Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
At the Altar 
Another story with one of Lucy Maud’s thematic standbys: a long-ass courtship of 15 years … not really going anywhere … until one member of the couple takes drastic measures (pretends to start seeing someone else) … and the other member of the couple is jealous, and suddenly realizes: I can’t live without this person! Like ‘The Hurrying of Ludovic’. Or ‘The Pursuit of the Ideal’. These are romances between practical middle-aged people. Lucy Maud so knows how to write about that.
In ‘The Way of the Winning of Anne’ – Jerome has been “seeing” Anne for 15 years. I would say, in a less charitable way, that Anne has been stringing Jerome along – but I suppose she has her reasons. He asks her to marry him once a year, and she continuously turns him down. And yet every week they walk home from prayer meeting together. That is their main date. It is a declaration of commitment to a relationship (as anyone who reads Lucy Maud’s books knows. Walking home from prayer meeting with a member of the opposite sex is as good as being engaged.) Jerome figures that if he just keeps asking she’ll eventually cave. But 15 years is a long time. So one night – Jerome has had enough. He starts to see a woman named Harriet Warren – even going so far as taking her to a social in the next town. A gossipy neighbor informs Anne of this. The very next night, Jerome is not at prayer meeting. He has gone to prayer meeting at another church with Harriet Warren.
Excerpt from At the Altar
When she got home she looked at her face in the glass more critically than she had done for years. Anne Stockard at her best had never been pretty. When young she had been called “gawky”. She was very tall and her figure was lank and angular. She had a long, pale face and dusky hair. Her eyes had been good – a glimmering hazel, large and long-lashed. They were pretty yet, but the crow’s feet about them were plainly visible. There were brackets around her mouth too, and her cheeks were hollow. Anne suddenly realized, as she had never realized before, that she had grown old – that her youth was left far behind. She was an old maid, and Harriet Warren was young and pretty. Anne’s long, thin lips suddenly quivered.
“I declare, I’m a worse fool than Jerome,” she said angrily.
When Saturday night came Jerome did not. The corner of the big, old-fashioned porch where he usually sat looked bare and lonely. Anne was short with octavia and boxed the cat’s ears and raged at herself. What did she care if Jerome Irving never came again? She could have married him years ago if she had wanted to – everybody knew that!
At sunset she saw a buggy drive past her gate. Even at that distance she recognized Harriet Warren’s handsome, high-coloured profile. It was Jerome’s new buggy and Jerome was driving. The wheel spokes flashed in the sunlight as they crept up the hill. Perhaps they dazzled Anne’s eyes a little; at least, for that or some other reason she dabbed her hand viciously over them as she turned sharply about and went upstairs. Octavia was practising her music lesson in the parlour below and singing in a sweet shrill voice. The hired men were laughing and talking in the yard. Anne slammed down her window and banged her door and then lay down on her bed; she said her head ached.
The Deep Meadow people were amused and made joking remarks to Anne, which she had to take amiably because she had no excuse for resenting them. In reality they stung her pride unendurably. When Jerome had gone she realized that she had no other intimate friend and that she was a very lonely woman whom nobody cared about. One night – it was three weeks afterward – she met Jerome and Harriet squarely. She was walking to church with Octavia, and they were driving in the opposite direction. Jerome had his new buggy and a crimson lap robe. His horse’s coat shone like satin and had rosettes of crimson on his bridle. Jerome was dressed extremely well and looked quite young, with his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face and clear blue eyes.
Harriet was sitting primly and consciously by his side; she was a very handsome girl with bold eyes and was somewhat overdressed. She wore a big flowery hat and a white lace veil and looked at Anne with a supercilious smile.
Anne felt dowdy and old; she was very pale. Jerome lifted his hat and bowed pleasantly as they drove past. Suddenly Harriet laughed out. Anne did not look back, but her face crimsoned darkly. Was that girl laughing at her? She trembled with anger and a sharp, hurt feeling. When she got home that night she sat a long while by her window.
Jerome was gone – and he let Harriet Warren laugh at her – and he would never come back to her. Well, it did not matter, but she had been a fool. Only it had never occurred to her that Jerome could act so.
“If I’d thought he would I mightn’t have been so sharp with him,” was as far as she would let herself go even in thought.
