Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after the lapse of time . The letters were tender , intimate , sacred . To Anne , the sweetest of all was the one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence . It was full of a proud young mother 's accounts of `` baby '' -- her cleverness , her brightness , her thousand sweetnesses . `` I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake , '' Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript . Probably it was the last sentence she had ever penned . The end was very near for her . `` This has been the most beautiful day of my life , '' Anne said to Phil that night . `` I 've FOUND my father and mother . Those letters have made them REAL to me . I 'm not an orphan any longer . I feel as if I had opened a book and found roses of yesterday , sweet and beloved , between its leaves . '' Chapter XXII Spring and Anne Return to Green Gables The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at Green Gables , for the spring evening was chilly ; through the open east window drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the night . Marilla was sitting by the fire -- at least , in body . In spirit she was roaming olden ways , with feet grown young . Of late Marilla had thus spent many an hour , when she thought she should have been knitting for the twins . `` I suppose I 'm growing old , '' she said . Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years , save to grow something thinner , and even more angular ; there was a little more gray in the hair that was still twisted up in the same hard knot , with two hairpins -- WERE they the same hairpins ? -- still stuck through it . But her expression was very different ; the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor had developed wonderfully ; her eyes were gentler and milder , her smile more frequent and tender .
Marilla was thinking of her whole past life , her cramped but not unhappy childhood , the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood , the long , gray , narrow , monotonous years XXXXX dull middle life that followed .
In after at by for of over through to with