prompt:
Chapter: |THE next three weeks were busy ones at Green Gables, for Anne was
getting ready to go to Queen's, and there was much sewing to be done,
and many things to be talked over and arranged. Anne's outfit was
ample and pretty, for Matthew saw to that, and Marilla for once made
no objections whatever to anything he purchased or suggested. More--one
evening she went up to the east gable with her arms full of a delicate
pale green material.

"Anne, here's something for a nice light dress for you. I don't suppose
you really need it; you've plenty of pretty waists; but I thought maybe
you'd like something real dressy to wear if you were asked out anywhere
of an evening in town, to a party or anything like that. I hear that
Jane and Ruby and Josie have got 'evening dresses,' as they call them,
and I don't mean you shall be behind them. I got Mrs. Allan to help me
pick it in town last week, and we'll get Emily Gillis to make it for
you. Emily has got taste, and her fits aren't to be equaled."

"Oh, Marilla, it's just lovely," said Anne. "Thank you so much. I don't
believe you ought to be so kind to me--it's making it harder every day
for me to go away."

The green dress was made up with as many tucks and frills and shirrings
as Emily's taste permitted. Anne put it on one evening for Matthew's
and Marilla's benefit, and recited "The Maiden's Vow" for them in the
kitchen. As Marilla watched the bright, animated face and graceful
motions her thoughts went back to the evening Anne had arrived at Green
Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child
in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking
out of her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears to
Marilla's own eyes.

"I declare, my recitation has made you cry, Marilla," said Anne gaily
stooping over Marilla's chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that lady's
cheek. "Now, I call that a positive triumph."

"No, I wasn't crying over your piece," said Marilla, who would have
scorned to be betrayed into such weakness by any poetry stuff. "I just
couldn't help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Anne. And
I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your
queer ways. You've grown up now and you're going away; and you look so
tall and stylish and so--so--different altogether in that dress--as if
you didn't belong in Avonlea at all--and I just got lonesome thinking it
all over."

"Marilla!" Anne sat down on Marilla's gingham lap, took Marilla's lined
face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Marilla's
eyes. "I'm not a bit changed--not really. I'm only just pruned down and
branched out. The real _me_--back here--is just the same. It won't make a
bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I
shall always be your little Anne, who will love you and Matthew and dear
Green Gables more and better every day of her life."

Anne laid her fresh young cheek against Marilla's faded one, and reached
out a hand to pat Matthew's shoulder. Marilla would have given much just
then to have possessed Anne's power of putting her feelings into words;
but nature and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her
arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing
that she need never let her go.

Matthew, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went
out-of-doors. Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked
agitatedly across the yard to the gate under the poplars.

"Well now, I guess she ain't been much spoiled," he muttered, proudly.
"I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm after all.
She's smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the
rest. She's been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake
than what Mrs. Spencer made--if it _was_ luck. I don't believe it was any
such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I
reckon."

The day finally came when Anne must go to town. She and Matthew drove
in one fine September morning, after a tearful parting with Diana and an
untearful practical one--on Marilla's side at least--with Marilla. But
when Anne had gone Diana dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at
White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived
to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Marilla plunged fiercely into
unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of
heartache--the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away
in ready tears. But that night, when Marilla went to bed, acutely and
miserably conscious that the little gable room at the end of the
hall was untenanted by any vivid young life and unstirred by any soft
breathing, she buried her face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in
a passion of sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough to reflect
how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful fellow creature.

Anne and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to
hurry off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a
whirl of excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the
professors by sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Anne
intended taking up the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss
Stacy; Gilbert Blythe elected to do the same. This meant getting a
First Class teacher's license in one year instead of two, if they were
successful; but it also meant much more and harder work. Jane, Ruby,
Josie, Charlie, and Moody Spurgeon, not being troubled with the
stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the Second Class work.
Anne was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found herself in
a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except the
tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion
she did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically.
Yet she was undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old
rivalry could still be carried on, and Anne would hardly have known what
to do if it had been lacking.

"I wouldn't feel comfortable without it," she thought. "Gilbert looks
awfully determined. I suppose he's making up his mind, here and now, to
win the medal. What a splendid chin he has! I never noticed it before.
I do wish Jane and Ruby had gone in for First Class, too. I suppose I
won't feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I get acquainted,
though. I wonder which of the girls here are going to be my friends.
It's really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised Diana that
no Queen's girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever be as dear
to me as she is; but I've lots of second-best affections to bestow. I
like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson waist.
She looks vivid and red-rosy; there's that pale, fair one gazing out of
the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two
about dreams. I'd like to know them both--know them well--well enough to
walk with my arm about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just
now I don't know them and they don't know me, and probably don't want to
know me particularly. Oh, it's lonesome!"

It was lonesomer still when Anne found herself alone in her hall bedroom
that night at twilight. She was not to board with the other girls, who
all had relatives in town to take pity on them. Miss Josephine Barry
would have liked to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the
Academy that it was out of the question; so Miss Barry hunted up a
boarding-house, assuring Matthew and Marilla that it was the very place
for Anne.

"The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman," explained Miss Barry.
"Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what sort
of boarders she takes. Anne will not meet with any objectionable persons
under her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the Academy, in
a quiet neighborhood."

All this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so, but it did
not materially help Anne in the first agony of homesickness that seized
upon her. She looked dismally about her narrow little room, with its
dull-papered, pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty
book-case; and a horrible choke came into her throat as she thought of
her own white room at Green Gables, where she would have the pleasant
consciousness of a great green still outdoors, of sweet peas growing in
the garden, and moonlight falling on the orchard, of the brook below the
slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind beyond it, of a
vast starry sky, and the light from Diana's window shining out through
the gap in the trees. Here there was nothing of this; Anne knew that
outside of her window was a hard street, with a network of telephone
wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a thousand
lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that she was going to cry,
and fought against it.

"I _won't_ cry. It's silly--and weak--there's the third tear splashing
down by my nose. There are more coming! I must think of something funny
to stop them. But there's nothing funny except what is connected with
Avonlea, and that only makes things worse--four--five--I'm going home
next Friday, but that seems a hundred years away. Oh, Matthew is nearly
home by now--and Marilla is at the gate, looking down the lane for
him--six--seven--eight--oh, there's no use in counting them! They're
coming in a flood presently. I can't cheer up--I don't _want_ to cheer up.
It's nicer to be miserable!"

The flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not Josie Pye appeared
at that moment. In the joy of seeing a familiar face Anne forgot that
there had never been much love lost between her and Josie. As a part of
Avonlea life even a Pye was welcome.

"I'm so glad you came up," Anne said sincerely.

