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 in leaf then , as young and cheerful as if they was n't a hundred years old . And I sighed right out loud and said , `` Oh , Grandpa Holland , it 's time I was put away up on the hill there with you . '' And with that the gate banged and there was Nancy Jane Whitmore 's boy , Sam , with two letters for me . One was from Anne up at St. Mary 's and the other was from Gil out in Manitoba . I read Anne 's first . She just struck right into things in the first paragraph . She said her year at St. Mary 's was nearly up , and when it was she meant to quit teaching and go away to New York and learn to be a trained nurse .
She said she was just broken-hearted XXXXX Gilbert , and would always love him to the day of her death .
So about as for from if of to under with