L. M. Montgomery 
Jane of Lantern Hill 
classic

Once, when Jane had been sitting in the Cadillac, one dark, dingy morning in a snowy world, waiting for Frank to take her to St. Agatha’s, as he did every day, she had heard two women, who were standing on the street-corner, talking about it. “Did you ever see such a dead house?” said the younger. “It looks as if it had been dead for ages.” “That house died thirty years ago, when Robert Kennedy died, ” said the older woman. “Before that it was a lively place. Nobody in Toronto entertained more. Robert Kennedy liked social life. He was a very handsome, friendly man. People could never understand how he came to marry Mrs. James Anderson . . . a widow with three children. She was Victoria Moore to begin with, you know, old Colonel Moore’s daughter . . . a very aristocratic family. But she was pretty as a picture then and was she crazy about him! My dear, she worshipped him. People said she was never willing to let him out of her sight for a moment. And they said she hadn’t cared for her first husband at all. Robert Kennedy died when they had been married about fifteen years . . . died just after his first baby was born, I’ve heard.” “Does she live all alone in that castle?” “Oh, no. Her two daughters live with her. One of them is a widow or something . . . and there’s a granddaughter, I believe. They say old Mrs. Kennedy is a terrible tyrant, but the younger daughter . . . the widow . . . is gay enough and goes to everything you see reported in Saturday Evening. Very pretty . . . and can she dress! She was the Kennedy one and took after her father. She must hate having all her fine friends coming to Gay Street. It’s worse than dead . . . it’s decayed. But I can remember when Gay Street was one of the most fashionable residential streets in town. Look at it now.”