Dr. Blythe heaved a sigh of relief as he finally finished the last of his paper work. He stretched his long limbs and placed his head on the back of his chair, closed his eyes and momentarily enjoyed the quietness of his home, the absence of all the hustle and bustle for a while. All six of his young ones were currently not at home, some off to their friend's place after school, Nan and Rilla went to town with his wife looking for appropriate materials for new dresses for the girls, and as far as he knew, Shirley was out back with Susan aiding her in pruning their vegetable patch, getting their hands dirty uprooting and planting.
He felt it was a little odd for Ingleside to be blanketed in such tranquility and placidness, that no one was actually ringing him up asking for assistance to treat yet another sick villager, or another woman going into labour, or a little girl bedridden with fever. Neither were any of his children at home, or anyone else for that matter, no rapid rap-a-tap-taps from the tiny knuckles of Rilla, asking if she may sit on daddy's lap for a while, or a head covered with auburn tresses peeking in to see how her husband was holding up beneath all the work, or any of his sons asking if their dad was in need of a temporary assistant, they would be more than happy to boil and brew him a cup of tea right away.
Strange, he chuckled to himself, never in my years of residing in Ingleside have I passed a moment where there's silence in this house. Needless to say the good doctor savoured it, unwinding his mind off his daily workload and settled down for a short, peaceful nap in the hush of his office.
However, before he could nod off into dreamland he heard the front door creak open and being slammed shut forcefully, then followed by small, heaving sobs coming from an unknown source as the sound of its slight, diminutive footsteps scampered up the staircase rang in Dr. Blythe's ears, which was again followed by another assertive slam of a bedroom door directly above his office. One of the girls, he thought and attempted to guess which of his daughters possessed such strong, capable arms to bang doors shut with so much gusto.
Must be Di and her fiery temper, he mused as he got up from his chair, out of his office and made his way up the stairs, one step at a time, but then again, Nan is the one always prone to such dramatics. He walked down the hallway until he reached the twins rooms, then he stood outside for a while and fixed his ear upon the polished wood of the bedroom door. The muffled sound of someone crying could be heard from the other side and immediately his heart reached out to his child that was plainly hurting, but from what exactly he was not so certain of. However he was going to find out soon enough as he rapped his knuckles softly against the door, gradually turning the knob to let himself in.
The first thing that met his brown, hazel eyes was the mass of red hair covering the small, heart shaped face of a girl that had been weeping for quite a long time. Her shoulder shook as another sob escaped her, rivulets of tears running down her blotchy nose and flushed cheeks. The little girl's pair of greenish-gray eyes met with her father's, and instantaneously she sprang off her bed and ran into the comforting arms of Gilbert.
"What's wrong, my sweets?" he asked as he patted and rubbed her back gently, carrying her in his arms and calmly sat down on the bed, his sobbing daughter's limbs still latched on to his.
"Daddy," little Di hiccupped, "it hurts." She burrowed her head into the nook of his broad shoulders.
"Where does it hurt, my dear?" He whispered, beckoning her to indicate the area in which it was smarting. Sitting on his lap, Di gradually lifted her head off his shoulders and raised her hand to where she thought her heart was situated. "Here," she said and patted herself on the chest, "it's really painful here."
He sat and stared at where Di had her palm planted on, then asked in all seriousness, "You mean your heart, Di? That's where you're hurting?" She nodded her head vigorously, her curls bouncing along with every dip of her head. "After Katherine White told me she does not want to be friends with me anymore, it started hurting real bad inside." Then, feeling as if she has nothing left to say, she quickly buried her head into her father's shoulders and clutched his neck tightly again.
Gilbert raised his eyebrows and inwardly breathed another sigh of relief. For a while there he thought that Di might be facing some sort of severe heart ailment, he felt as if his own heart stopped beating then. With his arms encircled around her tiny waist, he resumed his conversation with her, although now he was much at ease, no longer wary at the root of this problem.
"What's that, Ms. White does not want to be friends with my Diana? How dare she." He tut and tenderly rocked his daughter back and forth. When he realized that he would not be garnering a desired response, or any at all from his silent daughter, he continued on. "You'll still have lots of other friends, Di, friends who would like and cherish you. She isn't the only one in the entire world-"
"But she's my only bosom friend in the entire world!" Di gasped from her spot in her father's arms, head still tucked between his shoulder. He kept mum, waiting for her to go on, and eventually she did speak up. "We were best friends, daddy, and now I don't have a best friend anymore because she does not want to be mine. I thought- I thought that she-" tears started welling up in her puffy eyes again, "I though she liked me, but she said she hated me because of- because…." Her lower lip trembled as she peered up into the kind, understanding eyes of her father.
