`` It has cost me more than that , '' I said , as I turned to the stairway . Max held me back for an instant , while Ismay and Fatima pattered down . `` Do you think it has cost too much , Sue ? '' he whispered . I looked at him sideways . He was really a dear . Niceness fairly exhaled from him . `` No-o-o , '' I said , `` but when we are married you will have to take care of Fatima , I wo n't . '' `` Dear Fatima , '' said Max gratefully . II . THE MATERALIZING OF CECIL It had never worried me in the least that I was n't married , although everybody in Avonlea pitied old maids ; but it DID worry me , and I frankly confess it , that I had never had a chance to be . Even Nancy , my old nurse and servant , knew that , and pitied me for it . Nancy is an old maid herself , but she has had two proposals . She did not accept either of them because one was a widower with seven children , and the other a very shiftless , good-for-nothing fellow ; but , if anybody twitted Nancy on her single condition , she could point triumphantly to those two as evidence that `` she could an she would . '' If I had not lived all my life in Avonlea I might have had the benefit of the doubt ; but I had , and everybody knew everything about me -- or thought they did . I had really often wondered why nobody had ever fallen in love with me . I was not at all homely ; indeed , years ago , George Adoniram Maybrick had written a poem addressed to me , in which he praised my beauty quite extravagantly ; that did n't mean anything because George Adoniram wrote poetry to all the good-looking girls and never went with anybody but Flora King , who was cross-eyed and red-haired , but it proves that it was not my appearance that put me out of the running . Neither was it the fact that I wrote poetry myself -- although not of George Adoniram 's kind -- because nobody ever knew that . When I felt it coming on I shut myself up in my room and wrote it out in a little blank book I kept locked up . It is nearly full now , because I have been writing poetry all my life .
It is the only thing I have ever been able to keep a secret from XXXXX .
Adoniram Avonlea Fatima II Ismay King Max Maybrick Nancy Niceness