"I feel like one," I said laughing; and I ran to my room and did
what I had never done before--wrote a second poem in the same
day. I had to have some outlet for my feelings. I called it "In
Summer Days of Long Ago," and I worked Mary Gillespie's roses and
Cecil Fenwick's eyes into it, and made it so sad and reminiscent
and minor-musicky that I felt perfectly happy.

For the next two months all went well and merrily. Nobody ever
said anything more to me about Cecil Fenwick, but the girls all
chattered freely to me of their little love affairs, and I became
a sort of general confidant for them. It just warmed up the
cockles of my heart, and I began to enjoy the Sewing Circle
famously. I got a lot of pretty new dresses and the dearest hat,
and I went everywhere I was asked and had a good time.

But there is one thing you can be perfectly sure of. If you do
wrong you are going to be punished for it sometime, somehow and
somewhere. My punishment was delayed for two months, and then it
descended 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