Hello again! What a brilliant response to the last chapter, and there I was thinking you were only wanting to read about Anne and Gil ;o) I suppose given the title of this chapter you're expecting something about that little boy. I hope what I have written instead doesn't disappoint too much -well I did promise juice!

CHAPTER XVII -A Letter from Davy

Friday, September 29th; Patty's Place, in my delicious blue haven, at my delightful new desk, with my dear old pussems curled in my lap.

Welcome Ady

How do you like your new home, isn't this desk such a dear piece of history? None of your whitewashing here, I'm afraid, this is a proper antique. To think it was here the whole time in the very next room, when I had trawled through every stall and emporium in Kingsport. I thought I would spend that wretched prize money on something that would raise my literary spirits, and what could be more fitting than a handsomely crafted desk? Yet even with pockets stuffed with filthy lucre I found nothing to tempt my eye. Though I must tell Marilla I saw the exact likeness of her larch-wood table for fifty dollars!

I am glad Rachel turned down our neighbour's offer to buy my tobacco stripe quilt. The scarlet and ivory looks so homey on my bed and makes the blue of my room even bluer. I feel as though I slept in a warm afternoon sky, and have decided to keep my bolsters and pillows as white as the clouds the chase across the harbour. Once I have that emerald armchair up here it shall feel as hunker-downish inside as our dear little cottage looks outside. With the red of the brick, the green of the pines, and the billowing, blowsy blue.

I am so impatient to have my room finished. I told myself I wouldn't write a line in you until it was done. Ida knows how particular I am about the importance of starting as you mean to go on, and I need as many graceful debuts as I can muster. That diary is now tucked up in a drawer. Fat with the words of my first year at Redmond and happy, I think, for you to now take your fill, darling Ady.

You are a darling. Bound in a velvety suede of cornflower blue, each page bearing a watermark of a rose unfurling, and scented with those self same blooms. Yes, I admit you were an indulgence. Even Phil raised her eyebrows when she saw me unwrap you, and she is the most extravagant creature. She used almost a whole pound of powdered sugar to top her very first batch of ginger-breads. Good thing too, Ady. They were like cobble stones. But we thrifty minded Islanders did our best to get them down. Fortunately that was the day Moody and Gil lugged the new desk up to Priss and Stella's bedroom. Such a hefty piece, solid oak with veneers of walnut (which when you peer at closely make a wood goblin's face.) We needed all Euclid's wisdom to manuoevre it up our higgledy staircase, and Moody was very keen to earn his reward. He must have worked up quite an appetite because he declared Phil's baking delicious! Though whether this was because Mrs Spurgeon-MacPherson is a spectacularly bad cook or because her son was rather taken with the baker of those bricks I wouldn't like to say.

Gil took one look at them and decided he would rather get on with shifting the other desk into my room. He placed it exactly where I wanted it too, by the little tiled fireplace. I suppose because he knew I would never get any work done if I kept it by the window. There is such a wondrous view of the pines ~and the smell of them, Ady! It would draw Paul's rock people out from hiding such is its power to enchant.

I wish Gil would arrive. He said he would help me move Stella's armchair this afternoon and it is already after five. I must ready myself for tonight, Mr Miles, Mr MacDonald and Phil's sundry victims are due in just over an hour. One of them sent her the most exquisite bouquet of tiny white rosebuds. Though they only succeeded in annoying the little madam because we hadn't the right sort of crystal bowl to display them in. So she poked them into a jam jar. I think they look glorious, like little stars shooting into the room.

Oh, I can hear a commotion downstairs~

Later...

Gilbert Blythe has a bloody nose! He arrived not half an hour ago with red spatters all over his shirt (His tie was worse, he had removed that in order to clean up his face.) The foolish boy decided to take revenge on the nasty oafs who shaved off half Moody's hair on Monday. Would you believe Avonlea's finest son put mustard powder into their hats during Chapel, so that when they put them on again they doused themselves with a powdery fire. He didn't even run, he said, but stood there in the vestry watching them stagger and choke. Barring their way to the fountain until they gave their word they would apologise to Moody.

One of his targets was Neil's younger brother, an unrepentant bully and a resolute Lamb. After he had Gil pinned down and pummelled he went straight to the Dean to demand his expulsion from the fraternity and the debating team. They will only be hurting themselves if they go that far, but I fear Gil has done the same. The MacDonald family run the 'Daily Express', and I know Gil was hoping to secure work in the printing room three evenings a week. He earned half what he hoped to this summer. Allwinds kept him so busy, as did the Wrights, and I know he must be as mindful of money as I am. Redmond only offers one full scholarship for sophomores, in Art History worse luck.

Luckily gliding on the coat tails of Philippa Gordon means all my fun is usually paid for. Her victims are always showering her with tickets to concerts and plays. I could never afford to attend the Charity Gala tonight if George Parker hadn't left four tickets inside a box of Belgian chocolates. The tickets Phil was glad to share, but I thought the chocolate had been well and truly scoffed, until I saw her feeding them to Gil as he lay back on our sofa.

