Chapter One

A high-wheeled buggy rattled merrily towards the King farm, carrying Alec, Janet and Felix King. All of them basked in the sun-drenched day. With gulls wheeling overhead and a tangy breeze blowing in off the sea, the weather seemed made-to-order for bolstering good humor; it had been a fine day for paying a social call.

“Hard to believe,” Alec mused, steering the horse skillfully around a pothole, “how Malcolm and Abigail’s little boy has grown.”

Abigail, Janet King’s sister, had waited long to marry and even longer for motherhood.

Motherhood had come to Abigail in the form of an adorable orphan literally left on her doorstep. The child was a thriving toddler now, filling Abigail and her husband with so much delight that the whole community had to smile every time the pair walked their pride-and-joy down the street.

Alec’s mind was on children as, beside him, Janet was growing large with the promise of yet another King youngster. The baby was awaited with mounting anticipation by everyone—and with more than a little anxiety by Felix.

“I don’t want another sister, Mother,” Felix insisted from the back seat. He already had two sisters—one older, who bossed him around, and one younger, who was far more interested in her best friend, Clemmie Ray, than in him. The closest thing he had to a brother, at the moment, was his cousin Andrew, who was staying at the farm while his father finished important work in South America.

“Well, Dr. Blair said there’s a possibility of twins,” Janet murmured complacently.

Felix was filled with galloping alarm! One new sister would be bad enough—but two! Surely that was more girls than any fellow could be asked to put up with in one lifetime!

“One brother would be enough for me,” he informed his mother hurriedly, hoping to impress her with the modesty of his demands.

“Well, having a brother isn’t always easy. Your father and Uncle Roger certainly had their share of disagreements, didn’t you, Alec?”

Janet King smiled mischievously towards her husband, an easy-going, sunburnt farmer edging towards middle age.

Alec hesitated as he struggled with some uncomfortable memories. “Well, we had our disappointments over the years,” he admitted, “but I wouldn’t say we didn’t get along.”

He only succeeded in making his wife laugh. Janet had grown up in Avonlea, too, and had known Alec King for about as long as she could remember—certainly long before she had had any thoughts of marrying him. It was impossible for Alec to hide anything from her.

“Oh Alec, you and Roger never saw eye to eye on anything.”

“Is Uncle Roger as famous as Aunt Hetty says he is?” Felix wanted to know. “She makes him sound smarter than a professor and more important than the Prime Minister!” His Aunt Hetty, who was even older than his father, and who had never married anybody, was apt to get pretty windy about anything she considered important. Years of teaching school did that to a person, Felix supposed. He himself had had to listen to enough of Aunt Hetty’s high-flown speeches at the Avonlea school.

Janet paused, choosing her words carefully. Hetty was the eldest of the Kings and considered herself the head of the clan—an idea that had already caused enough head-butting in the family to last Janet a lifetime. Janet didn’t want to stir up the waters now any more than necessary.

“Well...um...your Aunt Hetty always did favor your Uncle Roger, Felix.”

This was one of those statements loaded with a whole world of meaning, most of it too complicated for Felix to figure out at the moment.

“I must say, he’s done well for himself, considering,” Alec added quickly, as though in a hurry to give Roger his full due.

“Oh, well!” Janet clasped her hands in admiration of her brother-in-law. “He’s one of the most sought-after geologists in the country.”

Felix had certainly heard enough about the geology part from his cousin Andrew, who was Roger’s son. The minute Andrew had heard his father was on his way back from Brazil, he had started spending most of his time digging in the fields and poking along the riverbank so he could make a rock collection of his own.

“I can’t wait to meet him again.” Felix’s own memories of his uncle were very dim, but it was exciting to have a real celebrity in the family.

As the buggy rolled up to the rambling King farmhouse, Janet grinned at her husband.

“Remember,” she chuckled, “when Roger pushed you out of the barn door into the manure pile? You went face first out on the—”

“Janet!” Alec exclaimed mildly. He didn’t want the old incident raked up again for the amusement of his son. Some boyhood things remain sensitive, even to a grown man. Alec pointed to a buggy tied to the yard fence—a quick and handy way to change the subject.

“Now, looks like Dr. Blair has been here waiting a while. Whoa!”

He reined in the horse and pulled to a halt. Felix hopped down and held out his hands to help his mother as she clambered to the ground. Alec remained in his seat.

“And...uh.. .well, I’ve got some things to pick up at Lawson’s,” Alec told his wife, and he clucked the horse into a trot again before any more tales of his childhood could surface to plague him.

As Alec drove off, Janet took a firm grip of her son’s hand and started towards the house, where the doctor waited to give her a checkup.

“Please finish the story, Mother,” Felix demanded, trotting to keep up. He didn’t intend to be done out of a story in which his father had ended up in a manure heap!

“Well,” began his mother happily, “it all started when Roger and your father were raising pigs for the Charlottetown fair. They couldn’t decide which one of them should parade the pigs in front of the judge, so...”

Alec was gratefully out of earshot as Janet told the embarrassing story. He drove past the barn, his lips pressed rather tightly together, and gave the horse a slap with the reins. In no time at all, he was rumbling over the covered bridge and into the nearby village of Avonlea.

Alec tied his horse up in front of the general store, the heart of this rural village. The store was a comfortable wooden building with a long veranda and heaps of goods visible through the wide-paned windows. Mr. and Mrs. Lawson ran this establishment, and, between them, they managed to cope with just about every commercial need the people in the neighborhood could come up with.

Alec walked in to see Mrs. Lawson behind the counter serving a worried-looking man with his arm in a sling. The man was Amos Spry, one of the local farmers. His worn clothes, callused hands and diffident air attested to a life not always on the best of terms with good luck and prosperity.

