laughed Prissy . `` I 'm so happy now I could sing . I believe it was an inspiration -- my idea of coming up here to cook your dinner for you . '' `` You must promise to come and cook my New Year 's dinner for me every New Year we live near enough together , '' said Uncle Richard . And Prissy promised . White Magic One September afternoon in the year of grace 1840 Avery and Janet Sparhallow were picking apples in their Uncle Daniel Sparhallow 's big orchard . It was an afternoon of mellow sunshine ; about them , beyond the orchard , were old harvest fields , mellowly bright and serene , and beyond the fields the sapphire curve of the St. Lawrence Gulf was visible through the groves of spruce and birch . There was a soft whisper of wind in the trees , and the pale purple asters that feathered the orchard grass swayed gently towards each other . Janet Sparhallow , who loved the outdoor world and its beauty , was , for the time being at least , very happy , as her little brown face , with its fine , satiny skin , plainly showed . Avery Sparhallow did not seem so happy . She worked rather abstractedly and frowned oftener than she smiled . Avery Sparhallow was conceded to be a beauty , and had no rival in Burnley Beach . She was very pretty , with the obvious , indisputable prettiness of rich black hair , vivid , certain colour , and laughing , brilliant eyes . Nobody ever called Janet a beauty , or even thought her pretty . She was only seventeen -- five years younger than Avery -- and was rather lanky and weedy , with a rope of straight dark-brown hair , long , narrow , shining brown eyes and very black lashes , and a crooked , clever little mouth . She had visitations of beauty when excited , because then she flushed deeply , and colour made all the difference in the world to her ; but she had never happened to look in the glass when excited , so that she had never seen herself beautiful ; and hardly anybody else had ever seen her so , because she was always too shy and awkward and tongue-tied in company to feel excited over anything . Yet very little could bring that transforming flush to her face : a wind off the gulf , a sudden glimpse of blue upland , a flame-red poppy , a baby 's laugh , a certain footstep . As for Avery Sparhallow , she never got excited over anything -- not even her wedding dress , which had come from Charlottetown that day , and was incomparably beyond anything that had ever been seen in Burnley Beach before . For it was made of an apple-green silk , sprayed over with tiny rosebuds , which had been specially sent for to England , where Aunt Matilda Sparhallow had a brother in the silk trade . Avery Sparhallow 's wedding dress was making far more of a sensation in Burnley Beach than her wedding itself was making .
XXXXX Randall Burnley had been dangling after her for three years , and everybody knew that there was nobody for a Sparhallow to marry except a Burnley and nobody for a Burnley to marry except a Sparhallow .
For about as beyond in near of off to with