Anne of Green Gables

Description

MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a littlehollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had itssource away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool andcascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted littlestream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde's door without due regardfor decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at herwindow, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, andthat if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferretedout the whys and wherefores thereof.There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to theirneighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of thosecapable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into thebargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she "ran"the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the ChurchAid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundanttime to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting "cotton warp" quilts-she had knittedsixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices-and keeping asharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hillbeyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St.Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to passover that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's all-seeing eye.