Anne and Priscilla Rent Patty's Place

Anne Shirley and Priscilla Grant secure Patty's Place on Spofford Avenue as a furnished home for the coming college year after a search repeatedly thwarted by price, size, and distance. The agreement turns Anne’s attachment to a house she had admired from afar into a practical arrangement: Miss Patty Spofford accepts the students’ limited offer, and she and Maria Spofford prepare to leave the house in their care while they travel to Europe.

The search and the discovery

Anne and Priscilla want to keep house rather than return to a boardinghouse, but finding a suitable rental proves difficult. The available places are too large or too small, too expensive or too far from Redmond College. Exams come and go, and by the last week of term their hoped-for home still seems out of reach. Priscilla is ready to wait until fall and settle, if necessary, for whatever shelter they can find.

Their luck changes during an April walk through Kingsport park. Anne refuses to let the unresolved search spoil the afternoon, dwelling instead on spring and on the prospect of returning home: she longs for the back porch at Green Gables, the Haunted Wood, and Violet-Vale, but has learned to love Kingsport too. Winning the Thorburn Scholarship has made returning to college possible without taking money from Marilla Cuthbert’s small savings. Against Priscilla’s anxious view of the houses spread across Kingsport, Anne insists that failure is not inevitable.

As the two friends walk home by way of Spofford Avenue, they pause, as usual, to admire Patty's Place on Spofford Avenue. A small sign over its arched gateway announces that the furnished house is available to let. Anne has felt her fortunes tied to the house ever since she first saw it, so she resolves that they must inquire the next day rather than abandon the possibility to guesswork.

Miss Patty’s test and the agreement

When Anne and Priscilla return, the sign is still up, though Miss Patty says she had intended to take it down that day. The students fear they have arrived too late. In their first conversation, however, the decisive question is not whether Anne likes the house’s appearance, but whether she truly loves it. Miss Patty distrusts the casual use of the word and distinguishes affection for a home from liking its looks.

Anne explains that she has loved the place since seeing it the previous fall and that she and her two college companions want to rent a small house instead of boarding. Miss Patty has already decided against letting it to the other people who had viewed it: she and Maria do not have to rent the house, and she does not want it to pass to people she considers unsuitable. Anne’s sincerity persuades her that the students will be good to it. In this exchange, affection is not ornamental language but the condition that wins the tenancy.

The financial terms still threaten to undo the arrangement. When Miss Patty names her asking price, Anne and Priscilla recognize that it is beyond their means. Anne says plainly that they are poor college girls and offers the amount they can afford. Miss Patty accepts it. She explains that the rent would help fund the trip, but that she and Maria can afford to go to Europe even if the house remains empty. The agreement therefore does not depend on the students matching a market price: Miss Patty can choose tenants on the basis of trust and attachment.

A furnished home with its name intact

Miss Patty and Maria expect to sail in June and be away for two years, perhaps three. They will send the students the key and leave the house in order for them to take possession when they choose. They plan to pack a few things they especially prize, but leave the rest. Anne asks specifically whether the large china dogs can stay. Miss Patty agrees on the condition that the girls take care of them, identifying the figures as Gog and Magog: Gog looks to the right, Magog to the left.

The house’s name is another point on which Miss Patty will not yield. She explains that earlier prospective tenants wanted to remove the name from the gate during their occupancy; she refused, insisting that it belonged with the house. Her brother Aaron left the property to her, and it has been Patty's Place since then. She intends the name to remain while she and Maria are alive, though she leaves any later owner free to change it. Anne and Priscilla are glad to accept the name as part of the home rather than treat it as a detail to erase.

Their tour confirms the scale and particularity of what they have secured. The ground floor contains a large living room, a kitchen, and a small bedroom; upstairs are three rooms, one large and two small. Anne especially likes one small room facing the big pines. Its pale-blue paper, old-fashioned toilet table with candle sconces, and diamond-paned window with a seat beneath blue muslin frills make it, in her eyes, a fitting place to study or dream. The house is not just a solution to the problem of lodging: its rooms already invite distinct uses and attachments.

From possibility to anticipated home

The agreement is made before the students actually take possession. Priscilla still feels that the visit might prove a fleeting dream, but she can already imagine them living at Patty's Place on Spofford Avenue and jokes that the prospect makes her feel like a millionairess. Anne answers with a comparison to the morning stars singing for joy. Their exuberance registers the reversal from a search that had outlasted exams to a home secured on terms they can afford.

The episode joins practical independence to a more intimate idea of belonging. Anne and Priscilla need a place within reach of Redmond College, and the constraints of money and distance have narrowed their choices. Yet the decisive encounter turns on reciprocal recognition: Anne’s attachment to the house meets Miss Patty’s wish to entrust it to people who will value it. The students gain more than permission to rent furnished rooms; they are welcomed as temporary custodians of a named home, its objects, and its character. The arrangement makes their coming college year feel not merely affordable, but already inhabited in imagination.