Of all the unthinking, irresponsible, ridiculous things for him to do. I am half proud, half mad, and all nerves. Wanting very much to bundle him out the door. Not only because of what Neil MacDonald will say ~or do~ when he sees him here, but because I know how much Gilbert was wanting to go to this Gala. There is to be a presentation by an eminent explorer. Phil is dreading the speech and is urging us all to forgo dessert and make an early escape to the Ball Room. But I know that Gil would have loved it.

You know, Ady, I suddenly no longer care about fussing with ribbons and pearls. I will wear my charcoal georgette after all, it always looks best with simply styled hair~

Stella just peeped round my door to ask whether I still wanted Gil to haul her old chair up to my room. Now he is bound to bump into Neil and Seb and wonder why I didn't ask them to bring it up instead. I must go, Ady ~if only to rush that incorrigible Mr Blythe out the door.

… … …

Friday 29th, Glenaeon St, Kingsport

So that was Sebastian Miles. I can see why Anne needed me to shift her armchair -and move desks, and shove pianos to different corners, and chop up a weeks worth of wood. The poor fellow's arms are so twig-like he had better not bring sit too close to the fire or they are likely to combust. I don't expect MacDonald has much skill with an axe either. Though he is a better fellow than I believed. When he turned up at Patty's Place I thought I was in for a black eye next. Instead I received a hearty handshake and a slap on the back.

Heard what you did to my thug of a brother, he laughed. You might lose your place with the Lambs, Blythe, but you certainly have one at the Express.

Neil has completed his BA and took up his position at his father's paper last month. I admit I feel some relief at his assurance. I need the work. Though now I have made an enemy of the younger MacDonald I am slightly wary. That weasel has it in his power to make things very uncomfortable for me. Though perhaps he will think twice before preying on an Island boy. Poor old Moody. Yet he won't help himself. I have tried to persuade him to have all his hair cut short but he insists on keeping the longer side.

I suspect I am losing my powers of persuasion. When I saw Anne dressed so simply I assumed –or at least hoped- she wasn't going to the Gala with the others, and asked if she cared for an evening stroll. There is to be a corn moon tonight, I told her, large and gold like a low, lost sun. For a moment I was sure that Anne wavered. I had just lugged the armchair into her room when she pulled my tie from my waistcoat pocket to inspect it, and I had this powerful sense I was remembering my future. There was that copy of Shakespeare, there were my Michaelmas daisies, there was my tie in her laundry basket. There we both stood, hands on our hips, surveying the furniture which seemed to dance about the bed.

The bed. Where Anne sleeps, dreams, perhaps thinks of me. Yes, I asked her for a stroll but for a long moment the only steps I wanted to take were the three to her bed. To sweep her up the way Miles could never hope to, and lay her on her red and white striped counterpane. Lay kisses on every red and every white part of her body. It was then my nose began to bleed again.

She ordered me to tilt back my head and I noticed that her ceiling was covered in tiny stars. Anne must think of me, I reasoned. How could she look up at that every night and without recalling the evening we spent under the Virgin's sky? She guided me over to the green chair, her hand on my shoulder, her handkerchief under my nose.

What am I going to do with you, Gilbert Blythe? she sighed.

I didn't dare tell her.

… … …

Saturday 30th September, Patty's Place?

The Ochre Notebook

Am I dead? Is this Hell? It feels like Hell. Oh dear Lord, do you expect me to endure this for all eternity? I can barely survive the next minute!

I write this now –I use the term loosely, scrawling would be more accurate- in order to piece together the baffling, dizzying, excruciating events of last night. I find I can recall the evening we spent at the Gala without too much embarrassment. It is what happened next that is turning my insides into a nest of snakes. Oh, Phillipa, what did you do?

I remember taking the last tram to the Rosewood Inn, and Mr MacDonald plying us all with the most exquisite vintage of Canard Duchene –my absolute favourite! If he wasn't such a red cheeked, stolid sort I would pilfer him from Anne and keep him for myself. Then we were rudely tossed out onto the damp streets of Kingsport and after an interminable wait for a ride that never came, Stella Maynard began to shunt me up Gosforth Street insisting we girls walk home!

Walk! In my heels? I was all to blisters in minutes. What a dismal procession we must have made. Anne and Mr Miles tugging my sorry self along, with Stella and Prissy up ahead wailing Farewell to Nova Scotia into the night like fishwives in the slums. I was about to knock on the door of a hovel and beg for a bed when who should appear from an alleyway like Anne's demonic cat but the angelic Gilbert Blythe!

"What no chariot for your ladyship?" he winked at me.

There were all sorts of salty exclamations next as we tried to ascertain why on earth he was stalking the streets at two in the morning, when I -oh, I can scarcely write for the revolting blush going through me- I commanded Mr Blythe to carry me back to Patty's Place. Well, I really couldn't go another step, and there was no way a weedy creature like Mr Miles could manage it. Gil had me up in his arms the next moment. I felt as weightless as a scrap of silk flung against his chest, which I admit I nestled into a rather immodestly. I could blame the champagne -in fact I believe I did- which is a pity as it means I have no fresh excuse for what followed.

