Anne wasn't doing anything.

She was sitting and staring at Walter, who was looking through a book. He turned the pages this way and that, and sometimes held the book upside down. She'd been looking at it with him all week, and now she was done with the whole problematic book and left it to him to figure out.

"What have you got there, Walter?" Gilbert asked, coming into the room with a piece of cake for Anne. Anne took it from him but didn't eat it, her eyes glued on her son while Gilbert sat down on the floor with him.

"Book," Walter said. He held it up for Gilbert to see.

"What's the Same?" Gilbert read from the title on the cover. "Oh, it's a book of puzzles. All right. What's the same...look, here are three yellow ducks and two white geese." He flipped through the pages with Walter, seeing what the rest of it was. "Which flower is taller? ...Which tree has more apples?"

After Walter had pointed to the wrong things several times, Anne let out a big sigh without realizing it.

Gilbert turned around, looking at her. "What?"

"He's been looking at that book for a solid week and he still can't figure it out."

"Maybe it isn't meant for two year olds," Gilbert said, turning it over to see if there were directions on it anywhere.

"Or maybe he's just..." Anne went silent, then moved on to a different matter. "Jane sent him that."

Gilbert's eyebrows raised. "Oh. I didn't know you were speaking again."

"We're not," Anne told him. "I mean, I'm not. She writes. Now she's sent him a book...she's using the same ploy her mother uses."

"What do you mean?" Gilbert asked.

"I wasn't responding to her letters, so she sent a gift. That way I'll be forced to respond. Whether I feel obligated to her send a thank you note, or whether I just mail the book back to her and say I don't want it, either way she's getting me to answer her."

Gilbert nodded slowly. He could see Mrs. Andrews using a ploy like that, but he didn't think Jane would think in such a way. He understood Anne's point, though.

"Do you want me to take it back to her for you?"

"No, because sending it back- even if you do it for me- is a response. And I'm not responding to her! Not at all. I won't give her the satisfaction." With another look at Walter, she said regretfully, "So I'll just let him keep it, I suppose. ...Though it certainly isn't doing him any good."

Gilbert watched Walter. "Maybe he just likes looking at the pictures."

"It would be nice if he got more out of it than looking at the pictures."

Walter dropped the book suddenly and ran to Marilla's room, wanting his rocking horse.

"He asks for 'Aunt Jane's Mama' nearly every day," Anne said once he had left the room. "Why can't he just forget about her? His head is empty except for the things I don't want him to remember!"

"His head is empty?" Gilbert asked with a strange expression.

"Gilbert, I hate that look he gets," Anne said lowly.

"What look?" Gilbert asked, concerned.

"Sometimes, when he doesn't understand something, he gets this dumb, empty-headed look on his face. And then I just begin to think there's...not a lot going on up there."

Gilbert, after a moment asked hesitantly, "Are you sure you're not..."

"What?"

"If you're insistent on looking for something, you'll probably find it."

Anne pulled back from him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing...nothing, I-" Gilbert shook his head.

It seemed they might be on the verge of an argument.

But Walter came back in, already tired of his rocking horse and wanting something else to do.

"Mamaaa," he said happily, putting his arms out to cling to Anne.

But Gilbert scooped him up instead. He tickled him, making him laugh. "Let's play hide and seek," he told the little boy. "We'll hide, and mama has to come find us."

Walter liked this idea.

But the game was easy for Anne to win, because every time she came within close range, Walter jumped out of where he'd been hiding and ran to her, saying "Mama, I here, I hide here!" and threw himself at her.

Gilbert stayed a few nights at his own house until Marilla told him she did not like him going back and forth every day in such extreme weather and that he ought to just stay with them for the duration of his winter break.

"Gil-ber live with us now," Walter said happily.

"For a while," Gilbert told him- not wanting to promise something he could not keep- "Until I go back to school."

"I go with you," Walter announced. "I go with you to school."

"You'll go to school when you're bigger," Gilbert said. "Not now."

"But I big now! I go to school, and mama go to school too."

"Mama doesn't get to go to school," Anne murmured. "But someday you can go to school. Would you like that? You can read stories yourself instead of just listening to me tell them."

"I not go to school," Walter shook his head, changing his mind.

"Why not?" Anne asked him.

"I wanna hear mama's stories," he decided. "I stay with you."

"Where we going," Walter asked.

"Tonight is mama's play," Gilbert said, putting on a tie. "We're going to church."

"I want to play, too," Walter said happily.

