There were three plates laid , so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea ; but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves and one kind of cake , so that the expected company could not be any particular company . Yet what of Matthew 's white collar and the sorrel mare ? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet , unmysterious Green Gables . `` Good evening , Rachel , '' Marilla said briskly . `` This is a real fine evening , is n't it ? Wo n't you sit down ? How are all your folks ? '' Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel , in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- their dissimilarity . Marilla was a tall , thin woman , with angles and without curves ; her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it . She looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience , which she was ; but there was a saving something about her mouth which , if it had been ever so slightly developed , might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor . `` We 're all pretty well , '' said Mrs. Rachel . `` I was kind of afraid YOU were n't , though , when I saw Matthew starting off today . I thought maybe he was going to the doctor 's . '' Marilla 's lips twitched understandingly . She had expected Mrs. Rachel up ; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor 's curiosity . `` Oh , no , I 'm quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday , '' she said . `` Matthew went to Bright River . We 're getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he 's coming on the train tonight . '' If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished . She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds .
It was unsupposable XXXXX Marilla was making fun of her , but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to suppose it .
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