Anne thought that nobody could quilt like me . I was as tickled as a girl at the thought of visiting with Anne for two weeks , but I never went ; things happened before August . I do n't know rightly how the trouble began . Other folks -- jealous folks -- made mischief . Anne was thirty miles away and Gilbert could n't see her every day to keep matters clear and fair . Besides , as I 've said , they were both proud and high-sperrited . The upshot of it was they had a terrible quarrel and the engagement was broken . When two people do n't care overly much for each other , Nora May , a quarrel never amounts to much between them , and it 's soon made up . But when they love each other better than life it cuts so deep and hurts so much that nine times out of ten they wo n't ever forgive each other . The more you love anybody , Nora May , the more he can hurt you . To be sure , you 're too young to be thinking of such things . It all came like a thunderclap on Gil 's friends here at Greendale , because we had n't ever suspected things were going wrong . The first thing we knew was that Anne had gone up west to teach school again at St. Mary 's , eighty miles away , and Gilbert , he went out to Manitoba on a harvest excursion and stayed there . It just about broke his parents ' hearts . He was their only child and they just worshipped him . Gil and Anne both wrote to me off and on , but never a word , not so much as a name , did they say of each other . I 'd ` a ' writ and asked 'em the rights of the fuss if I could , in hopes of patching it up , but I ca n't write now -- my hand is too shaky -- and mebbe it was just as well , for meddling is terribly risky work in a love trouble , Nora May . Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the last state of a meddler and them she meddles with is worse than the first . So I just set tight and said nothing , while everybody else in the clan was talking Anne and Gil sixty words to the minute . Well , last birthday morning I was feeling terrible disperrited .
I had made up my mind that my birthday was always XXXXX be a good thing for other people , and there did n't seem one blessed thing I could do to make anybody glad .
So about because between for of on than that to