Gilbert laughed. "Not that kind of play."

Once at church, Walter was unhappy because he couldn't stay with Gilbert during the play. Anne dropped him off at the nursery before church.

"He's too little to sit through it quietly," Marilla said, seeing that Gilbert looked a little disappointed not to have Walter with them. "He'd keep waving and calling out mama, mama every time he saw Anne! He'll be all right in the nursery. He'll play with Clara and he'll forget all about the show."

The pastor began the service, and Gilbert gave Anne's hand a squeeze before she left them to go find her pupils.

Anne felt a little frantic, making sure everyone was ready.

"Miss Shirley, I can't breathe in here," one little boy complained. Anne loosened his sheep costume for him, and then began going to every child to make minor adjustments and make sure everyone looked right.

"I can't remember my lines," a little girl said frantically, as another began to cry: "I'm afraid to go up there..."

Anne gathered the children together. "Now listen, all of you. You don't need to be afraid. You've rehearsed and rehearsed, and you've done well every time, so you'll do well tonight, too. I know you will. I have confidence in every single one of you. And if you do forget your lines, it won't hurt the play- you all know the story well enough now that you can just make something up and keep going." She grabbed the hands of the two children next to her, and they in turn grabbed others, until the whole group was connected, hand by hand. Anne went on, "Let's remember that our performance tonight isn't about us, and it isn't even about the people watching us. It's just about telling a story- we're putting a story out into the world. And if we can do that with love and joy and pride in it, then we'll come out all right."

In a few minutes, the pastor announced Anne.

"Good evening, everyone," Anne said, her voice stronger than she had thought it would be. "Thank you for coming out in the cold tonight to watch the children in their play. It means a lot to us. ...I want to thank you for the way you've entrusted your little ones to me. I'm enjoying my class immensely. I want you to know that, and I hope I have lived up to the responsibility you've given me." She smiled. "And now...may I present to you, your children in...The First Christmas."

"Anne wrote the play herself," Marilla murmured to Gilbert. He noted the pride in her voice. Then she pushed that down and said, "Of course, she used the Bible in deciding what to write."

As Anne left, she patted her first little actor on the head. "You're on," she whispered to Richard.

Richard, in a long robe and a hood wrapped around his head, walked out onto the stage and sat down. "Hello," he said. "My name is Luke. I wrote a book, long, long ago, to tell you all about something that happened on the night that we call Christmas..."

Richard got through his speech without any difficulty at all, and Anne stopped crossing her fingers.

Next came Agnes, the little girl who was playing Mary, mother of Jesus. She was followed onstage by Henry, the boy who was playing the angel Gabriel.

"Mary," Gabriel said.

But Mary did not turn around. She had gotten her skirt caught on a bale of hay, and was trying to pull it off.

"Mary!" Gabriel repeated, walking closer and poking her in the shoulder.

Mary jumped, nearly shouting.

Anne's cheeks grew pink at the stifled noises around her as the congregation tried not to laugh.

"Mary, I have come to tell you something," Gabriel announced loudly.

But Gabriel was supposed to introduce himself, before he told her he had news for her. Because he hadn't introduced himself, Mary asked instead:

"Who are you, anyway?"

Again there was stifled laughter.

"I am an angel called Gabriel," he finally remembered. Moving on, he repeated his first line: "I have come to tell you something."

But it seemed Gabriel forgot his actual line, and tried to manage with what he knew was supposed to happen next:

"You're having a baby. ...Congratulations."

Anne was embarrassed that this again caused laughter.

This time the laughter was loud enough to distract the children, and Mary looked thrown off. "Miss Shirley," she whispered loudly to Anne in the first row. "Am I supposed to be happy about this? Or sad? I forget."

Anne sighed. Trying to be unnoticed, but knowing it was a futile endeavor, she whispered to the girl: "You're supposed to ask Gabriel 'How could this be?'"

Mary either didn't hear or didn't understand, and put on a mopey expression and wailed, "Why me?"

Amid laughter, Gabriel put his hands up, saying, "Don't shoot the messenger!"

And then Mary and Gabriel stood still, staring at each other, neither knowing what was to come next.

Anne wanted to sink into the floor.

Finally, to fill up the space, Mary asked, "Why did you have to tell me this?"

Gabriel shook his head. "Look, lady, it was my job, all right? God just sent me down here. I don't make the rules."

The audience no longer tried to contain their laughter.

Anne stopped feeling embarrassed and laughed right along with them.