Rachel came by with news that the reverend would be retiring and planned to have his last Sunday morning service in just a few weeks.

"I'm glad," Marilla commented. "He's never been my favorite person. ...Though I hope it didn't show outside the family."

"Why do you want to go to church, then," Anne asked, "If you don't like him?"

"We don't go to church for the reverend," Marilla explained. "We go to church for God."

"Well, I'm glad he's leaving," Anne said.

Matthew, though he didn't say it, agreed with Anne.

"Since we won't have a reverend anymore does this mean we don't have to go to church?" Anne asked.

Marilla gave her a Look. "No," she said firmly. "Another will be found."

Anne hoped that whoever it was would be a little nicer.

The congregation had a retirement party for the reverend one week, and though many cried at his departure, Anne did not.

She did worry, though, about what the next one would be like.

Anne did not worry for long. Reverend Seth Powell was sent to Avonlea fresh out of seminary school and full of enthusiasm that made Anne feel some revived interest in being an active part of the congregation.

Reverend Powell's first action in his new community was to go visit every person in town to get to know them.

At Green Gables, Marilla welcomed him in with a pie, introducing him to Matthew and then inviting him to come into the parlor and sit down.

Matthew said hello gruffly, and- though obligated by good manners to speak from time to time- he was quiet for the majority of the visit.

Marilla called Anne to come down and meet the new reverend.

"This is my daughter, Anne," she said with a hint of pride in her voice. "Well, she's Matthew's daughter, too- we share her, sort of." Knowing that sounded odd, she explained: "We took Anne in from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia three years ago. She's been a blessing to us ever since."

Anne couldn't help smiling, color coming into her cheeks.

"I can imagine," Reverend Powell said, smiling. "It's nice to meet you, Anne."

"And this is Anne's little boy, Walter," Marilla continued.

Anne was going to shake hands, but a look of panic came to her face and instead she hid her hands behind her back.

Reverend Powell did not know what the problem was.

But Walter, suddenly shy, had hidden behind Anne, and his chubby hands pulling on her skirt reminded her that she did not want anyone to know she wasn't married- she wished she could keep her hands hidden behind her back forever so that no one would see that she was not wearing a wedding ring.

Anne wished the reverend hadn't come, because she was always rather nervous of meeting new people, since she never knew how she would be regarded by them. Also, it meant potentially having to re-tell her story.

But Reverend Powell didn't seem to think she needed to bother with any explanations.

"Hello, Walter," he said with a smile, bending down to be at eye level with the little boy. "How old are you?"

Walter shyly held out two fingers.

"Is he in the nursery?" Reverend Powell asked the family.

"He just started," Anne said. "He likes it. He's made friends that way."

"Clara my fwend," Walter said loudly.

Anne smiled. "Clara Perkins is his best friend," she told the reverend. "They've been friends since he was born, practically."

"I visited with the Perkins' just yesterday," Reverend Powell said, smiling. "They seem like a lovely family."

"They are," Marilla put in. "Anne used to babysit for their daughter. We're very fond of them."

They talked a while longer, though Walter could not sit still for long and went off to find his toys.

Anne followed him and brought his rocking horse into the parlor so that she could oversee him as he used it. Marilla was surprised to see the horse brought out, because Anne hated it so and did not want the reminder of the Andrews, but she realized that if Anne was to be included in the conversation, she would have to occupy Walter while they talked.

Reverend Powell had assumed that Anne had been cast off to an orphan asylum because she'd found herself pregnant and was disowned by her parents over it. He had heard of that happening before, and assumed it had happened again here.

But Miss Cuthbert had said they'd taken in Anne three years ago, and Anne's baby was two. That meant she'd had the baby after coming to live with the Cuthberts, not before.

He wondered about the situation. He was relieved that Anne's apparent indiscretion had not caused the Cuthbert's to send her straight back to the orphan's home they'd gotten her from.

Knowing Miss and Mr. Cuthbert had kept this young girl despite her predicament made him like these people all the more. He left their home feeling like he had made friends here.

Anne spent the next several weeks in a happier state. She went to lunch several times with Emily's friends, who were slowly and surely becoming her friends. She even liked going to church, because Reverend Powell was a revolutionary in her eyes.

The previous reverend's sermons were full of doom and gloom, fire and brimstone. And while Anne in her younger self enjoyed the dramatic effect, she found religion dreary as a result.

But this reverend was different. He seemed to be overflowing with a deep seated joy, and Anne found it contagious.

He said that people ought to turn to God because God loved them. This was very different from what Anne had learned from the previous reverend, which was that God was an angry God who would cast them into a fiery pit for every wrongdoing.

He also believed that God had made the world beautiful and it was to be enjoyed. The previous reverend saw danger at every turn, cautioning people from enjoying things because it would surely lead them to ruin; the devil was everywhere, waiting to tempt them.

But the most important thing to Anne was that this reverend talked a lot about how people ought to treat each other with love and compassion- a far cry from the previous reverend's harsh judgement.

Anne's letters to Gilbert were filled with church news and news of her outings with friends, and Gilbert was glad that Anne was beginning to have a fuller life.

Mrs. Andrews, after all these weeks still upset over her sudden expulsion from Walter's life, finally went to the new reverend, hoping she could get him to intervene on her behalf.

It was through this meeting that Reverend Powell learned Anne's story.

He did not agree to coerce the Cuthberts into allowing Mrs. Andrews back into the baby's life. Instead, the reverend told her that she would have to respect Anne's decision, difficult as it was. The fact was, Anne had trusted Mrs. Andrews by allowing her into the baby's life, and Mrs. Andrews sending a photo of the baby to her son had been a betrayal of that trust. He would pray for peace and forgiveness, but he would not try to force Anne into a situation of feeling violated once again.

Reverend Powell's Sunday School attendance had grown so much that he decided to split the children's class into groups because there were too many of them. When he needed a teacher for the youngest children, he thought of Anne.

"Me?" Anne asked. "Why me?"

"Why not you?" he asked her. "You seem to me like you were meant to be a teacher. You're good with children, and I think you'd be perfect to teach the little ones."

Anne looked at Marilla and Matthew.

"It's nice," Marilla said slowly, "But I'm not sure people in town would accept..." she trailed off, not wanting to make things worse.

But Anne finished for her: "An unwed mother," she stated flatly. "An unwed mother teaching their children."

"On the contrary, I think it is your life experiences that have made you a good messenger for the faith. You have been tested by hardship, yet here you are, steadfast and optimistic."

Anne finally, reluctantly, agreed to be the teacher. Marilla worried about how people would react to this.

There were parents who objected to Anne taking on the role, but the reverend only offered to let their children move to the other teacher's class; he would not rescind his invitation for Anne to teach hers.

And so Anne began her little Sunday School class at the beginning of the Winter term, with only four children.

She was told that she should spend the first seven weeks on the Creation of the world. The other teachers read from the Bible and made the children memorize long passages of scripture and then quizzed them on what they had memorized.

Anne did not.

For the first Sunday, she brought in a black wool blanket to cover up the window and a box of candles to show light and shadow. For the second Sunday, she showed them how water evaporates and how clouds form. For the third Sunday, she taught them about plants making oxygen and that you can tell a tree's age by its rings. For the fourth Sunday, she led the children in creating a model of the solar system using wax and wire. For the fifth Sunday, she talked about the mechanics of wings so they'd understand how birds fly. For the sixth Sunday, she took them on a walk in the woods to point out the ways that animals had been made with certain features to help them to survive winters.

On the seventh Sunday, she was sick, and so she rested.

Other parents began to ask if their children could move into Anne's class.