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Rh on my head and I was crushed to the very dust.

Another new family besides the Mercers had come to Avonlea in the spring — the Maxwells. There were just Mr. and Mrs. Maxwell; they were a middle-aged couple and very well off. Mr. Maxwell had bought the lumber mills, and they lived up at the old Spencer place which had always been “the” place of Avonlea. They lived quietly, and Mrs. Maxwell hardly ever went anywhere because she was delicate. She was out when I called and I was out when she returned my call, so that I had never met her.

It was the Sewing Circle day again — at Sarah Gardiner’s this time. I was late; everybody else was there when I arrived, and the minute I entered the room I knew something had happened, although I couldn’t imagine what. Everybody looked at me in the strangest way. Of course, Wilhelmina Mercer was the first to set her tongue going.

“Oh, Miss Holmes, have you seen him yet?” she exclaimed.

“Seen whom?” I said non-excitedly, getting out my thimble and patterns.

“Why, Cecil Fenwick. He’s here —in Avonlea — visiting his sister, Mrs. Maxwell.”

I suppose I did what they expected me to do. I dropped everything I held, and Josephine Cameron said afterwards that Charlotte Holmes would never