Upon arriving at the cottage Stella and Prissy ran pell-mell up the stairs, slamming their door on the rest of us without so much as a Farewell to Nova Scotia! Mr Miles, however, was content to dawdle on the porch steps with Anne. So Gilbert carried me up to my room and onto my bed, yet my hands refused to let him go.

"Are you ill?" he said.

He was so close I could make out the blue bruises emerging from under his eyes. They looked almost gold -and that's when it struck me.

"It's you!' I squealed. "You are Maurice!"

He told me I had evidently muddled him with one of my victims. And I was muddled. I felt so churned up and giddy -Maurice and Alonzo and Gilbert all merging into one- as I gripped his neck more tightly, until his mouth was by my ear and- oh I feel sick to recollect it, let alone write it!- he murmured,

"When I kiss a girl, Phil, I want to be sure she will remember it in the morning."

All at once my hands were down by my sides, then he pulled up the blankets of my unmade bed and was gone. I have been lying here mortified ever since. Gilbert Blythe assumed I wanted him to kiss me! But did I? I cannot decide! Not that it matters. Gilbert believed I wanted it -and worse, far worse, had the nerve to resist. Now I don't know whether I detest him or am in love with him. But shall I be allowed to luxuriate in that particular woe? I shall not. Instead I must turn my poor sore head to more pertinent matters –of how I am going to persuade the girls to run after me, when they will be busy getting our house in order for the arrival of this Jamesina woman.

I knew we should have hired a maid!

… … …

Saturday 30th September, a picture of pique at Patty's Place

GILBERT BLYTHE!

What does he mean by walking the streets at two in the morning? What does he mean by carrying Philippa Gordon (who actually deserves her own capital enhancement now I think of it~ THAT GIRL!) all the way back to Patty's Place? And what does he mean by lingering about the porch as Seb and I said goodnight, as conspicuous and welcome as spinach in teeth!

Dear Mr Miles. He was attempting to demonstrate the fingering of Schubert's allegro for four hands upon the porch banister ~not that I had a hope of following it, in fact I was longing for bed. Then Gilbert appears at the front door with the air of a father summoning his daughter. He actually bid Sebastian goodnight on my behalf! And worse, Ady, Sebastian took one look at Gilbert's face and fled.

I suppose he does look rather fearsome, his eyes are beginning to blacken now. Serves him right. I hope his nose is broken ~Phil loathes ugly noses. Ugh, I sound jealous. But I assure you, Ady, I am not. I happen to love those two fools a great deal more than either of them deserve at the moment. But they are so unsuited. Though Phil likes to say that Gilbert sees her as nothing more than a kitten he'd like to pet, I believe it is she who would use Gil like a plaything. She doesn't understand the Island way. She flirts with everyone.

Not that it matters to me in the least if they really did care for each other. But would Gil have been in such a hurry to get downstairs if he truly loved her? No, the whole thing is too incredible and I have had too much champagne. I must say I am beginning to like it now. Let us hope Stella's aunt likes it too.

Now to make an unlawful noise right outside Miss Gordon's door!

... ... ...

The cheeky reference to 'Avonlea's finest son' was because I adore that story. It's written by Laurie1, and though unfinished is one of the best pieces of writing about Gilbert Blythe I have ever read.

So, how was that for a bit of fun? I hope you had a giggle :o) Next we have one of my favourite scenes, where Gilbert is 'looking at Anne just as if... just as if... well it's very embarrassing!'

bunnybee: thanks for your great review, i think you and i are of the same mind when it comes to the girls of patty's place!

Bertha: i'm glad i'm back too, losing all my work at the same time i was losing my mojo -not pretty. thanks for waiting for me :o)

Vicky: thanks for your encouragement -it's funny the way the room sharing angst has resonated with so many, ha ha! i will indeed be taking your tech savvy advice ;o)

Alila: what an astonishing review, i find your writing beautiful too, and sincerely hope you decide to write something here. thank you for your kind words about Stella, it really mattered that i found her voice, for her story to have touched you was incredibly heartening. you are a very generous soul :o)

Diana: as always, thank you, babe. and may i ask how your writing is going? ;o)

Alinya: i am glad those tears seemed believable, i was rather stunned at it happening myself!

Edkchestnut: consider yourself spared from davy, ha ha! and you should know whatever thrill you feel when you see i have updated is exactly what i feel when i see you have left another review. thank you!

K.B. i was just as excited to find my way back to patty's place too. as for other stories... well, i am planning a modern day Anne of Green Gables set in small town california, and one in a new canon altogether, a sequel to Frances Burnett Hodgkins 'The Secret Garden'. I 'ship Mary and Dickon like i 'ship Anne and Gil ;o)

Thank you!