It seemed a great while ago that she had cried at her grandmother's
funeral. If this were the future it was certainly very welcome and
already very dear, and the time of distress was like a night of bad
dreams between two pleasant days.
It will easily be understood that no great change was made in Dr.
Leslie's house. The doctor himself and Marilla were both well settled
in their habits, and while they cordially made room for the little
girl who was to be the third member of the household, her coming made
little difference to either of her elders. There was a great deal of
illness that winter, and the doctor was more than commonly busy; Nan
was sent to school, and discovered the delight of reading one stormy
day when her guardian had given her leave to stay at home, and she had
found his own old copy of Robinson Crusoe looking most friendly and
inviting in a corner of one of the study shelves. As for school, she
had never liked it, and the village school gave her far greater misery
than the weather-beaten building at the cross-roads ever had done. She
had known many of the village children by sight, from seeing them in
church, but she did not number many friends among them, even after the
winter was nearly gone and the days began to grow brighter and less
cold, and the out-of-door games were a source of great merriment in
the playground. Nan's ideas of life were quite unlike those held by
these new acquaintances, and she could not gain the least interest in
most of the other children, though she grew fond of one boy who was a
famous rover and fisherman, and after one of the elder girls had read
a composition which fired our heroine's imagination, she worshiped
this superior being from a suitable distance, and was her willing
adorer and slave.
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