The Sewing Circle met at Mary Gillespie’s on my
fortieth birthday. I have given up talking about
my birthdays, although that little scheme is not much
good in Avonlea where everybody knows your age
— or if they make a mistake it is never on the side
of youth. But Nancy, who grew accustomed to
celebrating my birthdays when I was a little girl,
never gets over the habit, and I don’t try to cure
her, because, after all, it’s nice to have some one
make a fuss over you. She brought me up my
breakfast before I got up out of bed — a concession
to my laziness that Nancy would scorn to make on
any other day of the year. She had cooked everything I like best, and had decorated the tray with
roses from the garden and ferns from the woods
behind the house. I enjoyed every bit of that
breakfast, and then I got up and dressed, putting
on my second best muslin gown. I would have put
on my really best if I had not had the fear of Nancy
before my eyes; but I knew she would never condone
that, even on a birthday. I watered my flowers and
fed my cats, and then I locked myself up and wrote
a poem on June. I had given up writing birthday
odes after I was thirty.
In the afternoon I went to the Sewing Circle. When I was ready for it I looked in my glass and wondered if I could really be forty. I was quite sure I didn’t look it. My hair was brown and wavy,
