Author's Note:

Thank you to all the amazing, wonderful Anne-girls out there who have been so kind to review and follow this. I am still getting a chance to respond and thank you all personally (Real Life can be so pesky!) and I wish to also thank the fantastic readers who have logged on as guests.

This story is still very fluid and of-the-moment and I take each and every one of your insights and comments around with me.

Your feedback has already helped to make this more than I thought it would be.

Joanne x

Chapter Three

A Likely Looking Girl

"Do you suppose," the overeager, excitable voice questioned at a speed and pitch not often encountered by the flabbergasted lady, "that the founding fathers of Hopetown so named it as a symbol of their faith or an ironical mediation on their despair? Certainly I would like to believe that the former is the case; who would want to name the place you are to live based on a private joke? But I don't think even they could have dreamed up a scenario whereby an orphan asylum which feeds on hope should so be named a town of hope – as if it were almost a beacon as such. I've never thought of it that way before. Do you like the symmetry of that? Because I do. I have often had to cling onto Hope myself. I remain resolutely hopeful. Do you think a new family might come for me soon?"

Mrs Cadbury, director of the very institution whose name had precipitated such conjecture, had cause to blink several times before understanding there was even a question in the torrent of words which swept past her, let alone form the ability to answer it.

"Goodness, child! Mrs Hammond only dropped you off this afternoon! Or should I say deposited, abandoned and otherwise demonstrated a clear dereliction of her duty." The woman's thin lips were made to virtually disappear in the disapproving line they formed across her face. "Can we not actually have you settled for one night here before you make plans to leave?"

"I'm sorry, Mrs Cadbury. I meant no offence. You have indeed made it much nicer since I was here last. I don't rightly notice any improvements yet, but then I was away nearly three years."

"Was it only three years?" Mrs Cadbury sighed. "It seems like only yesterday, Anne Shirley. You've hardly changed a bit, but for the fact you're slightly taller and have a much larger and more worrisome vocabulary."

"Oh but my hair, though!" Anne tried not to plead. "Do you think it might have darkened up in that time? I'm eleven now. I can't ever hope for nut brown – that's something even my imagination couldn't tackle. But do you think perhaps it is on its way to auburn?"

Mrs Cadbury's thin lips very nearly curved upwards, before she remembered herself.

"Vanity is a sin, Anne Shirley. No more such ramblings from you or you'll wake the entire building. Get into bed now. Over there, by the window. And try to keep your mouth closed till morning."

Anne did as instructed. Mrs Cadbury didn't so much tuck her in as wave the threadbare blanket in her general direction. Anne brought it up to her chin, and all that was seen were her big, grave grey eyes in her pale, thin face, and the faint light from the streetlamp through the window made the image positively otherworldly.

Anne realised soon enough that there had been a great many changes at the orphanage, even if they hadn't extended to the furnishings. There were so many more little ones about; crying babies and bewildered toddlers with noses perpetually streaming; youngsters who constantly ran up and down the stairs or, more audaciously, attempted to slide the bannisters, when they weren't hollering over some grievance or other, real or imagined; a tall, fair, mostly silent boy a little older than herself who someone had whispered was a recent arrival, and who surveyed proceedings from the relative safety of various corners of the establishment with a look of bewildered panic.

It was just as well, Anne thought, that she was quite good with children. She'd had enough practice; Mrs Hammond had certainly had her share of them.

There was a beautiful little girl in particular, appropriately called Lily; delicate as the flower itself, her enviable nut brown hair flowing as if a rippling river down her back, her green eyes wide and patient and wondering. She wore the world weary air of an old soul, and went about the business of the day with startling seriousness for an individual no more than five. As Anne began to read to the children at night, as had always been her habit, she started with a few of them heaped on her bed; soon her audience grew to such an extent that she had to take a chair and have half of them perched on the rug beneath her. The Lily Maid, as Anne had christened her, bestowing a literary gift the child was oblivious to, hovered about on the very edges of the group, as an ethereal presence; a ghost with her pale face and her shimmering hair and her tiny pale nightgown.