"You've been crying," remarked Josie, with aggravating pity. "I suppose
you're homesick--some people have so little self-control in that
respect. I've no intention of being homesick, I can tell you. Town's too
jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so
long. You shouldn't cry, Anne; it isn't becoming, for your nose and eyes
get red, and then you seem _all_ red. I'd a perfectly scrumptious time in
the Academy today. Our French professor is simply a duck. His moustache
would give you kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable
around, Anne? I'm literally starving. Ah, I guessed likely Marilla 'd
load you up with cake. That's why I called round. Otherwise I'd have
gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley. He boards
same place as I do, and he's a sport. He noticed you in class today, and
asked me who the red-headed girl was. I told him you were an orphan that
the Cuthberts had adopted, and nobody knew very much about what you'd
been before that."

Anne was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more
satisfactory than Josie Pye's companionship when Jane and Ruby appeared,
each with an inch of Queen's color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned
proudly to her coat. As Josie was not "speaking" to Jane just then she
had to subside into comparative harmlessness.

"Well," said Jane with a sigh, "I feel as if I'd lived many moons since
the morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old
professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply
couldn't settle down to study tonight. Anne, methinks I see the
traces of tears. If you've been crying _do_ own up. It will restore my
self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Ruby came along. I
don't mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake?
You'll give me a teeny piece, won't you? Thank you. It has the real
Avonlea flavor."

Ruby, perceiving the Queen's calendar lying on the table, wanted to know
if Anne meant to try for the gold medal.

Anne blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.

"Oh, that reminds me," said Josie, "Queen's is to get one of the Avery
scholarships after all. The word came today. Frank Stockley told me--his
uncle is one of the board of governors, you know. It will be announced
in the Academy tomorrow."

An Avery scholarship! Anne felt her heart beat more quickly, and the
horizons of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic. Before
Josie had told the news Anne's highest pinnacle of aspiration had been
a teacher's provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and
perhaps the medal! But now in one moment Anne saw herself winning
the Avery scholarship, taking an Arts course at Redmond College, and
graduating in a gown and mortar board, before the echo of Josie's words
had died away. For the Avery scholarship was in English, and Anne felt
that here her foot was on native heath.

A wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his
fortune to endow a large number of scholarships to be distributed
among the various high schools and academies of the Maritime Provinces,
according to their respective standings. There had been much doubt
whether one would be allotted to Queen's, but the matter was settled at
last, and at the end of the year the graduate who made the highest mark
in English and English Literature would win the scholarship--two hundred
and fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond College. No wonder
that Anne went to bed that night with tingling cheeks!

"I'll win that scholarship if hard work can do it," she resolved.
"Wouldn't Matthew be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh, it's delightful to
have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to
be any end to them--that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain
to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does
make life so interesting."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Over the next three weeks, Anne prepares to go to Queen's. Marilla and Matthew make sure that Anne has multiple new dresses, including one of delicate green material that Marilla chooses particularly thoughtfully. When the green dress has been made, Anne puts it on and performs a recitation for Marilla and Matthew. Marilla starts to cry as she thinks about Anne arriving at Green Gables when she was so young and neglected. Marilla says she wishes that Anne had stayed a little girl, and Anne assures her that she is the same as ever. Marilla and Anne hug, and Matthew goes outside to hide his tears. The day comes for Anne to leave for Queen's. Anne says tearful goodbyes to Diana and Marilla; Diana proceeds afterward to a beach picnic, while Marilla devotes herself to working all day so that she won't feel so lonely. On her first day of school, Anne meets the other new students and her professors. Out of all the students from the Avonlea school, only Anne and Gilbert have decided to skip to the second year at Queen's, meaning they will get their teacher's license after only one year. Anne is happy that Gilbert is in her class since, without him, she wouldn't know any of the fifty students. Additionally, she feels that she wouldn't be comfortable in a school environment without their rivalry. Anne examines the other students and wonders which of them will become her friends. Anne feels lonesome on her first night in the bedroom she has rented in a boarding-house. She has just started to cry when Josie Pye, a student Anne did not like at the Avonlea school, shows up at her door. Josie Pye speaks somewhat rudely to Anne, and Anne is just thinking that she may have actually preferred solitude when their friends Jane and Ruby show up. Ruby asks Anne whether she is going to try for the gold medal, which is awarded at the end of the year, and Anne says she has been thinking of doing so. Josie announces that there will also be a scholarship to college awarded at the end of the year to whoever gets the highest grades in English. Anne feels a burst of ambition as she imagines herself going to college and making Matthew proud


prompt:
Chapter: |ANNE'S homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her
weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea
students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday
night. Diana and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on
hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party.
Anne thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in
the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond,
were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.

Gilbert Blythe nearly always walked with Ruby Gillis and carried her
satchel for her. Ruby was a very handsome young lady, now thinking
herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long
as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had
to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes,
a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great
deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of
life frankly.

"But I shouldn't think she was the sort of girl Gilbert would like,"
whispered Jane to Anne. Anne did not think so either, but she would not
have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking,
too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert
to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and
ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem
the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.

There was no silly sentiment in Anne's ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys
were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good
comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared
how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius
for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague
consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing
to round out one's conceptions of companionship and furnish broader
standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Anne could have put her
feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought
that if Gilbert had ever walked home with her from the train, over the
crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and
merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening
around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Gilbert was a clever
young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to
get the best out of life and put the best into it. Ruby Gillis told Jane
Andrews that she didn't understand half the things Gilbert Blythe said;
he talked just like Anne Shirley did when she had a thoughtful fit on
and for her part she didn't think it any fun to be bothering about books
and that sort of thing when you didn't have to. Frank Stockley had lots
more dash and go, but then he wasn't half as good-looking as Gilbert and
she really couldn't decide which she liked best!

In the Academy Anne gradually drew a little circle of friends about
her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the
"rose-red" girl, Stella Maynard, and the "dream girl," Priscilla Grant,
she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking
maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the
vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies,
as aerial and rainbow-like as Anne's own.

After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home
on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen's
scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and
the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of
individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was
admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down
to three--Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery
scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible
winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as
won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a
patched coat.

Ruby Gillis was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the
Second Year classes Stella Maynard carried off the palm for beauty, with
small but critical minority in favor of Anne Shirley. Ethel Marr was
admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes
of hair-dressing, and Jane Andrews--plain, plodding, conscientious
Jane--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Josie
Pye attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in
attendance at Queen's. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Stacy's old
pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.

Anne worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Gilbert was as intense
as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the
class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Anne no
longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the
proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It
would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be
insupportable if she did not.

In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times.
Anne spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her
Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Barry. The latter was,
as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the
vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the
latter on Anne, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical
old lady.

"That Anne-girl improves all the time," she said. "I get tired of other
girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Anne
has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while
it lasts. I don't know that she is as amusing as she was when she was
a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love
them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them."

Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in
Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where
snow-wreaths lingered; and the "mist of green" was on the woods and in
the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought and
talked only of examinations.

"It doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over," said Anne.
"Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter
of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next
week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but
when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and
the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so
important."

