`` You may read it if you want to ; it is n't really a love letter . I told Gilbert he was n't to write silly letters . Come , pussy , I 'm going to get ready for prayer meeting . We 've got a nice , new , young , good-looking minister in Exeter , pussy , and that makes prayer meeting very interesting . '' Anna shut the door , her departing laugh rippling mockingly through the dusk . Alma picked up Gilbert Murray 's letter and went to her room . She wanted to cry , since she could not shake Anna . Even if she could have shook her , it would only have made her more perverse . Anna was in earnest ; Alma knew that , even while she hoped and believed that it was but the earnestness of a freak that would pass in time . Anna had had one like it a year ago , when she had cast Gilbert off for three months , driving him distracted by flirting with Charlie Moore . Then she had suddenly repented and taken him back . Alma thought that this whim would run its course likewise and leave a repentant Anna . But meanwhile everything might be spoiled . Gilbert might not prove forgiving a second time . Alma would have given much if she could only have induced Anna to answer Gilbert 's letter , but coaxing Anna to do anything was a very sure and effective way of preventing her from doing it . * * * * * Alma and Anna had lived alone at the old Williams homestead ever since their mother 's death four years before . Exeter matrons thought this hardly proper , since Alma , in spite of her grave ways , was only twenty-four . The farm was rented , so that Alma 's only responsibilities were the post office which she kept , and that harum-scarum beauty of an Anna . The Murray homestead adjoined theirs . Gilbert Murray had grown up with Alma ; they had been friends ever since she could remember .
Alma loved Gilbert XXXXX a love which she herself believed to be purely sisterly , and which nobody else doubted could be , since she had been at pains to make a match -- Exeter matrons ' phrasing -- between Gil and Anna , and was manifestly delighted when Gilbert obligingly fell in love with the latter .
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