"Because of what, sweets?" he inquired, staring back at the tear stricken face of his precious child.
She ducked her head, letting her locks of hair fall around her face. "She said because I was no fun to play with, that I am not as fun as the other girl Eliza Martin is. That's why she doesn't want to be friends with me anymore." Dr. Blythe continued rocking his daughter back and forth, back and forth until her sobs subsided into hiccups, allowing her to calm herself down.
"If that's the case Di, then I'm glad that you actually lost a friend like her." He whispered to her wickedly, causing his daughter to gaze at her father in shocked amazement. "How could you say that, daddy?" She whispered back.
"Because," He replied her with a merry and mischievous twinkle in his eyes, "I think that Ms. White has made a grave mistake in choosing not to befriend you. If she is not able to see what you're worth Diana, then I'm certain that she's not of the race of Joseph, and most certainly not an adequate bosom friend for you."
"But I do want a bosom friend, daddy, just like how mother and Aunt Diana are. Why can't I find a friend like Aunt Diana?"
"You will, sweets." He smiled at her reassuringly.
"When?" She sniffed, rubbing the tears out of her eyes.
"Soon, I'm sure God will find you a good friend soon."
Her eyes grew sad and her small shoulders drooped, "But I want it to be now."
Gilbert hugged his daughter for a moment longer, then a sudden idea sprang upon him that he wondered to himself why he didn't suggest that all along.
"Well, Di," He told her matter-of-factly, "You don't have to look very far. I can be your best friend."
His red headed daughter looked up at him quizzically, brows furrowed in confusion.
"You?" she asked, sounding wholly skeptical on her part. "Really?"
He laughed, "Why not, Di? I can be your bosom buddy. You can share all your thoughts with me, and I'll do the same to you. We can have frolics in Rainbow Valley after dinner and play around in the garden anytime, or stay up in the attic and find what we can as play things."
"But daddy," She still does not sound convinced, "You wouldn't like what I play with."
"Who says I wouldn't? Whatever my Diana likes, I would definitely take a liking to it as well."
"You're not my age."
"I don't have to be." He answered reproachfully.
"Would you be an awful lot of fun, dad?"
"The funnest dad you'll ever have!"
She laughed heartily, "is that even a word, dad?"
"It is, in our dictionary. Let's call it the Gil & Di dictionary, and we can invent words along the way, make up anything as we go along. So when we come up with one, we can write it down, and before long all our words would be so jumbled up together no one would even understand what we're saying." He said in a hushed tone, as if constructing a conspiracy.
Her eyes lit up, "It'll be like our own secret language."
"That's right," He nods at her excitedly, "And only you can comprehend what I'm saying."
There was a momentary lapse in their conversation as Diana thought over it, contemplating on whether her father would be a good bosom buddy or not. The secret language code sounds awfully exciting though, and so she made up her mind.
She tugged at his fingers, "You sure you want to be my best friend, daddy?"
"Forever and always, my sweets." He said and gave her a peck on her smooth forehead.
Di gave her dad a lovely, radiant smile and got him off his feet as they went gallivanting to their first adventure as best friends.
Anne left her home in high spirits today. She just received another letter from her dearest friend Diana Wright, informing her of the latest going-ons in Avonlea and everything else that Anne missed so much when she departed from the soil she first stepped on as a tiny, smite little orphan girl. Everything seemed fine and dandy in the place she deemed as her first home on earth, and as soon as she read the last word within the letter she got out her writing set and sped away with little vignettes of her own to be posted over to a ever eager, ever waiting Diana at the receiving end.
Just as Anne signed her name at the bottom of the page with a flourish, she saw her husband striding towards the house with an easy smile on his face and a bounce to his steps, evidently glad that he was heading home-ward after attending to the sick in one of the neighbouring house. Immediately she sprang up from her seat and, rather comically, half-ran and half-skipped and finally fell into steps beside her chuckling husband whom then whispered into her ear, "Even after six children Anne-girl, you're still a child when overcome with excitement."
