The girls cried all the way home from school . Carrie Sloane kept saying every few minutes , ` The time has come for us to part , ' and that would start us off again whenever we were in any danger of cheering up . I do feel dreadfully sad , Marilla . But one ca n't feel quite in the depths of despair with two months ' vacation before them , can they , Marilla ? And besides , we met the new minister and his wife coming from the station . For all I was feeling so bad about Mr. Phillips going away I could n't help taking a little interest in a new minister , could I ? His wife is very pretty . Not exactly regally lovely , of course -- it would n't do , I suppose , for a minister to have a regally lovely wife , because it might set a bad example . Mrs. Lynde says the minister 's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she dresses so fashionably . Our new minister 's wife was dressed in blue muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses . Jane Andrews said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a minister 's wife , but I did n't make any such uncharitable remark , Marilla , because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves . Besides , she 's only been a minister 's wife for a little while , so one should make allowances , should n't they ? They are going to board with Mrs. Lynde until the manse is ready . '' If Marilla , in going down to Mrs. Lynde 's that evening , was actuated by any motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had borrowed the preceding winter , it was an amiable weakness shared by most of the Avonlea people . Many a thing Mrs. Lynde had lent , sometimes never expecting to see it again , came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof . A new minister , and moreover a minister with a wife , was a lawful object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement where sensations were few and far between . Old Mr. Bentley , the minister whom Anne had found lacking in imagination , had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years . He was a widower when he came , and a widower he remained , despite the fact that gossip regularly married him to this , that , or the other one , every year of his sojourn . In the preceding February he had resigned his charge and departed amid the regrets of his people , most of whom had the affection born of long intercourse for their good old minister in spite of his shortcomings as an orator . Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many and various candidates and `` supplies '' who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on trial .
These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers in Israel ; but a certain small , red-haired girl who sat meekly in the corner of the old Cuthbert pew also had her opinions about them and discussed the same XXXXX full with Matthew , Marilla always declining from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form .
Besides For amid because by despite in of that to