Chapter XXI - Page 2

do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally lovely
wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Lynde says the
minister's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because
she dresses so fashionably. Our new minister's wife was dressed in
blue muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses.
Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a
minister's wife, but I didn't make any such uncharitable remark,
Marilla, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves.
Besides, she's only been a minister's wife for a little while,
so one should make allowances, shouldn't they? They are going
to board with Mrs. Lynde until the manse is ready."

If Marilla, in going down to Mrs. Lynde's that evening, was
actuated by any motive save her avowed one of returning the
quilting frames she had borrowed the preceding winter, it was an
amiable weakness shared by most of the Avonlea people. Many a
thing Mrs. Lynde had lent, sometimes never expecting to see it
again, came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof.
A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful
object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement where
sensations were few and far between.

Old Mr. Bentley, the minister whom Anne had found lacking in
imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He
was a widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite
the fact that gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the
other one, every year of his sojourn. In the preceding February
he had resigned his charge and departed amid the regrets of his
people, most of whom had the affection born of long intercourse for
their good old minister in spite of his shortcomings as an orator.
Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a variety of religious
dissipation in listening to the many and various candidates and
"supplies" who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on trial.
These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers
in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly
in the corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about
them and discussed the same in full with Matthew, Marilla always
declining from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.

"I don't think Mr. Smith would have done, Matthew" was Anne's
final summing up. "Mrs. Lynde says his delivery was so poor,
but I think his worst fault was just like Mr. Bentley's--he had
no imagination. And Mr. Terry had too much; he let it run away
with him just as I did mine in the matter of the Haunted Wood.
Besides, Mrs. Lynde says his theology wasn't sound. Mr. Gresham
was a very good man and a very religious man, but he told too
many funny stories and