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 of dull middle life that followed . And the coming of Anne -- the vivid , imaginative , impetuous child with her heart of love , and her world of fancy , bringing with her color and warmth and radiance , until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose . Marilla felt that out of her sixty years she had lived only the nine that had followed the advent of Anne . And Anne would be home tomorrow night . The kitchen door opened . Marilla looked up expecting to see Mrs. Lynde .
Anne stood before her , tall and starry-eyed , with her hands full XXXXX Mayflowers and violets .
In about at for like of over through to until