Stephen Irving and Lavendar Lewis Reunite

Stephen Irving and Miss Lavendar Lewis reunite at Echo Lodge after twenty-five years apart, in a meeting arranged by Anne Shirley. The encounter turns an old friendship into an apparent renewed courtship: though the proposal itself takes place offstage, Stephen's arm around Miss Lavendar and Anne's prediction of a wedding make the scene's direction unmistakable.

An Old Friend and a New Invitation

Stephen's return to the story comes through his son, Paul Irving. After Paul tells Anne about his father's homecoming, Stephen speaks with her about the subjects they had been discussing; Anne senses that his attention is partly elsewhere. He then asks whether she knows Miss Lewis, explaining that Paul's last letter mentioned visiting her at the stone house in Grafton. His description of her as an old friend quietly introduces the history behind the coming visit.

Anne replies that Miss Lavendar is a dear friend and that the two women are close. Her answer is outwardly composed, but the news sends a thrill through her: she recognizes the possibility of romance before Stephen makes his request. He asks Anne to find out whether Miss Lavendar will receive him. The request is modest in form, a visit between old friends, yet the twenty-five-year absence implied by the scene gives it greater emotional weight. Anne understands that the meeting may reopen a relationship rather than merely renew an acquaintance.

The Message at the Garden

The next morning, Anne walks through the beechwoods to Grafton to carry Stephen's request. Her excitement is physical as well as emotional: her hands grow cold and her voice trembles when she tells Miss Lavendar that she has important news. Miss Lavendar guesses what it is from Anne's manner before hearing the message. Her face pales, and her usually lively voice loses its color and sparkle. The reaction suggests that Stephen's name has already reached a place in her feelings that Anne's announcement need not explain.

When Anne asks whether she may tell Stephen that he can come, Miss Lavendar agrees, then presents the permission as unexceptional: he is coming only as an old friend might. Anne has her own view of this disclaimer. That difference between Miss Lavendar's cautious explanation and Anne's eager interpretation gives the approach to the meeting its tension: both women know that the visit matters, but only Anne openly treats it as the beginning of a romance.

Waiting at Echo Lodge

That evening, the usual tea at Echo Lodge becomes a ritual performed under the pressure of anticipation. Nobody really eats. Miss Lavendar goes upstairs to put on her new forget-me-not organdy, while Anne does her hair. Miss Lavendar tries to sustain an air of indifference by attending to ordinary household concerns, inspecting a rent in the curtain and complaining that Charlotta the Fourth has again forgotten to dust the stair railing. The contrast makes her composure legible as a performance: the visit has altered the evening, even while she insists on the claims of mending and dusting.

Anne, unable to concentrate, proposes cleaning the silver spoons as a task that will occupy their hands and pass the time. After an hour, she lays down the last shining spoon, and the sound of the front door closing sends both women searching each other's faces for reassurance. Charlotta the Fourth fears that Stephen has already left, which would make the visit a failure before it began. But he has not gone. Anne and Charlotta hurry to the window and see him walking with Miss Lavendar along the middle path toward the stone bench.

A Gesture and a Forecast

Stephen recognizes the house and garden as unchanged since his previous visit twenty-five years earlier, and says that being there makes him feel young again. Anne answers by likening the place to an enchanted palace in which events begin when the prince arrives. Her image gives the reunion a fairy-tale shape, but the scene anchors that expectation in a real place Stephen remembers and in a walk he now takes with Miss Lavendar.

From the window, Charlotta notices that Stephen has put his arm around Miss Lavendar's waist. She takes the gesture as proof that he has proposed, since Miss Lavendar would not otherwise allow such intimacy. The narrative does not show the proposal or report an answer; instead, it lets the observers interpret the couple's movement together. Anne responds by dancing Charlotta around the kitchen and predicting a wedding at the stone house before the maple leaves turn red. Her forecast converts the private gesture into a public expectation, while preserving the tenderness of the moment: after a quarter-century, the possibility of a shared future appears in the familiar garden as a new beginning.