Another reluctant fringe dweller during these night time readings was the new, tall boy, who didn't so much stick to the shadows as attempt to fade into the furniture. He and Anne, it struck her, were almost the oldest of the children now even at their own still-tender ages; once thirteen or fourteen, boys invariably tried their luck in the various and invariably risky workplaces about town; the factories that gobbled up their ready, cheap labour; apprenticing themselves to a trade or other; even taking to the streets to sell newspapers or to shine the shoes of the impatient adults they accosted on the sidewalks. Girls tried their best at gaining a position in a house somewhere, the lowest of the low; cleaning grates and lighting fires and scrubbing floors, swapping the monotonous chores of the asylum for the drudgery of domestic service.

In the interests of finding any sort of companion, Anne finally approached him a week or so after her arrival. He was invariably housed in a corner by a window somewhere, as if at any moment he would throw himself out, in sheer desperation, in his bid for freedom. He read a little or whittled occasionally, or drew pictures with a long finger in the dust coating the windowsills. Mostly he stared at the children as they went about their activities or haphazard lessons, and today he stared at her as she made her long approach.

"Hello," she offered her hand and a wide, game smile, "I'm Anne. Anne Shirley. Anne is spelt with an 'e' you know, just to be clear. Or you may call me Cordelia, which I much prefer, but Mrs Cadbury and Matron have rather discouraged that. Very pleased to meet you."

Her arm was extended to him; her hand awaited his own. He looked at it and then at her with pale blue eyes that could have been bright and cheerful, but that had dulled in the wake of his disinterest in his life and in whatever disasters had previously befallen him.

He took the hand and shook it briefly, in a grip surprisingly firm, but his mouth did not work to make greeting in return.

This hardly troubled Anne, who was used to having one-sided conversations at the best of times. She hopped up neatly onto the windowsill, swinging her legs.

"You seem to have been here a relatively short time. I know well the feeling of terror this place and the marauding children must instil. We are rather a wild lot. I should know; I've lived here my whole life, except for the past few years when I was fostered out, mostly to Mr and Mrs Harrison and their frighteningly large family. Three sets of twins! Can you imagine?"

His expression remained impassive, but he was listening, and she pressed on.

"So what is your sorry tale? How did your parents die? Was it very tragical?"

His face registered his shock at her blunt effrontery, and his eyes widened by degrees. He attempted to make a response, now, but his lips were clearly ineffectual in forming the words.

"Please don't be troubled by my question. You see you're here, so forgive me, but your circumstances are rather a foregone conclusion." She attempted a wry smile, only to be met by his stricken eyes, and she blanched momentarily at the pain in them.

"Well…" she paused. "At any rate, mine died of the fever, years and years ago. I was only three months old. Mrs Cadbury says I have the rare distinction of being one of the youngest ever orphans in her records."

Anne's prattle began to lose momentum. She darted a glance around the room, and then concentrated her gaze on the rhythm her legs made, the soft thwack, thwack of shoe meeting wall.

There was a low, soft rumble. "Tom."

Anne looked up, surprised.

"I'm Tom. Tom Caruthers." His face was watchful and wary.

"That's delightful!" Anne broke out into a relieved smile. "What a distinguished name! I certainly wouldn't imagine that one away. Thomas Caruthers, Esquire. That has a real ring to it."

"No," he looked a little affronted. "Just Tom."

"Oh. Of course." Anne thought he was bypassing an obvious opportunity, but did not pursue it.

Tom Caruthers now frowned severely, looking down at his already large hands, which were still calloused and work roughened, Anne noted, though he had been at the orphanage for perhaps four weeks. He shifted uncomfortably in the hardbacked chair he had been seated in. He cleared his throat.

"It's not tragic," he almost mumbled.

"I beg your pardon?"

He had been addressing his hands, but now he lifted those blue eyes to her. He already had some of the features of a man; the height, the makings of a strong, broad shouldered torso; the wavering voice, unsure or not if it wanted to leave boyhood behind. But what she saw, clearly, in those eyes now was the unmistakeable heartbreak of the lonely, frightened child.

"My circumstances are not tragic. They are typical. My father left us when I was little. My mother was sick for a long time, and then she died. No one else wanted me. So now I'm here."

