`` Well , yes , I know it . I reckon I 'm the only person living in Four Winds now that can remember the schoolmaster 's bride as she was when she come to the Island . She 's been dead this thirty year , but she was one of them women you never forget . '' `` Tell us the story , '' pleaded Anne . `` I want to find out all about the women who have lived in this house before me . '' `` Well , there 's jest been three -- Elizabeth Russell , and Mrs. Ned Russell , and the schoolmaster 's bride . Elizabeth Russell was a nice , clever little critter , and Mrs. Ned was a nice woman , too . But they were n't ever like the schoolmaster 's bride . `` The schoolmaster 's name was John Selwyn . He came out from the Old Country to teach school at the Glen when I was a boy of sixteen . He was n't much like the usual run of derelicts who used to come out to P.E.I. to teach school in them days . Most of them were clever , drunken critters who taught the children the three R 's when they were sober , and lambasted them when they was n't . But John Selwyn was a fine , handsome young fellow . He boarded at my father 's , and he and me were cronies , though he was ten years older 'n me . We read and walked and talked a heap together . He knew about all the poetry that was ever written , I reckon , and he used to quote it to me along shore in the evenings . Dad thought it an awful waste of time , but he sorter endured it , hoping it 'd put me off the notion of going to sea . Well , nothing could do THAT -- mother come of a race of sea-going folk and it was born in me . But I loved to hear John read and recite . It 's almost sixty years ago , but I could repeat yards of poetry I learned from him .
Nearly sixty XXXXX ! ''
Anne Glen Ned P.E.I. Russell Winds days evenings sorter years