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 about Gilbert , and would always love him to the day of her death . But she knew he did n't care anything more about her after the way he had acted , and there was nothing left for her in life but to do something for other people , and so on and so on , for twelve mortal pages . Anne is a fine writer , and I just cried like a babe over that letter , it was so touching , although I was enjoying myself hugely all the time , I was so delighted to find out that Anne loved Gilbert still . I was getting skeered she did n't , her letters all winter had been so kind of jokey and frivolous , all about the good times she was having , and the parties she went to , and the new dresses she got . New dresses ! When I read that letter of Anne 's , I knew that all the purple and fine linen in the world was just like so much sackcloth and ashes to her as long as Gilbert was sulking out on a prairie farm . Well , I wiped my eyes and polished up my specs , but I might have spared myself the trouble , for in five minutes , Nora May , there was I sobbing again ; over Gilbert 's letter . By the most curious coincidence he had opened his heart to me too . Being a man , he was n't so discursive as Anne ; he said his say in four pages , but I could read the heartache between the lines .
He wrote that he was going XXXXX Klondike and would start in a month 's time .
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