He didn't rail to the skies or remonstrate his Fate to the heavens. He admitted it with a weary, wretched resignation.

Anne swallowed carefully. She tried to not let these troubles travel with her. They were hard, heavy stones she emptied from her pockets. They were paper boats, launched on a current, floating gently away.

"That's OK," her smile was wistful, and he looked caught by the huskiness that had replaced the usual chirpiness of her tone. "They didn't want me, either."

Matron came to them one early morning soon after, rousing all from their far-from-restful slumbers, demanding that they vacate their beds this instant, wash immediately, and begin on their chores even before they were to receive a whiff of their meagre breakfasts.

She was a woman whose appearance contradicted her personality; she looked all rounded jollity, with a plump, open face and air of brisk efficiency, and yet her sour expression and sharp tongue could lash and wound, with or without the birch stick that took up its threatening presence on the shelf inside the dormitory.

Mrs Cadbury came to check on them as they were in a flurry of sweeping and scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, and ridding every available surface of the grime that had taken up long residence. Her heightened color made her seem feverish, and the hair that she usually kept in tidy, if not exactly fashionable, style was in disarray. She brandished a telegram in her hand.

"Children! Children!" she shrilled for their attention. "A very important man is coming to visit us today. Little ones need to be on best behaviour or there will be no supper for the rest of the week. Older children, it is the Inspector – you will know full well what that means!"

Tom, who had no idea at all what that meant, flashed a quick look to Anne from the other side of the room. He had begun to search in her the answers to his questions regarding the new world he was trying to navigate. She met his eyes and risked a quick, droll eyeroll.

"Tom!" Mrs Cadbury demanded. "You will chop more firewood and organise a fire in every room. Take another of the boys with you. Anne Shirley – you must come with me."

Anne scampered after her, her imagination alight with what her role in events would be. Mrs Cadbury did not slow her pace as she mounted the stairs, throwing the story over her shoulder.

"Martha our girl is visiting her sick mother. Of course she is! What in the world possessed me to take pity on her is beyond me, for now we are in such a pickle! Anne you will have to be serving girl today. The Inspector will take tea in my office after his tour of the asylum. Goodness only knows what we will give him! Cook is making something now. My only hope is that it is even edible!"

Mrs Cadbury had reached her office, spartan as the rest of the building, although at least it was warm, and the handsome cabinet gleamed polished mahogany, proudly displaying its delicate contents.

Mrs Cadbury thrust a starched apron into Anne's hands. She looked down upon it for a startled moment, and then quickly put it on. She caught her reflection in the glass. She thought it might be the cleanest, whitest thing she had ever had near her person in her life.

"Take the tea set out, the one with the roses, and arrange it on the low table. It is my own personal collection – if you so much as chip a single saucer I will have your head, Anne Shirley! Practice pouring with a little cold water first. When the Inspector comes, you will not speak unless spoken to. You will not give any opinions. You will be demure and respectful. Are we understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Anne murmured, giving a neat little curtsy, already delighted to be cast in such a role.

"Yes, well… I must make myself presentable now," she put a hand to her hair. "Do not leave this room!"

Anne waited with mounting trepidation and excitement as she stood by the door, eventually hearing the faint greetings of the children chorused in welcome for their esteemed visitor; the steady commentary of Mrs Cadbury as she explained, in exacting detail, everything that opened and shut in the entire building; and the slow heavy tread of a man's shoes as they made their way up the wide, winding staircase towards her. How fantastical her imagination supposed he might look like! She had only ever seen him before from a long distance, and she had been much younger. Would he be straight out of Dickens, with a delightfully improbable name and a terrific handlebar moustache? Would he be amazingly awful; fat, balding and grotesque? Would he pose and pontificate, making himself secretly ridiculous?

The reality was far more disappointing. Mrs Cadbury finally swept in, her color still high but, it appeared, for an entirely different reason, and a man, tall, but not overly tall, stood in the doorway, dressed not in foppish finery but in professional black, with a very small, neat moustache, and the tiny twitch of a smile.

"You are most welcome, Sir," Anne dipped her head, offering a deep curtsy.

"Yes, I am sure that I am," was his sardonic reply.