Jane and Ruby and Josie, who had dropped in, did not take this view
of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important
indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Maytime hazes. It was
all very well for Anne, who was sure of passing at least, to have her
moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on
them--as the girls truly thought theirs did--you could not regard them
philosophically.

"I've lost seven pounds in the last two weeks," sighed Jane. "It's no
use to say don't worry. I _will_ worry. Worrying helps you some--it
seems as if you were doing something when you're worrying. It would be
dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen's all winter
and spending so much money."

"_I_ don't care," said Josie Pye. "If I don't pass this year I'm coming
back next. My father can afford to send me. Anne, Frank Stockley says
that Professor Tremaine said Gilbert Blythe was sure to get the medal
and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship."

"That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Josie," laughed Anne, "but just
now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out
all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns
are poking their heads up in Lovers' Lane, it's not a great deal of
difference whether I win the Avery or not. I've done my best and I begin
to understand what is meant by the 'joy of the strife.' Next to trying
and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don't talk
about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses
and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark
beech-woods back of Avonlea."

"What are you going to wear for commencement, Jane?" asked Ruby
practically.

Jane and Josie both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side
eddy of fashions. But Anne, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft
cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions,
looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome
of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden
tissue of youth's own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its
possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of
promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Throughout the fall, Anne studies at Queen's during the week and returns to Avonlea on the weekends. On the return trip to Avonlea, Anne notices that Gilbert always walks with Ruby and carries her bag, and she thinks to herself that it would be nice to be friends with Gilbert. The narrator notes that Anne had many female friendships, but she lacked friendships with males. At Queen's, Anne makes new friendships and settles into her studies. In the winter, Anne and the other students from Avonlea stop going back home as frequently. Anne and Gilbert are at the top of the class, along with a few other students, and Anne continues to feel motivated by seeing herself as competing with Gilbert. On Sundays, Anne eats lunch and attends church with Aunt Josephine. Spring arrives, and soon, the school year will end. The students worry about their end-of-year exams, though Anne is more concerned with whether she will win the medal or the scholarship than whether she will pass


prompt:
Chapter: |ON the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be
posted on the bulletin board at Queen's, Anne and Jane walked down the
street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over
and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further
considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions
and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For
we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although
ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but
exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.
Anne was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had
won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not
seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time.

"Of course you'll win one of them anyhow," said Jane, who couldn't
understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise.

"I have not hope of the Avery," said Anne. "Everybody says Emily Clay
will win it. And I'm not going to march up to that bulletin board and
look at it before everybody. I haven't the moral courage. I'm going
straight to the girls' dressing room. You must read the announcements
and then come and tell me, Jane. And I implore you in the name of our
old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. If I have failed just
say so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do _don't_
sympathize with me. Promise me this, Jane."

Jane promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for
such a promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen's they
found the hall full of boys who were carrying Gilbert Blythe around on
their shoulders and yelling at the tops of their voices, "Hurrah for
Blythe, Medalist!"

For a moment Anne felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment.
So she had failed and Gilbert had won! Well, Matthew would be sorry--he
had been so sure she would win.

And then!

Somebody called out:

"Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery!"

"Oh, Anne," gasped Jane, as they fled to the girls' dressing room amid
hearty cheers. "Oh, Anne I'm so proud! Isn't it splendid?"

And then the girls were around them and Anne was the center of a
laughing, congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands
shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all
she managed to whisper to Jane:

"Oh, won't Matthew and Marilla be pleased! I must write the news home
right away."

Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held
in the big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays
read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.

Matthew and Marilla were there, with eyes and ears for only one student
on the platform--a tall girl in pale green, with faintly flushed
cheeks and starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and
whispered about as the Avery winner.

"Reckon you're glad we kept her, Marilla?" whispered Matthew, speaking
for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had finished
her essay.

"It's not the first time I've been glad," retorted Marilla. "You do like
to rub things in, Matthew Cuthbert."

Miss Barry, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked
Marilla in the back with her parasol.

"Aren't you proud of that Anne-girl? I am," she said.

Anne went home to Avonlea with Matthew and Marilla that evening. She had
not been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another
day. The apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young.
Diana was at Green Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where
Marilla had set a flowering house rose on the window sill, Anne looked
about her and drew a long breath of happiness.

"Oh, Diana, it's so good to be back again. It's so good to see those
pointed firs coming out against the pink sky--and that white orchard and
the old Snow Queen. Isn't the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea
rose--why, it's a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. And it's _good_
to see you again, Diana!"

"I thought you liked that Stella Maynard better than me," said
Diana reproachfully. "Josie Pye told me you did. Josie said you were
_infatuated_ with her."

Anne laughed and pelted Diana with the faded "June lilies" of her
bouquet.

"Stella Maynard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are
that one, Diana," she said. "I love you more than ever--and I've so many
things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy enough to sit
here and look at you. I'm tired, I think--tired of being studious and
ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying out in the
orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing."

"You've done splendidly, Anne. I suppose you won't be teaching now that
you've won the Avery?"

"No. I'm going to Redmond in September. Doesn't it seem wonderful? I'll
have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time after three
glorious, golden months of vacation. Jane and Ruby are going to teach.
Isn't it splendid to think we all got through even to Moody Spurgeon and
Josie Pye?"

"The Newbridge trustees have offered Jane their school already," said
Diana. "Gilbert Blythe is going to teach, too. He has to. His father
can't afford to send him to college next year, after all, so he means
to earn his own way through. I expect he'll get the school here if Miss
Ames decides to leave."

Anne felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not
known this; she had expected that Gilbert would be going to Redmond
also. What would she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not
work, even at a coeducational college with a real degree in prospect, be
rather flat without her friend the enemy?

The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Anne that Matthew was
not looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year
before.

"Marilla," she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, "is Matthew quite
well?"

"No, he isn't," said Marilla in a troubled tone. "He's had some real
bad spells with his heart this spring and he won't spare himself a mite.
I've been real worried about him, but he's some better this while back
and we've got a good hired man, so I'm hoping he'll kind of rest and
pick up. Maybe he will now you're home. You always cheer him up."

Anne leaned across the table and took Marilla's face in her hands.

"You are not looking as well yourself as I'd like to see you, Marilla.
You look tired. I'm afraid you've been working too hard. You must take
a rest, now that I'm home. I'm just going to take this one day off to
visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and then it will
be your turn to be lazy while I do the work."

Marilla smiled affectionately at her girl.

"It's not the work--it's my head. I've got a pain so often now--behind
my eyes. Doctor Spencer's been fussing with glasses, but they don't do
me any good. There is a distinguished oculist coming to the Island the
last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I guess I'll have to.
I can't read or sew with any comfort now. Well, Anne, you've done real
well at Queen's I must say. To take First Class License in one year and
win the Avery scholarship--well, well, Mrs. Lynde says pride goes before
a fall and she doesn't believe in the higher education of women at all;
she says it unfits them for woman's true sphere. I don't believe a word
of it. Speaking of Rachel reminds me--did you hear anything about the
Abbey Bank lately, Anne?"

