In Which Gilbert Catches an Earlier Train

Anne had tried.Really, she had! She'd spent her first night at Blackmore scribbling furiously and weeping as Diana held her. Diana had offered to pay for Anne to telegram, but Anne couldn't; not for something like this. (Diana had also offered, among other plans, to pay for passage to Toronto for Anne, or to send word of Anne taking ill to get Gilbert to come to Charlottetown. Anne had turned down every single idea. "I just… need to get word to him," she'd choked between sobs.)But after a first draft filled with all manner of vitriol for never saying it plainly, a subsequent three drafts ruined by tears the next day when she realized nearly everything she said about speaking plainly applied to her, and a final one ruined a week later by Josie and Tillie shrieking in delight at catching Moody and Ruby exhanging a chaste kiss on the front porch in a rainstorm causing Anne to knock over a bottle of ink she'd left open after refilling her pen, Anne had given up. The words wouldn't come but for the three that mattered, and she just couldn't force herself to write them again when she didn't know what had happened to them before.-----------In which Gilbert does not get yelled at by Diana.