He sat in the most comfortable chair as indicated by Mrs Cadbury, stretching his legs out, looking around curiously. He had the self satisfied air of a man who was once moderately handsome in his youth and still rather believed himself so. On closer inspection the years had not been kind; there was a flabbiness to his middle which spoke of too many teas in too many offices; his eyes, two coals in a slightly sallow face, were glittering and cold; when Anne served his tea with a flourish he leant over, too close, and his breath told readily of his slow slide into dissipation.

"Well, well…" he chuckled. "What do we have here?" he indicated to Anne with a nod of his head.

"This here is one of our own orphans, Mr Flagstaff. Anne Shirley."

"Anne Shirley…" he repeated, stroking his chin. His glance roamed up and down, lingeringly.

"Well, Mrs Cadbury, a likely looking girl for service, at any rate, and not much else I should think. The hair alone is quite the abomination. Make sure she can at least make her mark and know basic figures before you cast her out onto some unsuspecting household."

He turned again to Anne, noting with interest the bright red spots that had appeared on her pale cheeks. "Work hard, girl, and mind yourself. I'm sure someone or other will eventually take you."

Anne Shirley, who could do rather more than sign her name and who had taught Mrs Hammond's older brood to read, write and figure long division, could merely offer up a tremulous smile and another quick curtsy.

"Yes, Sir. Thank you very much, Sir." She tried her level best not to rattle the tea cup in her hand.

"Do you think we will get to order anytime soon?" Charlie Sloane grumbled, shaking his head and frowning at the empty tea cup before him, delicate rose leaf pattern gleaming mockingly, unsullied this half an hour by human lips.

"Maybe we need to try something not so fashionable and not so close to your campus," Jane Andrews advised patiently. "It takes Di, Ruby and I a clear forty minutes just to get across town sometimes, you know."

"It takes me forty five," Fred Wright added, not quite so amiably as usual.

Charlie was less interested in the people already clustered around the two tables they had commandeered within his now formerly favourite tea room, regardless of how long it had taken them to make the journey, than he was about those who were yet to arrive.

"Where is Ruby, anyway?" he demanded.

Jane and Diana Barry exchanged a loaded look.

"Seeing one of her beaux," Diana explained. "I think it involves letting him down gently."

Charlie's scowl was most unimpressed. "The way that she plays with fellows, like a cat with a mouse – or several mice – is simply outrageous," he huffed.

The fact that Ruby Gillis had not played, tormented, stepped out with or otherwise shown the slightest interest in his own good self over the years was, surely, yet another indication of her extremely flawed character, no matter how attractive the outer shell.

"And what of the others, then?" Charlie's remaining patience, tenuous as that was, had nearly reached its limit. "What's the point of even meeting up if half of us sit around, starving and mad with thirst, waiting for the other half to grace us with their presence?"

"Well, I am sure that Diana wouldn't let you starve, Charlie. She made a lovely pastry the other week that it was your misfortune to miss out on," Jane beamed at her friend.

Diana grinned back at Jane. "I was so excited to actually start any actual cooking in my course after two solid weeks of just memorising French terms and measurements. I wouldn't have cared if I'd had to tackle escargot!"

"What?" Charlie grimaced.

"Just don't cross me, Charlie Sloane, and you won't have to find out."

Jane laughed merrily at Charlie's perturbed expression. Fred had been opening and closing his mouth, trying to find a space in the conversation for his own quiet interjection.

"It was a very good pastry, Diana," he murmured to her earnestly, his face flushing.

Diana turned to him, seated to her right. She was well used to Fred's kind, shy praise of her. She took it almost as a given, actually, though she didn't want it to spoil her, and would hate to toy with him as Ruby seemed to do with everyone. However, she found herself surprised to feel the warmth come to her cheeks regardless.

"Thank you very much, Fred," she gave a pleased smile, which he returned tenfold, reddening even more.

Jane scanned the room, waving a hand at two women already laughing as they came through the doors.

"Look, Charlie, rest easy!" she placated. "There's Pris and Phil now. And you know better than anyone that Gil has lots to do as president – of your year, mind you. He'll be here when he can."

