Charlotte E. Morgan’s surprise visit to Green Gables overturns Anne Shirley’s elaborate dinner preparations and tests her poise in a far less glamorous setting: feather-covered, dressed for work, and with her nose dyed scarlet. The embarrassment gives way to an unexpectedly intimate afternoon. Anne’s effort to welcome the celebrated author, despite the mistaken identity and improvised meal, turns an anticipated formal occasion into a lively exchange of stories and a walk through familiar Avonlea paths.

The Unannounced Arrival

Anne expects a visitor who is in a hurry and hurries to answer the kitchen door while still covered in feathers from shifting a feather bed. Her dress is white with down, and escaped strands of hair form a feathered halo. The guests are Priscilla Grant, a stout gray-haired woman in a tweed suit, and a tall, beautifully dressed woman whose appearance leads Anne to assume she must be Charlotte E. Morgan. She has mistaken Mrs. Pendexter for the author; the gray-haired guest is the actual Mrs. Morgan.

The visit is a last-minute substitution. Priscilla explains that she did not know until the previous night that they would come. Her aunt, Charlotte E. Morgan, had planned to spend the day with a friend in town, but the friend’s household was quarantined because of scarlet fever. Priscilla proposed Green Gables instead, knowing Anne longed to meet her aunt. They had also called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter, a New York friend of Mrs. Morgan, whose husband is a millionaire. Their stay must be brief: Mrs. Pendexter has to return to the hotel by five o’clock.

Anne Rises to the Occasion

The guests arrive just after Anne has applied a freckle lotion she made from a magazine recipe. Her determination to remove her freckles has already led to a painful attempt in which the skin peeled from her nose but the freckles remained. Marilla Cuthbert disapproves of the lotion as well as the underlying effort to alter what Providence placed there. After Anne applies it, she returns to the work of shifting feathers, not yet aware how conspicuous she looks.

Faced with the visitors, Anne recalls that the heroines in Mrs. Morgan’s books are known for rising to the occasion. She treats this as an obligation and greets the guests calmly, despite the disarray. Her composure impresses Priscilla, who later says she has never admired Anne more. The irony is that Anne has mistaken the most visibly elegant guest for the author, while the actual Mrs. Morgan is the short, stout woman in tweed. In the confusion, however, this error matters less to Anne than the shock of receiving visitors in such an unpresentable state. She ushers them into the spare room and parlor, then goes out to help Priscilla unharness the horse.

The physical embarrassment is not over. Diana Barry, struggling to tell Anne what is wrong, eventually points out that it is her nose. Anne checks the looking glass above the sink and sees that it has turned brilliant scarlet. She fears the dye may not wash away and connects the mishap to an earlier hair-dyeing disaster, which had ended with Marilla cutting her hair. Fortunately, the lotion comes off easily. Anne changes clothes, but the muslin dress she had hoped to wear is still outside on the line, so she settles for her black lawn dress. The planned appearance has been compromised, but she can now return to receiving her guests.

An Improvised Welcome

Diana returns wearing her own muslin dress and carrying a covered platter sent by her mother: a carved and jointed chicken. The meal also includes light new bread, butter and cheese, Marilla’s fruit cake, preserved plums in golden syrup, and a bowl of pink-and-white asters for decoration. To Anne, the spread seems meager beside the elaborate dinner she had prepared for Mrs. Morgan. Her guests, however, eat the simple food with evident enjoyment, and after the opening moments Anne stops measuring the meal against her original plans.

Mrs. Morgan proves a more rewarding guest than Anne’s expectations alone could have supplied. Although her appearance disappoints some of her devoted readers, she is an engaging conversationalist, an experienced traveler, and a gifted storyteller. She condenses what she has seen of people into witty epigrams, but her brilliance is accompanied by sympathy and kindheartedness. Rather than monopolizing the talk, she draws Anne and Diana into it; both find themselves speaking freely. Mrs. Pendexter contributes little conversation, but her beauty and graceful enjoyment of the meal make a strong impression on Anne. Diana is struck by the incongruity of hearing that Mrs. Pendexter’s husband’s sister is married to an English earl and then watching her take a second helping of plum preserves.

The Afternoon’s Turn

After dinner, the group walks through Lover’s Lane, Violet Vale, and Birch Path, then returns through Haunted Wood to Dryad’s Bubble. There they sit and talk for a final half hour. Mrs. Morgan asks how Haunted Wood acquired its name and laughs until she cries at the story, including Anne’s dramatic account of a memorable walk through it at twilight. The visit thus moves from an arrival marked by confusion and self-consciousness to shared amusement in places that already belong to Anne’s imaginative world.

When the guests have left, Anne tells Diana that the afternoon was a feast of reason and flow of soul. She cannot decide whether she enjoyed listening to Mrs. Morgan or looking at Mrs. Pendexter more, and concludes that the unplanned visit may have been more enjoyable than a day encumbered by extensive serving. She asks Diana to stay for tea so they can talk it all over. The event’s decisive reversal is practical as well as emotional: the prepared dinner and expected formality fall away, while conversation, simple food, and a walk become the substance of the occasion.