankling thorn in his mind. “You don’t know what it is to pour out your love on one human being, and haveu it flung back in your face!”

Carl could not cope with Thyra’s moods. He had never understood her, even in youth. Now he went home, still shrugging his shoulders, and thinking that it was a good thing Thyra had not looked on him with favor in the old days. Cynthia was much easier to get along with.

More than Thyra looked anxiously to sea and