“Hello, Alec,” Mrs. Lawson called out pleasantly as she made up parcels for her customer. She wore a large apron over her dress and was perfectly at home among the stacks of items rising up to the ceiling around her.

“Hello,” Amos echoed, managing to wipe the anxious expression off his face long enough to greet Alec.

Alec nodded back, prepared to wait his turn. He had to step round a man and a woman who were standing by the front door. The woman was holding a shirt up against the man’s chest in an effort to check the size. Getting any man to actually try on a shirt inside the general store was a hopeless expectation.

Just as Alec was making himself comfortable, he was startled by the shrieks of two young children who suddenly tore past. A boy of about seven chased an even younger girl, playing tag with complete abandon among the heaped goods and the legs of the customers. The dark hair, skinny bodies and pointed chins marked them clearly as two of Amos’s offspring. Mrs. Spry had babies so regularly that people in Avonlea had lost count. Every year Amos looked more harried, and a new Spry appeared at the school to give Hetty King another gray hair or two.

Perhaps Amos was so used to being awash in children that he didn’t pay attention to them any more. Right then, certainly, Amos seemed to be watching the additions to his bill so closely that he was oblivious to the antics of his young ones. Mrs. Lawson, in the interests of smooth commerce, politely pretended that the children’s behavior didn’t bother her, even though they represented a fearful danger to her jars of pickling spices and the row of fancy glass lamp globes on shelves quite within their reach.

“I got you cornered!” the boy crowed, leaping to tag his sister in a spot just under Mrs. Lawson’s display of cups and saucers. Young Stephen was so quick on his feet that his sister, May, didn’t have a hope of escape.

Mrs. Lawson put a bag of flour on the counter next to Amos’s other purchases, which seemed scanty for such a large family.

“I don’t know where they get their energy,” she said, eyeing the children and trying not to grimace. “I really don’t.”

Making sure to keep out of the way, Alec started browsing casually among the hats. Even there, he wasn’t safe, for little May ran smack into his knee.

“Children, that’s enough, now,” he told them, catching the wrinkle in Mrs. Lawson’s brow.

They were good children, even though rambunctious. At the reprimand from Alec, they stopped their wild racing and stood, at least temporarily, still. The gaze of both then went straight to the tempting array of peppermint sticks in a big glass jar by the cash register. Stephen trotted over to his father and tugged at his sleeve.

“Can we have a candy stick, Papa?”

Amos frowned and bent over, trying to speak quietly so as not to be overheard by the entire store.

“Maybe some other time, son. Don’t want to spoil your appetite.”

“Spoil our appetite?” Stephen cried, entirely defeating his father’s efforts at discretion. “We just ate!”

Mrs. Lawson quietly totted up the bill, hoping to get the children through the door and out of her store as soon as possible.

“That’ll be two dollars and ten cents.”

Instead of reaching for his pocketbook, Amos shifted on his feet, looked furtively around him and then leaned towards Mrs. Lawson.

“Could you see your way to putting that on my account?” he asked, in the lowest of confidential tones.

“Oh, Amos...” Mrs. Lawson looked distressed in a way that did not bode well for Amos’s request.

Alec looked up from the hat display, unable to help overhearing what was going on.

“I’m afraid I’ve already overextended your credit,” Mrs. Lawson said uncomfortably. “Now, I told you last time...”

Looking over at her father, May reached up and caressed a doll on display. The doll was a pretty one, with curly yellow hair and a painted china smile. Passionate longing gleamed in May’s eyes, making it clear that the little Sprys did not have a lot in the way of toys.

“I know, I know,” Amos pleaded, glancing regretfully at his daughter and the doll, “but if you could just give me a couple of weeks till I get the harvest in, I’d be able to settle with you then.”

May, unaware of her father’s troubles, ran her fingers softly along the flounces of the doll’s dress. Oh, a doll like that simply begged to be cradled in a little girl’s arms—and that was what May wanted to do more than anything. Giving in to the temptation, she stood on tiptoe to reach up and bring the doll down. Unfortunately, May’s small hands knocked a can of custard powder over from the shelf behind. Naturally, the can tumbled straight into a box of fresh eggs, breaking a good many of the ones on top.

Mrs. Lawson gasped in dismay, and Amos groaned, as though he just couldn’t believe his ongoing misfortunes.

“Oh, May, what have you done?” he lamented, straightening up from the counter.

Silence fell inside the store. Young May, caught hugging the doll and standing over the egg box, felt all eyes upon her. She clutched the doll even closer and immediately burst into tears. She knew she had broken the eggs and eggs cost money and there wasn’t any money at all in her daddy’s pockets.

Alec, being nearest, quickly reached over and removed the child from the mess.

“There, there,” he told, her soothingly, patting her on the back and putting the doll safely back on its shelf. “You’ll be all right.”

May didn’t believe this for one minute. She only wailed the louder, scrubbing at her eyes with her fists. Mrs. Lawson, really a kindhearted person and herself flustered by all the crying, rushed to smooth out the situation. She also knew that if Amos couldn’t pay for his current purchases, he certainly wasn’t going to be able to make good on the eggs. The eggs, at least, would have to be written off.

“Now, it’s all right, Amos,” she told him. “Accidents happen.”

With his arm already in a sling, Amos knew that for sure.

“Calm down, now,” Alec said to the wailing May, trying to coax her out of her fright.

Fat tears were rolling down May’s face and plopping onto her carefully mended dress. Not only that, Stephen’s lips were quivering, too, as he threatened to join May in vigorous duet.

“Why don’t you take the children home,” Mrs. Lawson said to Amos, defeated by the situation and only wanting the Sprys safely out of the store, “and...uh, I’ll put it on your account.”

With a sigh of relief, which he tried mightily to hide, Amos tipped his cap.

“Thanks, Elvira. I’m...I’m real sorry.”