In this book Anne is now a tall, slim girl of half-past sixteen. With Mathew no more and Marilla's eyesight getting weak Anne puts on hold her dream of going to college and starts teaching at the school in Avonlea. Marilla and Anne also adopt two orphan kids Dora and Davy. Between continuing to get into scrapes, trying to answer Davy's I want to know's, being a full-fledged schoolma'am and bringing together the separated couple of Miss Lavendar and Stephen Irving, Anne has lots on her mind. By the time Anne of Avonlea ends, Anne is all set to go to college and discovers new found feelings for her friend Gilbert.
Mr. Harrison: "Those children must be a sight of trouble to you folks."
"Everything that's worth having is some trouble," said Anne.
Mrs. Allan: "Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."
Anne: "If we have friends we should look only for the best in them and give them the best that is in us, don't you think? Then friendship would be the most beautiful thing in the world."
"You'll probably have a good many more and worse disappointments than that before you get through life," said Marilla, who honestly thought she was making a comforting speech. "It seems to me, Anne, that you are never going to outgrow your fashion of setting your heart so on things and then crashing down into despair because you don't get them."
"I know I'm too much inclined that, way" agreed Anne ruefully. "When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts. . . it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud."
Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string."
Anne was sitting on the porch steps when Stephen Irving came down the lane and across the garden. "This is the one place where time stands still," he said, looking around him with delighted eyes. "There is nothing changed about this house or garden since I was here twenty-five years ago. It makes me feel young again."
"You know time always does stand still in an enchanted palace," said Anne seriously. "It is only when the prince comes that things begin to happen."
Diana: "I suppose, Anne, you must think it's funny I should like Fred so well when he's so different from the kind of man I've always said I would marry. . .the tall, slender kind? But somehow I wouldn't want Fred to be tall and slender. . .because, don't you see, he wouldn't be Fred then. "
Confessed Anne, "but I don't care so much for things like that as I did two years ago. What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself."
"What are you thinking of, Anne?" asked Gilbert, coming down the walk. He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.
"Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving," answered Anne dreamily. "Isn't it beautiful to think how everything has turned out. . .how they have come together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?"
"Yes, it's beautiful," said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne's uplifted face, "but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding. . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?"
For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps. . . perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.
Nothing like the real :)