"I heard it was shaky," answered Anne. "Why?"

"That is what Rachel said. She was up here one day last week and said
there was some talk about it. Matthew felt real worried. All we have
saved is in that bank--every penny. I wanted Matthew to put it in the
Savings Bank in the first place, but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of
father's and he'd always banked with him. Matthew said any bank with him
at the head of it was good enough for anybody."

"I think he has only been its nominal head for many years," said
Anne. "He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the
institution."

"Well, when Rachel told us that, I wanted Matthew to draw our money
right out and he said he'd think of it. But Mr. Russell told him
yesterday that the bank was all right."

Anne had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She
never forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free
from shadow and so lavish of blossom. Anne spent some of its rich hours
in the orchard; she went to the Dryad's Bubble and Willowmere and Violet
Vale; she called at the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Allan;
and finally in the evening she went with Matthew for the cows, through
Lovers' Lane to the back pasture. The woods were all gloried through
with sunset and the warm splendor of it streamed down through the hill
gaps in the west. Matthew walked slowly with bent head; Anne, tall and
erect, suited her springing step to his.

"You've been working too hard today, Matthew," she said reproachfully.
"Why won't you take things easier?"

"Well now, I can't seem to," said Matthew, as he opened the yard gate
to let the cows through. "It's only that I'm getting old, Anne, and keep
forgetting it. Well, well, I've always worked pretty hard and I'd rather
drop in harness."

"If I had been the boy you sent for," said Anne wistfully, "I'd be able
to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it
in my heart to wish I had been, just for that."

"Well now, I'd rather have you than a dozen boys, Anne," said Matthew
patting her hand. "Just mind you that--rather than a dozen boys. Well
now, I guess it wasn't a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It
was a girl--my girl--my girl that I'm proud of."

He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Anne took the
memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a
long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the
future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine;
the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Anne always
remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night.
It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is
ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has
been laid upon it.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Anne and Jane walk together to find out the results of their end-of-year exams. As they walk up, Anne hears someone shout that Gilbert won the medal. Anne feels defeated for a moment--until someone sees her and yells, "Three cheers for Miss Shirley, winner of the Avery. Anne won the scholarship to attend college. The next day is commencement, and Marilla and Matthew come to see Anne graduate. Anne wears the green dress Marilla gave her and reads an essay for the crowd. Marilla, Matthew, and Aunt Josephine all talk about how proud they are of Anne. After commencement, Anne goes back to Green Gables. Diana is jealous of Anne's new friends from Queen's, but Anne assures her that Diana is her dearest friend. Anne tells Diana that she will be going to Redmond College in September, but she will have three months of vacation first. Diana informs Anne that Gilbert is going to become the teacher at the Avonlea school since his family can't afford to send him to college. Anne is disappointed that she will not have her rivalry with Gilbert to keep her focused at Redmond. The next morning, Anne notices that Matthew isn't looking well. After he leaves, she asks Marilla about Matthew's health; Marilla says that he's been having issues with his heart but refuses to stop working. Anne asks about Marilla's health and Marilla says that she's been having headaches and her eyes have gotten worse. At the end of June, Marilla plans to have her eyes checked. On top of these problems, Marilla tells Anne that the bank where they keep all of their money has been "shaky". Marilla wants Matthew to pull their money out of the bank, but Matthew refuses. The rest of the day is pleasant, but the narrator ends the chapter foreshadowing sorrow soon to come


prompt:
Chapter: |MATTHEW--Matthew--what is the matter? Matthew, are you sick?"

It was Marilla who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Anne came through
the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,--it was long before Anne
could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,--in time to hear
her and to see Matthew standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper
in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Anne dropped her
flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as
Marilla. They were both too late; before they could reach him Matthew
had fallen across the threshold.

"He's fainted," gasped Marilla. "Anne, run for Martin--quick, quick!
He's at the barn."

Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office,
started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to
send Mr. and Mrs. Barry over. Mrs. Lynde, who was there on an errand,
came too. They found Anne and Marilla distractedly trying to restore
Matthew to consciousness.

Mrs. Lynde pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her
ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and
the tears came into her eyes.

"Oh, Marilla," she said gravely. "I don't think--we can do anything for
him."

"Mrs. Lynde, you don't think--you can't think Matthew is--is--" Anne
could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.

"Child, yes, I'm afraid of it. Look at his face. When you've seen that
look as often as I have you'll know what it means."

Anne looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great
Presence.

When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and
probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The
secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Matthew had held
and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained
an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.

The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and
neighbors thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness
for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert
was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had
fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.

When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was
hushed and tranquil. In the parlor lay Matthew Cuthbert in his coffin,
his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a little
kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were
flowers about him--sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had
planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew
had always had a secret, wordless love. Anne had gathered them and
brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white
face. It was the last thing she could do for him.

The Barrys and Mrs. Lynde stayed with them that night. Diana, going to
the east gable, where Anne was standing at her window, said gently:

"Anne dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?"

"Thank you, Diana." Anne looked earnestly into her friend's face. "I
think you won't misunderstand me when I say I want to be alone. I'm not
afraid. I haven't been alone one minute since it happened--and I want to
be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can't
realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can't be dead; and
the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and
I've had this horrible dull ache ever since."

Diana did not quite understand. Marilla's impassioned grief, breaking
all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush,
she could comprehend better than Anne's tearless agony. But she went
away kindly, leaving Anne alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.

Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a
terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Matthew, whom she had
loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Matthew who had walked
with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below
with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even when
she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the
stars beyond the hills--no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of
misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the
day's pain and excitement.

In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about
her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of
sorrow. She could see Matthew's face smiling at her as he had smiled
when they parted at the gate that last evening--she could hear his voice
saying, "My girl--my girl that I'm proud of." Then the tears came and
Anne wept her heart out. Marilla heard her and crept in to comfort her.

"There--there--don't cry so, dearie. It can't bring him back.
It--it--isn't right to cry so. I knew that today, but I couldn't help
it then. He'd always been such a good, kind brother to me--but God knows
best."

"Oh, just let me cry, Marilla," sobbed Anne. "The tears don't hurt me
like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your
arm round me--so. I couldn't have Diana stay, she's good and kind and
sweet--but it's not her sorrow--she's outside of it and she couldn't
come close enough to my heart to help me. It's our sorrow--yours and
mine. Oh, Marilla, what will we do without him?"

"We've got each other, Anne. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't
here--if you'd never come. Oh, Anne, I know I've been kind of strict and
harsh with you maybe--but you mustn't think I didn't love you as well as
Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It's never
been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this
it's easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood
and you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables."

Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead
threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had
loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its
usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old
groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before,
although always with the aching sense of "loss in all familiar things."
Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that
they _could_ go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like
shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs
and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of
gladness when she saw them--that Diana's visits were pleasant to her
and that Diana's merry words and ways moved her to laughter and
smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and
friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her
heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.

"It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in
these things now that he has gone," she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan
one evening when they were together in the manse garden. "I miss him so
much--all the time--and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very
beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something
funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could
never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn't to."

"When Matthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know
that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you," said Mrs.
Allan gently. "He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the
same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing
influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling.
I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that
anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share
the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our
sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us."

"I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Matthew's grave
this afternoon," said Anne dreamily. "I took a slip of the little white
Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Matthew
always liked those roses the best--they were so small and sweet on
their thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his
grave--as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it
there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps
the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many
summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Marilla is all
alone and she gets lonely at twilight."

"She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,"
said Mrs. Allan.

Anne did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green
Gables. Marilla was sitting on the front door-steps and Anne sat down
beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch
shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.

Anne gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in
her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial
benediction, above her every time she moved.

"Doctor Spencer was here while you were away," Marilla said. "He says
that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must
go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I'd better go and have it
over. I'll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind
of glasses to suit my eyes. You won't mind staying here alone while I'm
away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there's ironing and
baking to do."

"I shall be all right. Diana will come over for company for me. I shall
attend to the ironing and baking beautifully--you needn't fear that I'll
starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment."

Marilla laughed.

"What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Anne. You were
always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do
you mind the time you dyed your hair?"

"Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it," smiled Anne, touching the heavy
braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. "I laugh a little
now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me--but I
don't laugh _much_, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer
terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and
people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now--all but Josie
Pye. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder
than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked
me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Marilla, I've
almost decided to give up trying to like Josie Pye. I've made what I
would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Josie Pye won't
_be_ liked."

"Josie is a Pye," said Marilla sharply, "so she can't help being
disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in
society, but I must say I don't know what it is any more than I know the
use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?"

"No, she is going back to Queen's next year. So are Moody Spurgeon and
Charlie Sloane. Jane and Ruby are going to teach and they have both got
schools--Jane at Newbridge and Ruby at some place up west."

"Gilbert Blythe is going to teach too, isn't he?"

"Yes"--briefly.

"What a nice-looking fellow he is," said Marilla absently. "I saw him in
church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like
his father did at the same age. John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to
be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau."

Anne looked up with swift interest.

"Oh, Marilla--and what happened?--why didn't you--"

"We had a quarrel. I wouldn't forgive him when he asked me to. I meant
to, after awhile--but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him
first. He never came back--the Blythes were all mighty independent. But
I always felt--rather sorry. I've always kind of wished I'd forgiven him
when I had the chance."

"So you've had a bit of romance in your life, too," said Anne softly.

"Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn't think so to look at
me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides.
Everybody has forgot about me and John. I'd forgotten myself. But it all
came back to me when I saw Gilbert last Sunday."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: One day, Matthew falls down suddenly. Marilla and Anne try to rouse Matthew as their hired man goes to get the doctor. However, Mrs. Rachel Lynde arrives at the house first; after taking Matthew's pulse, she says he is dead. When the doctor arrives, he confirms that Matthew has died and says it was likely an instantaneous death due to a sudden shock. They discover that the shock was the newspaper, which said that the bank where all of Marilla and Matthew's money was kept had failed. Neighbors come to the house all day to grieve Matthew and comfort Marilla and Anne. When night comes, the only ones who remain at the house are Marilla, Anne, the Barrys, and Mrs. Rachel Lynde. Diana offers to sleep with Anne, but Anne says she prefers to be alone so that she can try to realize that Matthew is really gone. Anne has not cried all day, but once she is alone, she thinks of Matthew saying he was proud of her and she begins to weep. Marilla hears Anne weeping and comes in to comfort her. Anne asks what they will do without Matthew, and Marilla responds that they have each other. Additionally, Marilla tells Anne that she loves her as if she were her own flesh and blood. Matthew's funeral is held two days later, and after that, Marilla and Anne try to carry on with life at Green Gables. Anne feels ashamed when she begins to find pleasure in things like flowers and visiting with Diana, but Mrs. Allan reassures her that Matthew would like to know that she is enjoying life. When Anne departs from Mrs. Allan's house, Mrs. Allan tells her that Marilla will be lonely when Anne goes away to college. When Anne gets home, Marilla tells her that she will go to have her eyes checked the next day. They talk amicably about Anne being grown-up and about what the other students in Anne's class will do next with their lives, and then Marilla tells Anne something that shocks her: she once dated Gilbert's father. Marilla says that they broke up because they had a quarrel and both were too stubborn to make up


prompt:
Chapter: |MARILLA went to town the next day and returned in the evening. Anne had
gone over to Orchard Slope with Diana and came back to find Marilla in
the kitchen, sitting by the table with her head leaning on her hand.
Something in her dejected attitude struck a chill to Anne's heart. She
had never seen Marilla sit limply inert like that.

"Are you very tired, Marilla?"

"Yes--no--I don't know," said Marilla wearily, looking up. "I suppose I
am tired but I haven't thought about it. It's not that."

"Did you see the oculist? What did he say?" asked Anne anxiously.

"Yes, I saw him. He examined my eyes. He says that if I give up all
reading and sewing entirely and any kind of work that strains the eyes,
and if I'm careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he's given me
he thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured.
But if I don't he says I'll certainly be stone-blind in six months.
Blind! Anne, just think of it!"

For a minute Anne, after her first quick exclamation of dismay, was
silent. It seemed to her that she could _not_ speak. Then she said
bravely, but with a catch in her voice:

"Marilla, _don't_ think of it. You know he has given you hope. If you are
careful you won't lose your sight altogether; and if his glasses cure
your headaches it will be a great thing."

"I don't call it much hope," said Marilla bitterly. "What am I to live
for if I can't read or sew or do anything like that? I might as well
be blind--or dead. And as for crying, I can't help that when I get
lonesome. But there, it's no good talking about it. If you'll get me
a cup of tea I'll be thankful. I'm about done out. Don't say anything
about this to any one for a spell yet, anyway. I can't bear that folks
should come here to question and sympathize and talk about it."

When Marilla had eaten her lunch Anne persuaded her to go to bed. Then
Anne went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the
darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly
things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home!
Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy
with promise. Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before
she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart.
She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a
friend--as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.

One afternoon a few days later Marilla came slowly in from the front
yard where she had been talking to a caller--a man whom Anne knew by
sight as Sadler from Carmody. Anne wondered what he could have been
saying to bring that look to Marilla's face.

"What did Mr. Sadler want, Marilla?"

Marilla sat down by the window and looked at Anne. There were tears in
her eyes in defiance of the oculist's prohibition and her voice broke as
she said:

"He heard that I was going to sell Green Gables and he wants to buy it."

