
Upon meeting Anne, Matthew does not have the heart to send her back.

She has a vivid imagination tending toward fantasized romance and tragedy, this a mechanism to escape the harsh life she's endured thus far. She is extremely self conscious of her looks, especially the fact of her freckles and her red hair. Anne is outspoken, opinionated and stubborn, but she is also kind, good-hearted and bright.

Through an error, they instead receive a twelve year old orphan girl named Anne Shirley.

To assist with the farm work, they decide to adopt an orphan boy. In the early 1900s, elderly Matthew Cuthbert and his spinster sister Marilla Cuthbert live on a farmstead in Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, the house on the property known as Green Gables.
