At this auspicious moment a knock sounded at the kitchen door . `` That must be Mr. Shearer , '' thought Anne . `` I 'm in a dreadful mess but I 'll have to run down as I am , for he 's always in a hurry . '' Down flew Anne to the kitchen door . If ever a charitable floor did open to swallow up a miserable , befeathered damsel the Green Gables porch floor should promptly have engulfed Anne at that moment . On the doorstep were standing Priscilla Grant , golden and fair in silk attire , a short , stout gray-haired lady in a tweed suit , and another lady , tall stately , wonderfully gowned , with a beautiful , highbred face and large , black-lashed violet eyes , whom Anne `` instinctively felt , '' as she would have said in her earlier days , to be Mrs. Charlotte E. Morgan . In the dismay of the moment one thought stood out from the confusion of Anne 's mind and she grasped at it as at the proverbial straw . All Mrs. Morgan 's heroines were noted for `` rising to the occasion . '' No matter what their troubles were , they invariably rose to the occasion and showed their superiority over all ills of time , space , and quantity . Anne therefore felt it was HER duty to rise to the occasion and she did it , so perfectly that Priscilla afterward declared she never admired Anne Shirley more than at that moment . No matter what her outraged feelings were she did not show them . She greeted Priscilla and was introduced to her companions as calmly and composedly as if she had been arrayed in purple and fine linen . To be sure , it was somewhat of a shock to find that the lady she had instinctively felt to be Mrs. Morgan was not Mrs. Morgan at all , but an unknown Mrs. Pendexter , while the stout little gray-haired woman was Mrs. Morgan ; but in the greater shock the lesser lost its power . Anne ushered her guests to the spare room and thence into the parlor , where she left them while she hastened out to help Priscilla unharness her horse . `` It 's dreadful to come upon you so unexpectedly as this , '' apologized Priscilla , `` but I did not know till last night that we were coming . Aunt Charlotte is going away Monday and she had promised to spend today with a friend in town . But last night her friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever . So I suggested we come here instead , for I knew you were longing to see her . We called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us . She is a friend of aunt 's and lives in New York and her husband is a millionaire .
We ca n't stay very long , for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back XXXXX the hotel by five o'clock . ''
If In as at for from over to while with