In the twenty years that followed she had never even revisited Avonlea . Her sudden descent on it this summer was a whim born of a moment 's homesick longing for this same old garden . She had not thought about Peter . In very truth , she had thought little about Peter for the last fifteen years . She supposed that she had forgotten him . But now , sitting on the old doorstep , where she had often sat in her courting days , with Peter lounging on a broad stone at her feet , something tugged at her heartstrings . She looked over the valley to the light in the kitchen of the Wright farmhouse , and pictured Peter sitting there , lonely and uncared for , with naught but the cold comfort of his own providing . `` Well , he should have got married , '' she said snappishly . `` I am not going to worry because he is a lonely old bachelor when all these years I have supposed him a comfy Benedict . Why does n't he hire him a housekeeper , at least ? He can afford it ; the place looks prosperous . Ugh ! I 've a fat bank account , and I 've seen almost everything in the world worth seeing ; but I 've got several carefully hidden gray hairs and a horrible conviction that grammar is n't one of the essential things in life after all . Well , I 'm not going to moon out here in the dew any longer . I 'm going in to read the smartest , frilliest , frothiest society novel in my trunk . '' In the week that followed Nancy enjoyed herself after her own fashion . She read and swung in the garden , having a hammock hung under the firs . She went far afield , in rambles to woods and lonely uplands . `` I like it much better than meeting people , '' she said , when Louisa suggested going to see this one and that one , `` especially the Avonlea people . All my old chums are gone , or hopelessly married and changed , and the young set who have come up know not Joseph , and make me feel uncomfortably middle-aged .
It 's far worse XXXXX feel middle-aged than old , you know .
In about at for of on over than to under