A platform of planks, a stationmaster who wanted to close up and go home to his supper, and a pile of shingles at the end, where I sat because it was out of the way.
It was the beginning of June. I had a carpet bag with everything I owned in it, and a hat that was too small, and a dress made of the wincey the asylum had been given by a merchant. I had been told that someone would come for me. I had decided, if nobody did, to climb into the wild cherry tree at the end of the line and sleep there, under the blossoms, like a girl in a story. I had it planned down to the moonlight.
Then a man came up the platform, very slowly, the way you walk towards a horse you are not sure of. He was grey and stooped and so shy that he could not look at me, and he was, it turned out, expecting a boy.
He did not say so. That is the thing I have never forgotten. He picked up my bag, and helped me into the buggy, and drove me eight miles home while I talked the whole way, and he let Marilla be the one to tell me. I think he had already decided, somewhere between the station and the first bend of the road, that he would rather have me than any boy in Nova Scotia. It took the rest of them longer.