Those seated at the table were too busy greeting the newest arrivals to properly appreciate Charlie's rather spectacular eye roll in response and dark mutterings of general foreboding.

Meanwhile Gilbert, hiding behind his new striped scarf, surveyed the merry group (Charlie being the obvious and unsurprising exception) through the wide front window, having deliberately waited for Priscilla and the irrepressible Phil to enter. He had run all the way from his Student Council meeting and had been relieved beyond belief to see the girls just ahead of him, running late themselves, and had slowed deliberately in order to let them go in before and so buy himself a few extra minutes. Not for the first time did he wonder if there were any young people left in Avonlea, because most of them, fortuitously, were with him herein Kingsport. All their various purposes and paths had crossed, and although they wouldn't be here together forever, there was the sweet knowledge that their journeys, at least for a little while, would intersect in this grand old town. They were great friends, and although he was inundated with new ones, he really wanted to hold onto them all. Even Charlie… mostly.

Friends. There it was, that word again, loaded with meaning. Gilbert unwound his scarf and smiled down proudly at the colors, the scarlet and white of Redmond, and contemplated the first time he had worn it in another new friend's presence...

"Goodness! That makes a statement! It's positively Arthurian!" she had teased, knowing smile firmly in place.

"Well yes, I do think it gives me the air of a Lancelot," he affirmed, grinning.

"Rather more of a Sir Dagonet, I believe," came her coy reply. *

"Ouch, Anne! You wound me!" he moaned, laughing, and even clutched at his side, for emphasis.

Gilbert turned away momentarily, towards the street, raising his face to catch the pale afternoon rays. They could be so unexpectedly lovely, these late October days, but he hardly minded storm clouds either, now, and he often contemplated how a conversation in the rain a mere three weeks ago, with a girl who had forgotten her umbrella, had started off as a necessary penance, and had become an unexpected gift.

He turned back, took a breath, and went inside.

He was greeted enthusiastically, as he always was, took his seat on the other side of Fred, and gave his order to the waitress who had materialised at his elbow, missing the look of offended exasperation Charlie, having only just received his own tea and cake, threw at him.

"So, what's news?" he smiled.

Fred, as he knew, was enjoying his business course, at a smaller, commercial college the other side of Kingsport, made necessary by the shock the previous year of the Wright farm nearly going under, due to genteel mismanagement and too many loans against it. Fred, surprising everyone, himself probably most of all, had taken the matter (meaning his extremely conservative parents) firmly in hand, insisted he be jointly responsible with his father for not only working the farm but running it as well, and that he himself would undertake the necessary formal qualifications to ensure such a circumstance never happened again.

Ruby was at the same institution as Fred, trying her hand at a short secretarial course, having tired of – for her - the tediousness of teaching. Priscilla had likewise given up the school in Carmody upon hearing that so many good chums appeared to be going to Redmond; Jane was the only one continuing to broaden young minds, at a small school on the outskirts of Kingsport, having moved back from the west whilst she waited for her older, richer beau to make up his mind; that she had made up hers about him was rather evident. Most surprising of all had been Diana; bemoaning the time they had all abandoned her to undertake their teacher training at Queens College three years ago, she had felt the narrowed parameters of her life keenly, and once emboldened by the knowledge that even Fred Wright would be in Kingsport for a time, had badgered her mother, and then enlisted the help of her Aunt Josephine Barry, to support her bid for freedom, even if it had meant a French cooking course.

Gilbert was sure the conversation was entertaining; Phil, Priscilla's newfound friend whom they had all likewise been delighted to come to know, could be fairly relied upon for that. He made the appropriate nods and murmurs but he knew his mind was drifting off …

"Well, the scarf is for the football team, Anne," he explained once their laughter had subsided.

"Oh, well, are we captain of that enterprise too?"

"Er, actually…"

"I know you were made captain, Gilbert," she shook her head, her tone indulgent. "Let's just say your movements around Redmond are fairly… well documented."

He let out an aggrieved sigh. "The perils of being popular…"

"Indeed," her smile was rather tighter, and she plucked at a few stray blades of grass from under their newly regular meeting spot by the shade of an obliging oak, which they now, after a few tentative starts, headed to automatically after English class.

