`` Perhaps ... some day ... when I meet the right one , '' said Anne , smiling dreamily up at the moonlight . `` But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one ? '' persisted Diana . `` Oh , I should know him ... SOMETHING would tell me . You know what my ideal is , Diana . '' `` But people 's ideals change sometimes . '' `` Mine wo n't . And I COULD N'T care for any man who did n't fulfill it . '' `` What if you never meet him ? '' `` Then I shall die an old maid , '' was the cheerful response . `` I daresay it is n't the hardest death by any means . '' `` Oh , I suppose the dying would be easy enough ; it 's the living an old maid I should n't like , '' said Diana , with no intention of being humorous . `` Although I would n't mind being an old maid VERY much if I could be one like Miss Lavendar . But I never could be . When I 'm forty-five I 'll be horribly fat . And while there might be some romance about a thin old maid there could n't possibly be any about a fat one . Oh , mind you , Nelson Atkins proposed to Ruby Gillis three weeks ago . Ruby told me all about it . She says she never had any intention of taking him , because any one who married him will have to go in with the old folks ; but Ruby says that he made such a perfectly beautiful and romantic proposal that it simply swept her off her feet . But she did n't want to do anything rash so she asked for a week to consider ; and two days later she was at a meeting of the Sewing Circle at his mother 's and there was a book called ` The Complete Guide to Etiquette , ' lying on the parlor table .
Ruby said she simply could n't describe her feelings when in a section of it headed , ` The Deportment of Courtship and Marriage , ' she found the very proposal Nelson had made , word XXXXX word .
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