And , she thought , it really was heroic to volunteer to drive about the Glen and Four Winds one day , collecting promised Red Cross supplies with Abner Crawford 's old grey horse . One of the Ingleside horses was lame and the doctor needed the other , so there was nothing for it but the Crawford nag , a placid , unhasting , thick-skinned creature with an amiable habit of stopping every few yards to kick a fly off one leg with the foot of the other . Rilla felt that this , coupled with the fact that the Germans were only fifty miles from Paris , was hardly to be endured . But she started off gallantly on an errand fraught with amazing results . Late in the afternoon she found herself , with a buggy full of parcels , at the entrance to a grassy , deep-rutted lane leading to the harbour shore , wondering whether it was worth while to call down at the Anderson house . The Andersons were desperately poor and it was not likely Mrs. Anderson had anything to give . On the other hand , her husband , who was an Englishman by birth and who had been working in Kingsport when the war broke out , had promptly sailed for England to enlist there , without , it may be said , coming home or sending much hard cash to represent him . So possibly Mrs. Anderson might feel hurt if she were overlooked . Rilla decided to call . There were times afterwards when she wished she had n't , but in the long run she was very thankful that she did . The Anderson house was a small and tumbledown affair , crouching in a grove of battered spruces near the shore as if rather ashamed of itself and anxious to hide . Rilla tied her grey nag to the rickety fence and went to the door . It was open ; and the sight she saw bereft her temporarily of the power of speech or motion . Through the open door of the small bedroom opposite her , Rilla saw Mrs. Anderson lying on the untidy bed ; and Mrs. Anderson was dead . There was no doubt of that ; neither was there any doubt that the big , frowzy , red-headed , red-faced , over-fat woman sitting near the door-way , smoking a pipe quite comfortably , was very much alive . She rocked idly back and forth amid her surroundings of squalid disorder , and paid no attention whatever to the piercing wails proceeding from a cradle in the middle of the room . Rilla knew the woman by sight and reputation . Her name was Mrs. Conover ; she lived down at the fishing village ; she was a great-aunt of Mrs. Anderson ; and she drank as well as smoked . Rilla 's first impulse was to turn and flee . But that would never do .
Perhaps this woman , repulsive XXXXX she was , needed help -- though she certainly did not look as if she were worrying over the lack of it .
Through as by for from near off on so whether