"Oh don't tease me Gil, you of all people should know how very difficult it is for one such as I to contain my enthusiasm in seeing my husband coming back from work, you should be used to my behaviour by now."
"I would never get used to it Anne, and never want to." He replied and gently tucked her hand into his own as they strode back to Ingleside, taking their own sweet time to reach the front porch.
She recounted the events that Diana wrote to her in the letter, mused to him that perhaps one day next month they should make a trip down as a family to visit the Wrights, and when Gilbert enquired of the whereabouts of his own children, she told him that Jem dragged Walter along with him into the woods to "find some insects to dissect", much to the disgust of Walter who would have rather stayed home and bury his little nose under the pages of yet another book his father brought back especially for his enjoyment. The twins were with their respective friends in their respective houses, and would probably only make it back just in time for dinner, Shirley was tailing Susan the entire time she was at home and Rilla was around somewhere in the house, she just don't know which corner she was holed up in. Then, she went out in search of Rilla who was delighted at the prospect of accompanying mother to go material hunting for new dresses, and even had the privilege of choosing one material of her own. Both mother and daughter were off after bidding Dr. Blythe goodbye, and he took the spare time to complete some paperwork that he had been putting off for quite a while.
That was why when Anne finally came back with bundles of materials and a radiant Rilla in tow, carrying her own selection of a sunny coloured material, she was rather surprised to see that her husband's office was empty after she enquired from Susan of the whereabouts of her husband.
"I didn't hear the telephone ring, Mrs. Dr. Dear, so I assume that he's still in the house." She answered her as she helped Shirley pull out a bunch of wayward weeds.
Where could her husband be then?
When her youngest daughter set off to her room, prancing up the stairs on her pudgy little legs and was excitedly exclaiming that she was going to design and make the prettiest dress in the whole wide world all by herself, Anne set off on her own mission to seek out Gilbert. Her best guess was that he would be sprawled on their bed, snoozing lightly after a hard day's work. Then, she heard a peculiar 'thud, thud' sound coming from the attic and wondered what could have possibly made that sound. She abandoned her initial path towards her bedroom and climbed up the attic stairs instead and poked her head up to see who or what was making those mysterious thuds.
It was none other than her own husband, but just when she wanted to pull herself up in a rather unlady-like manner and demand what he was doing all the way up here in the dusty attic, she spied another head, considerably smaller with a cap of vividly red hair and heard the shrill laughter of her daughter. She hid herself from view again, observing as both father and daughter made a ruckus by rummaging through old, unwanted items shifted over from various places and used them to create a world of their own. She watched as her husband abandon his usual sense of practicality and acted out as a Red Indian tribesman as he draped himself with a discoloured, woolen bedspread and stuck feathers and loose strings into his curls. Di was rapturous in her own Red Indian outfit that consisted of an old shawl of Anne's which she did not have the heart to throw away for it held sentimental values. However she saw that it was put to good use for Di wrapped the old, hole-ridden thing around her small bodice as she danced around the attic with her father, pretending that they were leaping before a huge bonfire. And all the time they were going about, thumping their feet on the ground and whooping on the top of their lungs, Di laughed merrily as her father held her in his arms and twirled her around the makeshift bonfire (a pile of textbooks from Anne's schooling days) and Gilbert smiled along, obviously enjoying themselves immensely as they made up more stories of a Red Indian warrior in search of his lost daughter that got kidnapped by the enemy tribe.
Anne slowly and silently made her way down the steps and left father and daughter to their own devices. As she went about the daily household chores of Ingleside, Anne was constantly giggling to herself as she replayed the scenes she witnessed in the attic, and oh, how amusing it was to see Gilbert dressed in an old bedspread! She would never cease to tease the ears of her husband about this till her dying day, she joked and giggled to herself again. But, regardless of how silly and comical Gil looked as he whooped and hollered, she would never forget the joy etched onto Di face as she danced around with her father, nor would she ever forget the loving and tender smile Gil showed as he held Di in his strong, reassuring arms, reliving his childhood days all over again.
Anne always knew that he would be a remarkable parent, but this little display of the strong, unbreakable bond of fatherly love between him and one of his children just seemed to have reinforced the assurance that Gilbert would always be the affectionate husband and nurturing father he was destined to be.
She smiled to herself, thanked God for the millionth time for giving her this man as her husband, and went about Ingleside, listening to the continuous thuds of footsteps and hollers from up above.