Gilbert surveyed her, his dark brows drawing together. "You must find it rather… trivial… things like football, considering we are actually meant to be devoting ourselves to the pursuit of knowledge and all sorts of much higher purposes. And considering how hard we've all worked just to get here in the first place."

It still surprised him, the parallels to their experiences he kept unearthing. Anne, who had also taken her own teacher's certificate in one year at a college on the mainland, having won her own prize for academic achievement, as had he; how she had also taught, then, for two years, dreaming and saving towards Redmond. She had been his shadow self.

She gave him a look he couldn't quite fathom, and then drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them to her.

"Yes…" she smiled, softly, "how hard we've worked to get here."

Gilbert swallowed carefully, wishing she would let him uncover more about her… She was a book he was trying to read, but he feared he had the wrong translation. He sensed parts of her so hidden and protected, whole chapters of her life that he might never come to know. Their friendship, fledgling though it still was, had gathered pace and importance in a way he was still trying to fathom. He wished he could express that, although he was coming to so enjoy – perhaps too much – their verbal jousts, the teasing, almost affectionate asides … that she didn't always have to be that way with him. He hoped… he didn't even know what he hoped, except … he wanted to be more than that, to her.

In the heavy silence, he saw her transform. Her eyes refocussed, and she was back to being Anne.

"Gilbert Blythe," her smile lit on him, "of course football is not trivial. You have my hearty congratulations. Redmond, you know, will always have a football team… they may as well have someone so capable of leading them."

He smiled and nodded, acknowledging her praise, not wanting to know why it made him feel strangely hollow.

"Gilbert!" he realised Charlie was speaking. "I say, Gilbert!"

"Sorry, Charlie?" Gilbert surveyed him blankly.

He looked around at the interested faces, realising, yet again, that he had not a clue what was going on.

He groaned inwardly. I've got to stop doing that.

"I'm just saying I thought you were taking Maisie Monroe to the football club fundraising dance?"

Gilbert blinked, snapped back well and truly to the present. Unpleasantly.

"Yes… Yes, that's right. I am."

The groan had become an internal howl of frustration. Gilbert had indeed asked Maisie, a bubbly, beautiful co ed in his biology class, to the dance, in his very early weeks at Redmond. Something in him had been swayed by the obvious synchronicity everyone saw of the young man, new President of the Freshman Class, hero of the Arts Rush, in pairing with one of the prettiest and most popular girls in their year. It was a weak minded whim he almost instantly regretted, never more so than now. With the dance only two weeks away the knowledge of his upcoming escort duties no longer gave him any pleasure.

"And so does she know you've been seen in the company of a certain redhead three weeks in a row now? Fair play, Gil, spare a few ladies for the rest of us!"

The Avonlea girls, well used to Charlie and his pompous pronouncements, merely rolled their eyes; Pris and Phil, certainly not as used to Charlie and not really desiring to be, both pursed their lips, clearly affronted.

"What a special charm you do share with we ladies," Phil noted dryly.

Her wit was certainly lost on Charlie, but it hardly mattered; the entire table was now fixated on Gilbert.

"Redhead?" Fred asked curiously. This was news to him, too.

"I challenge you, Charlie, to refer to my new platonic friend from English class, Anne Shirley, by the color of her hair," Gilbert scowled.

"Anne Shirley?" Pris piped up, and she and Phil shared a look. "We know her!"

"She's in the Debating Club with us. And Art History," Philippa explained. "Great fun and clever as they come."

"Well, clever or not, she's obviously fascinating. I called out to you a dozen times the other day and you were clearly oblivious!" Charlie crowed.

Gilbert's countenance darkened considerably, and he wondered very much if he could make Charlie oblivious. He sighed deeply to himself. Of course, despite choosing a secluded area of the smaller quad, under the protection of a very large oak tree, they had still been observed, and of course it had to have been by Charlie. He was the Rachel Lynde of Redmond already.

"Gilbert, don't be like Ruby! It really isn't fair to be seeing two girls at the same time," Jane gently admonished, feeling she should be the one to say it, considering she was the only one of them seeing anyone seriously, even if he did happen to be in Winnipeg.