"Buy it! Buy Green Gables?" Anne wondered if she had heard aright. "Oh,
Marilla, you don't mean to sell Green Gables!"

"Anne, I don't know what else is to be done. I've thought it all over.
If my eyes were strong I could stay here and make out to look after
things and manage, with a good hired man. But as it is I can't. I may
lose my sight altogether; and anyway I'll not be fit to run things. Oh,
I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd have to sell my home.
But things would only go behind worse and worse all the time, till
nobody would want to buy it. Every cent of our money went in that bank;
and there's some notes Matthew gave last fall to pay. Mrs. Lynde advises
me to sell the farm and board somewhere--with her I suppose. It won't
bring much--it's small and the buildings are old. But it'll be enough
for me to live on I reckon. I'm thankful you're provided for with that
scholarship, Anne. I'm sorry you won't have a home to come to in your
vacations, that's all, but I suppose you'll manage somehow."

Marilla broke down and wept bitterly.

"You mustn't sell Green Gables," said Anne resolutely.

"Oh, Anne, I wish I didn't have to. But you can see for yourself. I
can't stay here alone. I'd go crazy with trouble and loneliness. And my
sight would go--I know it would."

"You won't have to stay here alone, Marilla. I'll be with you. I'm not
going to Redmond."

"Not going to Redmond!" Marilla lifted her worn face from her hands and
looked at Anne. "Why, what do you mean?"

"Just what I say. I'm not going to take the scholarship. I decided so
the night after you came home from town. You surely don't think I could
leave you alone in your trouble, Marilla, after all you've done for me.
I've been thinking and planning. Let me tell you my plans. Mr. Barry
wants to rent the farm for next year. So you won't have any bother over
that. And I'm going to teach. I've applied for the school here--but I
don't expect to get it for I understand the trustees have promised it to
Gilbert Blythe. But I can have the Carmody school--Mr. Blair told me
so last night at the store. Of course that won't be quite as nice or
convenient as if I had the Avonlea school. But I can board home and
drive myself over to Carmody and back, in the warm weather at least. And
even in winter I can come home Fridays. We'll keep a horse for that. Oh,
I have it all planned out, Marilla. And I'll read to you and keep you
cheered up. You sha'n't be dull or lonesome. And we'll be real cozy and
happy here together, you and I."

Marilla had listened like a woman in a dream.

"Oh, Anne, I could get on real well if you were here, I know. But I
can't let you sacrifice yourself so for me. It would be terrible."

"Nonsense!" Anne laughed merrily. "There is no sacrifice. Nothing could
be worse than giving up Green Gables--nothing could hurt me more. We
must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Marilla. I'm _not_
going to Redmond; and I _am_ going to stay here and teach. Don't you worry
about me a bit."

"But your ambitions--and--"

"I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only, I've changed the object of my
ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher--and I'm going to save your
eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little
college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans, Marilla. I've
been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best, and
I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen's my
future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought
I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I
don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the
best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder
how the road beyond it goes--what there is of green glory and
soft, checkered light and shadows--what new landscapes--what new
beauties--what curves and hills and valleys further on."

"I don't feel as if I ought to let you give it up," said Marilla,
referring to the scholarship.

"But you can't prevent me. I'm sixteen and a half, 'obstinate as a
mule,' as Mrs. Lynde once told me," laughed Anne. "Oh, Marilla, don't
you go pitying me. I don't like to be pitied, and there is no need
for it. I'm heart glad over the very thought of staying at dear Green
Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I do--so we must keep it."

"You blessed girl!" said Marilla, yielding. "I feel as if you'd given me
new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to college--but
I know I can't, so I ain't going to try. I'll make it up to you though,
Anne."

When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Anne Shirley had given up
the idea of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there
was a good deal of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not
knowing about Marilla's eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Allan did
not. She told Anne so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure
to the girl's eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Lynde. She came up one evening
and found Anne and Marilla sitting at the front door in the warm,
scented summer dusk. They liked to sit there when the twilight came down
and the white moths flew about in the garden and the odor of mint filled
the dewy air.

Mrs. Rachel deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the
door, behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a
long breath of mingled weariness and relief.

"I declare I'm getting glad to sit down. I've been on my feet all day,
and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round. It's
a great blessing not to be fat, Marilla. I hope you appreciate it. Well,
Anne, I hear you've given up your notion of going to college. I was
real glad to hear it. You've got as much education now as a woman can be
comfortable with. I don't believe in girls going to college with the men
and cramming their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense."

"But I'm going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Lynde," said
Anne laughing. "I'm going to take my Arts course right here at Green
Gables, and study everything that I would at college."

Mrs. Lynde lifted her hands in holy horror.

"Anne Shirley, you'll kill yourself."

"Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I'm not going to overdo
things. As 'Josiah Allen's wife,' says, I shall be 'mejum'. But I'll
have lots of spare time in the long winter evenings, and I've no
vocation for fancy work. I'm going to teach over at Carmody, you know."

"I don't know it. I guess you're going to teach right here in Avonlea.
The trustees have decided to give you the school."

"Mrs. Lynde!" cried Anne, springing to her feet in her surprise. "Why, I
thought they had promised it to Gilbert Blythe!"

"So they did. But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it
he went to them--they had a business meeting at the school last night,
you know--and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested
that they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of
course he knew how much you wanted to stay with Marilla, and I must
say I think it was real kind and thoughtful in him, that's what. Real
self-sacrificing, too, for he'll have his board to pay at White Sands,
and everybody knows he's got to earn his own way through college. So the
trustees decided to take you. I was tickled to death when Thomas came
home and told me."

"I don't feel that I ought to take it," murmured Anne. "I mean--I don't
think I ought to let Gilbert make such a sacrifice for--for me."

"I guess you can't prevent him now. He's signed papers with the White
Sands trustees. So it wouldn't do him any good now if you were to
refuse. Of course you'll take the school. You'll get along all right,
now that there are no Pyes going. Josie was the last of them, and a
good thing she was, that's what. There's been some Pye or other going to
Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in
life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn't their home.
Bless my heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Barry
gable mean?"

"Diana is signaling for me to go over," laughed Anne. "You know we keep
up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants."

Anne ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry
shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Lynde looked after her indulgently.

"There's a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways."

"There's a good deal more of the woman about her in others," retorted
Marilla, with a momentary return of her old crispness.

But crispness was no longer Marilla's distinguishing characteristic. As
Mrs. Lynde told her Thomas that night.

"Marilla Cuthbert has got _mellow_. That's what."

Anne went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh
flowers on Matthew's grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered
there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place,
with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its
whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally
left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining
Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike
afterlight--"a haunt of ancient peace." There was a freshness in the
air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home
lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay
the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west
was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in
still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Anne's heart, and
she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.

"Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely, and I am glad to
be alive in you."

Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the
Blythe homestead. It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he
recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed
on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand.

"Gilbert," she said, with scarlet cheeks, "I want to thank you for
giving up the school for me. It was very good of you--and I want you to
know that I appreciate it."

Gilbert took the offered hand eagerly.

"It wasn't particularly good of me at all, Anne. I was pleased to be
able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after
this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?"

Anne laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.

"I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn't know
it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I've been--I may as well make a
complete confession--I've been sorry ever since."

"We are going to be the best of friends," said Gilbert, jubilantly. "We
were born to be good friends, Anne. You've thwarted destiny enough. I
know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up your
studies, aren't you? So am I. Come, I'm going to walk home with you."

Marilla looked curiously at Anne when the latter entered the kitchen.

"Who was that came up the lane with you, Anne?"

"Gilbert Blythe," answered Anne, vexed to find herself blushing. "I met
him on Barry's hill."

"I didn't think you and Gilbert Blythe were such good friends that you'd
stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him," said Marilla with a
dry smile.

"We haven't been--we've been good enemies. But we have decided that it
will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future. Were we
really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see,
we have five years' lost conversations to catch up with, Marilla."

Anne sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content.
The wind purred softly in the cherry boughs, and the mint breaths came
up to her. The stars twinkled over the pointed firs in the hollow and
Diana's light gleamed through the old gap.

Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after
coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be
narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it.
The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship
were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her
ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!

"'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,'" whispered Anne
softly.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Marilla comes home in a dejected state from having her eyes checked. The oculist told her that she could go blind in as little as six months; to keep her vision for longer than that, she would have to give up reading and sewing. Anne tries to get Marilla's hopes up about maintaining her vision and reducing her headaches, but Marilla says she won't have anything to live for if she can't read or sew. When Marilla goes to sleep, Anne goes up to her bedroom and cries. She looks out her window and thinks about how much things have changed since she came home from Queen's; the narrator observes that "before she went to bed there was a smile on her face and peace in her heart". A few days later, Anne sees Marilla talking to a man from a nearby town. When Anne asks who the man is, Marilla responds that she was discussing selling Green Gables to him. Anne tells Marilla that she shouldn't sell Green Gables because she will stay at home with Marilla instead of going to Redmond College. Anne has already applied to teach at the Avonlea school as well as a school in a nearby town. She expects not to teach in Avonlea since Gilbert will be teaching there, but she says she will stay at Green Gables every night during the warm seasons and will come back on the weekends during winters. Marilla doesn't want Anne to sacrifice her scholarship and ambitions, but Anne says that she has merely changed her ambitions. There is gossip throughout Avonlea about Anne's decision to give up her scholarship. Many people think she is foolish to give it up, though Mrs. Rachel Lynde says it was foolish for a woman to think of receiving so much education in the first place. Anne assures Mrs. Rachel that she will still receive just as much education by studying all the same topics at home. Anne tells Mrs. Rachel that she will be teaching in a nearby town, and Mrs. Rachel informs her that she will actually be teaching in Avonlea because Gilbert told the school trustees to hire Anne instead. The next evening, Anne runs into Gilbert on her way back from visiting Matthew's grave. Anne thanks Gilbert, and Gilbert eagerly asks if they can be friends now after so many years of stubbornness. Anne tells Gilbert that she forgave him long ago. They stand together talking for half an hour, which Marilla notices and comments on when Anne comes back to Green Gables. The book ends with Anne sitting at her bedroom window feeling content that her life is full of aspirations, friendship, and dreams


prompt:
Chapter: |MRS. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down
into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and
traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the
old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook
in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool
and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde's Hollow it was a quiet,
well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs.
Rachel Lynde's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it
probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window,
keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children
up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never
rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend
closely to their neighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own;
but Mrs. Rachel Lynde was one of those capable creatures who can manage
their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a
notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she "ran" the
Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop
of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all
this Mrs. Rachel found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen
window, knitting "cotton warp" quilts--she had knitted sixteen of them,
as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices--and keeping
a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up
the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular
peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two
sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that
hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Rachel's all-seeing
eye.

She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in
at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house
was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of
bees. Thomas Lynde--a meek little man whom Avonlea people called "Rachel
Lynde's husband"--was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field
beyond the barn; and Matthew Cuthbert ought to have been sowing his on
the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Rachel knew
that he ought because she had heard him tell Peter Morrison the evening
before in William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to sow
his turnip seed the next afternoon. Peter had asked him, of course, for
Matthew Cuthbert had never been known to volunteer information about
anything in his whole life.

And yet here was Matthew Cuthbert, at half-past three on the afternoon
of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill;
moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was
plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy
and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable
distance. Now, where was Matthew Cuthbert going and why was he going
there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Rachel, deftly putting this
and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both
questions. But Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be
something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest
man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where
he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and
driving in a buggy, was something that didn't happen often. Mrs. Rachel,
ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon's
enjoyment was spoiled.

"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Marilla
where he's gone and why," the worthy woman finally concluded. "He
doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he _never_ visits; if
he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to
go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor.
Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I'm
clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or
conscience until I know what has taken Matthew Cuthbert out of Avonlea
today."

Accordingly after tea Mrs. Rachel set out; she had not far to go; the
big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Cuthberts lived was a
scant quarter of a mile up the road from Lynde's Hollow. To be sure, the
long lane made it a good deal further. Matthew Cuthbert's father, as
shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly
could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods
when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest
edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible
from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so
sociably situated. Mrs. Rachel Lynde did not call living in such a place
_living_ at all.

"It's just _staying_, that's what," she said as she stepped along the
deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. "It's no wonder
Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd, living away back here by
themselves. Trees aren't much company, though dear knows if they were
there'd be enough of them. I'd ruther look at people. To be sure, they
seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they're used to it. A body
can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said."

With this Mrs. Rachel stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green
Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one
side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies.
Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Rachel would have
seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Marilla
Cuthbert swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could
have eaten a meal off the ground without over-brimming the proverbial
peck of dirt.

Mrs. Rachel rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in
when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful
apartment--or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully
clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its
windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on
the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one,
whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left
orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook,
was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Marilla Cuthbert, when
she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to
her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to
be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind
her was laid for supper.

Mrs. Rachel, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental
note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid,
so that Marilla must be expecting some one home with Matthew to tea; but
the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves
and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any
particular company. Yet what of Matthew's white collar and the sorrel
mare? Mrs. Rachel was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery
about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.

"Good evening, Rachel," Marilla said briskly. "This is a real fine
evening, isn't it? Won't you sit down? How are all your folks?"

Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship
existed and always had existed between Marilla Cuthbert and Mrs. Rachel,
in spite of--or perhaps because of--their dissimilarity.

Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark
hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little
knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She
looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she
was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had
been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative
of a sense of humor.

