When they returned to Green Gables, Anne and Katherine turned in, and so did the twins. Mrs. Lynde and Marilla were still up, still working on their knitting, the picture of bliss in older years.

He wished them a good night. He had one more errand to run before returning home. Marilla stopped him.

"The guest room is made up for you, Gilbert," She said with a knowing smile. He had and would always be the ultimate gentleman where Anne was concerned. Marilla knew that. "As long as there's no funny business between you and my Anne at all hours of the night."

Mrs. Lynde laughed loudly. "There's no fear of that, Marilla," she said in her puffed up gossip voice. "That mustache quashed any romance between them this afternoon and I suspect it will until he gets rid of it."

He brought his hand up to the mustache. Was that why Anne had stroked it earlier? Why she hadn't kissed him good night? Was that why there had been awkwardness between them?

Oh.

Marilla must have been in on the joke. "I wouldn't let him stay if he shaved it off." Her wink was enough.

"But," he started. "All the medical students at Redmond have mustaches. They make us look dignified."

Both of the older women laughed. He felt like a petulant child, like he was too young to understand the joke.

"A word of advice, young Mr. Blythe," Marilla said once she stopped laughing. "If the other medical students suddenly decide to jump from a cliff, don't join them."

He realized how foolish he sounded then. He couldn't help but smile with them.

"Alright," he said. "I see both of your points. You may have your fun and then I will run the very important errand for Anne."

Mrs. Lynde smiled. "That Blythe constitution thrives again," She said looking at him with an appreciative look. "Any other man would have run from the house by now."

Something deep inside him had always loved challenging Mrs. Lynde, something similar to the same way he loved to challenge Anne. "Do your worst," he said.

Mrs. Lynde, the town gossip could have a harsh tongue so he expected worse than he got.

"Save the mustache and beard for when you're older, son," She said. "Most men with beards and mustaches already have more children than fingers on one hand and more years to their name."

Marilla nodded along. "Perhaps even skip it all together when our Anne is involved."

Mrs. Lynde nodded along. "Happy wife, happy life."

He decided to take that piece of advice to heart.

"Thank you, ladies," he said with a small bow. "I am always grateful for your advice on married life. Now, I should go see my father before he turns the lights out and I get completely turned around in the dark."

He bid them goodbye and bundled himself up. The journey to his fathers was one he had taken many times since he had proposed to Anne. He wouldn't get lost, the idea was comical, but the care the older women had shown him was not lost on him.

His father was still up, the puppy, at Anne's insistance for Katherine Brooke was napping near the fire.

"Gil, my boy!" His father said as he came through the front door knocking snow from his boots. The whole thing felt familiar, even though he had been away at Medical School for months.

Once he was done and unbundled, his father stood in the doorway, a proud look upon his face. "You've certainly grown into a handsome young man," he said as he hugged him with a backslapping hug that could wake the dead. "Medical school has done you well, or is it the Anne-Girl you're so fond of?"

Gilbert couldn't help but smile, the same way he always did when Anne was mentioned. "A little bit of both, I suppose."

His father could never sit idly by when he spotted a lie. For years during his formative years, his father had been adept at spotting his lies, deliberate or not. "Has something happened with Anne?" He pulled Gilbert toward the fire and sat him on the fine chairs for company.

Gilbert reluctantly told the whole story about Anne's icy reception. His father's loud raucous laughter filled the sitting room, woke the puppy and sent his mother tearing down the stairs.

"John?" She called from the stairs, concern on her face, her hair unkempt. So unlike Martha Blythe.

"Come on down, Martha, my dear, our boy has returned at last." He beckoned her to join him on the couch. "And does he have a story to tell of his adventures over at Green Gables!"

His father always loved his mother, deeply, truly, unwaveringly so. Gilbert couldn't help but hope he and Anne would have the same love, the same devotion, the same calm, warm, comfortable interactions he had seen from his parents since he could remember. His mother listened to his father recount the story, with all the laughter in the appropriate places, then she really looked at Gilbert, really looked at him in the first time in nearly a year and a half.

"Well," his mother said gently, in her usual way. "I suppose a man shouldn't wear a mustache until it fits his face, at least well into his thirties." Her eyes were kind as she smiled at him. "Dear, I'm not saying it's not handsome, but facial hair should be earned. Not all women prefer a man with facial hair."

"Dad has a mustache," Gilbert answered, once more feeling like the petulant child being told no. "And nearly a full beard."

His mother nodded. "And you still wonder why you're my only child?"

His father burst into laugher again. "It's all about compromise, Gil," he said once he stopped laughing. "I give in and let your mother shave my mustache clean off every five years and she promises not to leave me for another five." A knowing look of love between them. "Tomorrow is five years, isn't it, my love?"

His mother looked too perfect as she curled up next to him. "I can't remember if it's four or five this year." She brushed her thumb across his mustache. "I suppose we could leave it another year." The same motion Anne had done.

An idea struck him in that moment. "Dad," he said, pulling it all together as he spoke. "Can I borrow your shaving kit?" He had left his in Kingsport foolishly.

His father simply smiled. "Martha dear?" He turned to her. "Would you mind if we skipped the tradition just this once?"

Instead, his mother moved under the Christmas tree and brought forth a present wrapped in brown paper. "I was thinking you and Anne could start a tradition of your own." The same weight and shape of his father's old shaving kit. "Call it a mother's intuition." She kissed his forehead. "Now go on," she said. "Marilla made up the nice guest room for you. You don't want to show any disrespect to your future mother-in-law."

He swallowed the tears of happiness that threatened to fall. "Thank you, mother," he said. He could never put into words how much the gift meant to him.

How much it would mean to him and Anne.

After a few more hugs and congratulations, Gilbert made his way back to Green Gables and snuck one last unexpected present under the tree.