But anything your father says goes with me after this . '' Mary proved a rather dull companion in the following days , however . She confided to Una that the more she thought of going back to the asylum the more she hated it . Una racked her small brains for some way of averting it , but it was Nan Blythe who came to the rescue with a somewhat startling suggestion . `` Mrs. Elliott might take Mary herself . She has a great big house and Mr. Elliott is always wanting her to have help . It would be just a splendid place for Mary . Only she 'd have to behave herself . '' `` Oh , Nan , do you think Mrs. Elliott would take her ? '' `` It would n't do any harm if you asked her , '' said Nan . At first Una did not think she could . She was so shy that to ask a favour of anybody was agony to her . And she was very much in awe of the bustling , energetic Mrs. Elliott . She liked her very much and always enjoyed a visit to her house ; but to go and ask her to adopt Mary Vance seemed such a height of presumption that Una 's timid spirit quailed . When the Hopetown authorities wrote to Mr. Meredith to send Mary to them without delay Mary cried herself to sleep in the manse attic that night and Una found a desperate courage . The next evening she slipped away from the manse to the harbour road . Far down in Rainbow Valley she heard joyous laughter but her way lay not there . She was terribly pale and terribly in earnest -- so much so that she took no notice of the people she met -- and old Mrs. Stanley Flagg was quite huffed and said Una Meredith would be as absentminded as her father when she grew up . Miss Cornelia lived half way between the Glen and Four Winds Point , in a house whose original glaring green hue had mellowed down to an agreeable greenish gray . Marshall Elliott had planted trees about it and set out a rose garden and a spruce hedge .
It was quite a different place from what it had been XXXXX years agone .
At about after for from if in of to with