"We're all pretty well," said Mrs. Rachel. "I was kind of afraid _you_
weren't, though, when I saw Matthew starting off today. I thought maybe
he was going to the doctor's."

Marilla's lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs.
Rachel up; she had known that the sight of Matthew jaunting off so
unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor's curiosity.

"Oh, no, I'm quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday," she
said. "Matthew went to Bright River. We're getting a little boy from an
orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he's coming on the train tonight."

If Marilla had said that Matthew had gone to Bright River to meet a
kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Rachel could not have been more astonished.
She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable
that Marilla was making fun of her, but Mrs. Rachel was almost forced to
suppose it.

"Are you in earnest, Marilla?" she demanded when voice returned to her.

"Yes, of course," said Marilla, as if getting boys from orphan asylums
in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated
Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.

Mrs. Rachel felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought
in exclamation points. A boy! Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of all people
adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly
turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this!
Nothing!

"What on earth put such a notion into your head?" she demanded
disapprovingly.

This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be
disapproved.

"Well, we've been thinking about it for some time--all winter in fact,"
returned Marilla. "Mrs. Alexander Spencer was up here one day before
Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the
asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs.
Spencer has visited here and knows all about it. So Matthew and I have
talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we'd get a boy. Matthew
is getting up in years, you know--he's sixty--and he isn't so spry as he
once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know how desperate
hard it's got to be to get hired help. There's never anybody to be had
but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as you do
get one broke into your ways and taught something he's up and off to the
lobster canneries or the States. At first Matthew suggested getting a
Home boy. But I said 'no' flat to that. 'They may be all right--I'm not
saying they're not--but no London street Arabs for me,' I said. 'Give
me a native born at least. There'll be a risk, no matter who we get. But
I'll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born
Canadian.' So in the end we decided to ask Mrs. Spencer to pick us out
one when she went over to get her little girl. We heard last week she
was going, so we sent her word by Richard Spencer's folks at Carmody
to bring us a smart, likely boy of about ten or eleven. We decided that
would be the best age--old enough to be of some use in doing chores
right off and young enough to be trained up proper. We mean to give him
a good home and schooling. We had a telegram from Mrs. Alexander Spencer
today--the mail-man brought it from the station--saying they were coming
on the five-thirty train tonight. So Matthew went to Bright River to
meet him. Mrs. Spencer will drop him off there. Of course she goes on to
White Sands station herself."

Mrs. Rachel prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to
speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece
of news.

"Well, Marilla, I'll just tell you plain that I think you're doing a
mighty foolish thing--a risky thing, that's what. You don't know what
you're getting. You're bringing a strange child into your house and home
and you don't know a single thing about him nor what his disposition is
like nor what sort of parents he had nor how he's likely to turn out.
Why, it was only last week I read in the paper how a man and his wife up
west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum and he set fire to
the house at night--set it _on purpose_, Marilla--and nearly burnt them to
a crisp in their beds. And I know another case where an adopted boy used
to suck the eggs--they couldn't break him of it. If you had asked my
advice in the matter--which you didn't do, Marilla--I'd have said for
mercy's sake not to think of such a thing, that's what."

This Job's comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Marilla. She
knitted steadily on.

"I don't deny there's something in what you say, Rachel. I've had some
qualms myself. But Matthew was terrible set on it. I could see that, so
I gave in. It's so seldom Matthew sets his mind on anything that when he
does I always feel it's my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there's
risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world. There's risks
in people's having children of their own if it comes to that--they don't
always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is right close to the Island.
It isn't as if we were getting him from England or the States. He can't
be much different from ourselves."

"Well, I hope it will turn out all right," said Mrs. Rachel in a tone
that plainly indicated her painful doubts. "Only don't say I didn't
warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the well--I
heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did
that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl
in that instance."

"Well, we're not getting a girl," said Marilla, as if poisoning wells
were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case
of a boy. "I'd never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I wonder at
Mrs. Alexander Spencer for doing it. But there, _she_ wouldn't shrink
from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head."

Mrs. Rachel would have liked to stay until Matthew came home with his
imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at
least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert
Bell's and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second
to none, and Mrs. Rachel dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took
herself away, somewhat to Marilla's relief, for the latter felt
her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Rachel's
pessimism.

"Well, of all things that ever were or will be!" ejaculated Mrs. Rachel
when she was safely out in the lane. "It does really seem as if I must
be dreaming. Well, I'm sorry for that poor young one and no mistake.
Matthew and Marilla don't know anything about children and they'll
expect him to be wiser and steadier that his own grandfather, if so be's
he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to think
of a child at Green Gables somehow; there's never been one there, for
Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built--if they
ever _were_ children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them.
I wouldn't be in that orphan's shoes for anything. My, but I pity him,
that's what."

So said Mrs. Rachel to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her
heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently
at the Bright River station at that very moment her pity would have been
still deeper and more profound.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The first scene of the story opens on Mrs. Rachel Lynde, a housewife in the town of Avonlea who everyone knows...and who knows everyone. We're told that Mrs. Rachel Lynde is kind of the ultimate gossip. Her kitchen window looks out onto the only main road in the town of Avonlea, so she sees everyone who enters or leaves the town. Quick geography note: Avonlea is a made-up farming town on Prince Edward Island, which is off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada . Suddenly, Rachel sees Matthew Cuthbert travelling town the road. Rachel Lynde analyzes every detail, Sherlock Holmes-style. Matthew's wearing a suit, which means he's leaving town, and he's travelling via buggy and sorrel mare , which means he'll be travelling far. She knew Matthew should be sowing his turnip seed because she heard him tell a store clerk that yesterday. Scandal-a-lous. Rachel decides to visit Matthew's sister Marilla at her house, Green Gables, to investigate. Marilla and Matthew live in an orchard house that's set far back from the road, near the woods. As she walks there, Rachel Lynde thinks that it's no wonder Matthew and Marilla are both a little odd--they see way more trees than they do people. Marilla Cuthbert takes Rachel into the kitchen, and Rachel keeps on sleuthing. She notices that there are three plates on the table but "every-day dishes" and only one kind of cake, so the company they're expecting can't be too fancy. Marilla tells Rachel Lynde that Matthew went to pick up a little boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia . Cue the chapter title: Mrs. Rachel Lynde is surprised. Like, really surprised. Shocked. Marilla calmly explains that they've been thinking about this all winter, and that Matthew's getting older and needs help with the farm. A woman named Mrs. Alexander Spencer is picking up a girl from the orphanage and they asked her to bring back a boy for them, who Matthew will meet at the train station. Rachel Lynde goes all worst-case scenario and cites stories from the news about adopted orphans killing their new families. She reminds Marilla that they're bringing a strange boy into their house they know nothing about. Marilla points out that there are always risks with having a child, naturally or adopted. Rachel leaves to spread the gossip all over town, thinking about how sorry she feels for the orphan, since Marilla and Matthew are old, set in their ways, and don't know a thing about children.