Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 15 - (VERSO)

240.
the long yellow braid of Ruby Gillis, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He was a tall boy with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile. Presently Ruby Gillis started up to take a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek, believing that her hair was being pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at her and Mr. Phillips glared so sternly that Ruby began to cry. Gilbert had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at Anne and winked with inexpressible drollery.

“I think your Gilbert Blythe is handsome,” confided Anne to Diana, “but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a strange girl.[“]

But it was not until the afternoon



PHOTO ANNOTATION

black and white photo of a dark-haired boy in a black suit looking teasingly at a young girl in a dark dress

"he was a tall boy": Montgomery had several would-be beaus herself in Cavendish school days. Melanie Fishbane's YA novel, Maud, captures the flavor of those times (and Montgomery's journals) well.

Gilbert (Jeff Hyslop) and Anne (Gracie Finley) in the 1968 production of Anne of Green Gables–The Musical(begin superscript)TM(end superscript).
Confederation Centre of the Arts, photo by George Wotton