She had a feeling that Stella thought longingly about marriage… a home… babies. She had begged one night to be allowed to give Rilla her bath. ‘It’s so delightful to bathe her plump, dimpled little body’… and again, shyly, ‘It’s so lovely, Mrs Blythe, to have little darling velvet arms stretched out to you. Babies are so right, aren’t they?’ It would be a shame if a grouchy father should prevent the blossoming of those secret hopes. It would be an ideal marriage. But how could it be brought about, with everybody concerned a bit stubborn and contrary? For the stubbornness and contrariness were not all on the old folks’ side. Anne suspected that both Alden and Stella had a streak of it. This required an entirely different technique from any previous affairs. In the nick of time Anne remembered Dovie’s father. Anne tilted her chin and went at it. Alden and Stella, she considered, were as good as married from that hour. There was no time to be lost. Alden, who lived at the Harbour Head and went to the Anglican church over the harbour, had not even met Stella Chase as yet… perhaps had not even seen her.
