Here we have Anne's career as a schoolteacher and beginning of society of her generation of Avonlea, with Gilbert Blythe now her close friend, apart from Diana (now courted by Fred Wright), and other schoolmates that had been at Queen's.
Her life now moreover is already centred on children, her pupils at school and twins at home who are Marilla's cousins.
Anne and her friends try to improve Avonlea by getting people to improve their properties and fronts, fences and sidewalks, but are confronted by unexpected problems, from mixups leading to a hall painted bright blue instead of green, to serious horrors looming in shape of people renting their fences for advertisements.
Anne lingers in girlhood, woods and flowers and children, with Gilbert still only a friend, although she's become aware he's growing out of boyhood. Her first acquaintance with the phenomenon of love is via a love story of two people of a prior generation, one a father of a favourite student and another she discovers living in a lovely house far out of the village, surrounded by a forest anne is enchanted with; the now middle aged woman finds a kindred spirit in the young boy so like his father, the love of her life.
And the romance does blossom, with Stephen Irving returning to marry Lavender Lewis finally, after Paul writes him about meeting her. But Marilla has the sensible comment:-
""I can't see that it's so terribly romantic at all," said Marilla rather crisply. Marilla thought Anne was too worked up about it and had plenty to do with getting ready for college without "traipsing" to Echo Lodge two days out of three helping Miss Lavendar. "In the first place two young fools quarrel and turn sulky; then Steve Irving goes to the States and after a spell gets married up there and is perfectly happy from all accounts. Then his wife dies and after a decent interval he thinks he'll come home and see if his first fancy'll have him. Meanwhile, she's been living single, probably because nobody nice enough came along to want her, and they meet and agree to be married after all. Now, where is the romance in all that?""
Exactly what those not fooled by the candy floss KJ copy, KKHH, thought. But meanwhile Anne is being sent off to college after all by Marilla, and that's the end of this part of the story and of her teaching Avonlea school for now, with a possible glimmer of romance with Gilbert Blythe on horizon.
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July 01, 2020 - July 07, 2020.
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