Anne of Green Gables

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and crossed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place. It was said to be an intricate, headlong brook in its early course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-behaved little stream. Not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum. It probably knew that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores of it.

There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and outside it, who can keep close watch on their neighbors’ business by neglecting their own; but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable souls who can manage their own concerns and other folks’ into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done, and done well. She “ran” the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and the Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting “cotton warp” quilts—she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers liked to say in awed voices—and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea sat on a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, with water on two sides, anyone who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel’s all-seeing eye.