His tone said , `` I am going to see you home whether or no . '' Theodora , with a deprecating look at Arnold Sherman , took his arm , and Ludovic marched her across the green amid a silence which the very horses tied to the storm fence seemed to share . For Ludovic 't was a crowded hour of glorious life . Anne walked all the way over from Avonlea the next day to hear the news . Theodora smiled consciously . `` Yes , it is really settled at last , Anne . Coming home last night Ludovic asked me plump and plain to marry him , -- Sunday and all as it was . It 's to be right away -- for Ludovic wo n't be put off a week longer than necessary . '' `` So Ludovic Speed has been hurried up to some purpose at last , '' said Mr. Sherman , when Anne called in at Echo Lodge , brimful with her news . `` And you are delighted , of course , and my poor pride must be the scapegoat . I shall always be remembered in Grafton as the man from Boston who wanted Theodora Dix and could n't get her . '' `` But that wo n't be true , you know , '' said Anne comfortingly . Arnold Sherman thought of Theodora 's ripe beauty , and the mellow companionableness she had revealed in their brief intercourse . `` I 'm not perfectly sure of that , '' he said , with a half sigh . II . Old Lady Lloyd I . The May Chapter Spencervale gossip always said that `` Old Lady Lloyd '' was rich and mean and proud . Gossip , as usual , was one-third right and two-thirds wrong . Old Lady Lloyd was neither rich nor mean ; in reality she was pitifully poor -- so poor that `` Crooked Jack '' Spencer , who dug her garden and chopped her wood for her , was opulent by contrast , for he , at least , never lacked three meals a day , and the Old Lady could sometimes achieve no more than one . But she WAS very proud -- so proud that she would have died rather than let the Spencervale people , among whom she had queened it in her youth , suspect how poor she was and to what straits was sometimes reduced .
She much preferred to have them think her miserly and odd -- a queer old recluse who never went anywhere , even to church , and who paid the smallest subscription XXXXX the minister 's salary of anyone in the congregation .
For across amid by in than that to whether with