Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 11 - (VERSO)

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swept up the mud Mr. Malcolm MacPherson had tracked over the steps.

Peggy and I went home and told father. We felt very flat, but there was nothing to be done or said. Father laughed at the whole thing, but I could not laugh. I was sorry for Mr. Malcolm MacPherson and, though I was angry with her, I was sorry for Aunt Olivia, too. Plainly she felt badly enough over her vanished hopes and plans, but she had developed a strange and baffling reserve which nothing could pierce.

“It’s nothing but a chronic case of old-maidism,” said father


TEXT ANNOTATION

From "Aunt Olivia's Beau."

TEXT ANNOTATION

"Mr. Malcolm MacPherson": Montgomery had a tendency to use characters' full names throughout her short stories, as she has done throughout the stories featured on these verso pages. On one hand, it is comic to have the full name mentioned in the way it is—particularly in this story, where the girls use the full name as a way of mimicking their aunt's pride and primness. On the other, including full names is a useful technique to meet the needs of an audience that might be reading the story in a serialized form or across multiple pages of a magazine.