"Blessed be the name of the Lord." Then she went away, leaving Anne and Gilbert alone together with their dead.
The next day, the small white Joy was laid in a velvet casket which Leslie had lined with apple-blossoms, and taken to the graveyard of the church across the harbor.

Miss Cornelia and Marilla put all the little love-made garments away, together with the ruffled basket which had been befrilled and belaced for dimpled limbs and downy head.

Little Joy was never to sleep there; she had found a colder, narrower bed.
"This has been an awful disappointment to me," sighed Miss Cornelia.
"I've looked forward to this baby--and I did want it to be a girl, too." "I can only be thankful that Anne's life was spared," said Marilla, with a shiver, recalling those hours of darkness when the girl she loved was passing through the valley of the shadow.
"Poor, poor lamb! Her heart is broken," said Susan.
"I ENVY Anne," said Leslie suddenly and fiercely, "and I'd envy her even if she had died! She was a mother for one beautiful day.

I'd gladly give my life for THAT!" "I wouldn't talk like that, Leslie, dearie," said Miss Cornelia deprecatingly.

She was afraid that the dignified Miss Cuthbert would think Leslie quite terrible.
Anne's convalescence was long, and made bitter for her by many things.
The bloom and sunshine of the Four Winds world grated harshly on her; and yet, when the rain fell heavily, she pictured it beating so mercilessly down on that little grave across the harbor; and when the wind blew around the eaves she heard sad voices in it she had never heard before.
Kindly callers hurt her, too, with the well-meant platitudes with which they strove to cover the nakedness of bereavement.