`` 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 for word . She went home and wrote him a perfectly scathing refusal ; and she says his father and mother have taken turns watching him ever since for fear he 'll drown himself in the river ; but Ruby says they need n't be afraid ; for in the Deportment of Courtship and Marriage it told how a rejected lover should behave and there 's nothing about drowning in THAT . And she says Wilbur Blair is literally pining away for her but she 's perfectly helpless in the matter . '' Anne made an impatient movement . `` I hate to say it ... it seems so disloyal ... but , well , I do n't like Ruby Gillis now . I liked her when we went to school and Queen 's together ... though not so well as you and Jane of course . But this last year at Carmody she seems so different ... so ... so ... '' `` I know , '' nodded Diana . `` It 's the Gillis coming out in her ... she ca n't help it . Mrs. Lynde says that if ever a Gillis girl thought about anything but the boys she never showed it in her walk and conversation .
She talks about nothing but boys and what compliments they pay her , and how crazy they all are about her XXXXX Carmody .
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