`` Things have all ` gone catawampus , ' as Susan says , with me this week . Part of it was my own fault and part of it was n't , and I seem to be equally unhappy over both parts . `` I went to town the other day to buy a new winter hat . It was the first time nobody insisted on coming with me to help me select it , and I felt that mother had really given up thinking of me as a child . And I found the dearest hat -- it was simply bewitching . It was a velvet hat , of the very shade of rich green that was made for me . It just goes with my hair and complexion beautifully , bringing out the red-brown shades and what Miss Oliver calls my ` creaminess ' so well . Only once before in my life have I come across that precise shade of green . When I was twelve I had a little beaver hat of it , and all the girls in school were wild over it . Well , as soon as I saw this hat I felt that I simply must have it -- and have it I did . The price was dreadful . I will not put it down here because I do n't want my descendants to know I was guilty of paying so much for a hat , in war-time , too , when everybody is -- or should be -- trying to be economical . `` When I got home and tried on the hat again in my room I was assailed by qualms . Of course , it was very becoming ; but somehow it seemed too elaborate and fussy for church going and our quiet little doings in the Glen -- too conspicuous , in short . It had n't seemed so at the milliner 's but here in my little white room it did . And that dreadful price tag ! And the starving Belgians ! When mother saw the hat and the tag she just looked at me . Mother is some expert at looking . Father says she looked him into love with her years ago in Avonlea school and I can well believe it -- though I have heard a weird tale of her banging him over the head with a slate at the very beginning of their acquaintance .
XXXXX was a limb when she was a little girl , I understand , and even up to the time when Jem went away she was full of ginger .
Avonlea Belgians Father Mother Oliver Susan catawampus creaminess first milliner