Gilbert, exasperated, tried to call on his much vaunted charm, which would be of better value at this moment than becoming defensive.

He pasted on a winning smile. "I wholeheartedly agree, Jane. That is why I am escorting Maisie to the dance and innocently discussing term papers, in the full view of the entire college population, with Anne."

Charlie snorted in derision. Fred raised his brows, questioningly. Jane rolled her eyes, well remembering, as Gilbert ought, the summer before Queens when he had indeed gone around with herself one day and Ruby the next, in clear violation of his current professed code of conduct.

Pris looked on in silent bemusement, always having thought Gilbert a darling but rather enjoying the spectacle of him being on the back foot for a change.

Phil, who had come to know the strikingly handsome, effortlessly charming and frustratingly brilliant Gilbert Blythe in Mathematics, let alone many of the social events around campus, was less concerned about him in that moment than the girl they were actually discussing.

"You know, I've often thought of bringing Anne Shirley along to our catch ups," Phil mused aloud. "You'd all like her – she's a treasure. You were all so good in adopting me and taking me under your wings, friendless creature that I was, that I am sure we could do the same for her."

"That we should all be as friendless as you, Philippa Gordon!" Pris laughed.

Diana watched Gilbert take a long sip of his cold tea, and wasn't entirely convinced of his professed indifference.

They were neighbours at home, she and Gilbert, and she had been staring wistfully at his handsome features for half her life, so she thought perhaps she could get a fair reading of them now.

When Gilbert and his father had returned to Avonlea from Alberta, all those years ago, he was older and handsome and clever, and Diana Barry had swooned over Gilbert Blythe as much as the rest of them. He seemed to be very well disposed to being swooned over. He was not shy in his efforts with the young ladies, and there was a different girl on his arm every week … some of the girls here or mentioned at this very table, in fact. Though the rub was he had been so infuriatingly charming and good natured about it all that none of the young ladies could stay cross at him for very long, even once they had been inevitably replaced.

Diana Barry, despite perhaps having the best claim of all to his transitory affections, never quite found herself being one of those young ladies, though he was as friendly and flirtatious to her as to any of the others. She never received a kiss from him behind the schoolhouse, or an invitation to a dance, or found herself taking a long, secluded stroll with him down Lover's Lane. And if once she had been worried that his perceived lack of interest had been a slight, now she saw, more clearly, that perhaps it had been a compliment.

Now, she considered how everyone had known about the upcoming dance with Maisie Monroe. No one before now had known about this Anne Shirley. And might not have known for quite a while yet except for Charlie's big mouth. It made Diana wonder.

"You know, it's becoming a little difficult to meet in town now," she claimed suddenly. "It's busy and most of us have to travel. I was thinking from next week we could have our catch ups on a Sunday instead, back at Aunt Jo's rooms, where our landlady can chaperone us. We can take all the time we want. I can practise my French pastries – goodness knows I still need to. Phil and Pris you might as well invite your Anne Shirley when you next see her, or else everyone will meet her before I do. And Fred you must invite any of your new business chums as well. We'll make it a real meeting place!"

Attention was instantly and very neatly diverted away from Gilbert and his earnest talks with young ladies, redheaded or otherwise. In the next moment everyone was applauding the genius of Diana and clamouring to give their views on the arrangements, from the refreshments to the invitees.

Diana stole a glance at Gilbert, noting his wide, relieved grin. When his eyes met hers, he gave her a wink. Naturally.

Chapter Notes

"Yeh're a likely-looking girl and hev a right smart way o' stepping."

(Anne of the Island Ch. 34)

*Rather than Sir Lancelot, the brave, handsome hero of legend in the Knights of the Round Table, Sir Dagonet was King Arthur's court jester.

Tennyson wrote his Idylls of the King (published between 1859 and 1885) detailing his version, in twelve narrative poems, of King Arthur, the knights, Guinevere and the rise and fall of his kingdom. Though we know, of course, that canon Anne probably much preferred his The Lady of Shalott.

I appreciate you all suspending your disbelief in having half of Avonlea now here in Kingsport. The joys of writing an AU!