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 to be a good thing for other people , and there did n't seem one blessed thing I could do to make anybody glad . Emma Matilda and George and the children were all well and happy and wanted for nothing that I could give them . I begun to be afraid I 'd lived long enough , Nora May . When a woman gets to the point where she ca n't give a gift of joy to anyone , there ai n't much use in her living . I felt real old and worn out and useless .
I was sitting here under these very trees -- they was just budding out XXXXX leaf then , as young and cheerful as if they was n't a hundred years old .
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