Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert expected a boy orphan who could help Matthew with the farm chores, but got Anne Shirley, a girl, by mistake. Matthew wants to keep her, but Marilla isn’t sure. Here, Marilla drives Anne to Mrs. Spencer’s to find out how the mistake was made.

“I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?” said Marilla.

Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the look and said grimly:

“I’m going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I’ll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once. I’ll set your tea out for you and I’ll be home in time to milk the cows.”

Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won’t talk back – unless it is a woman who won’t.

Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them, and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:

“Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I’d hire him for the summer.”

Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them.” (51-52)

From L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, L. C. Page, 1908