Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw her coming , as they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside , enjoying the charm of the cat 's light , the sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among the twilit maples , and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing against the old , mellow , red brick wall of the lawn . Anne was sitting on the steps , her hands clasped over her knee , looking , in the kind dusk , as girlish as a mother of many has any right to be ; and the beautiful gray-green eyes , gazing down the harbour road , were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever . Behind her , in the hammock , Rilla Blythe was curled up , a fat , roly-poly little creature of six years , the youngest of the Ingleside children . She had curly red hair and hazel eyes that were now buttoned up after the funny , wrinkled fashion in which Rilla always went to sleep . Shirley , `` the little brown boy , '' as he was known in the family `` Who 's Who , '' was asleep in Susan 's arms . He was brown-haired , brown-eyed and brown-skinned , with very rosy cheeks , and he was Susan 's especial love . After his birth Anne had been very ill for a long time , and Susan `` mothered '' the baby with a passionate tenderness which none of the other children , dear as they were to her , had ever called out . Dr. Blythe had said that but for her he would never have lived . `` I gave him life just as much as you did , Mrs. Dr. dear , '' Susan was wont to say . `` He is just as much my baby as he is yours . '' And , indeed , it was always to Susan that Shirley ran , to be kissed for bumps , and rocked to sleep , and protected from well-deserved spankings . Susan had conscientiously spanked all the other Blythe children when she thought they needed it for their souls ' good , but she would not spank Shirley nor allow his mother to do it . Once , Dr. Blythe had spanked him and Susan had been stormily indignant . `` That man would spank an angel , Mrs. Dr. dear , that he would , '' she had declared bitterly ; and she would not make the poor doctor a pie for weeks . She had taken Shirley with her to her brother 's home during his parents ' absence , while all the other children had gone to Avonlea , and she had three blessed months of him all to herself . Nevertheless , Susan was very glad to find herself back at Ingleside , with all her darlings around her again . Ingleside was her world and in it she reigned supreme . Even Anne seldom questioned her decisions , much to the disgust of Mrs. Rachel Lynde of Green Gables , who gloomily told Anne , whenever she visited Four Winds , that she was letting Susan get to be entirely too much of a boss and would live to rue it . `` Here is Cornelia Bryant coming up the harbour road , Mrs. Dr. dear , '' said Susan . `` She will be coming up to unload three months ' gossip on us . ''
`` I hope so , '' XXXXX Anne , hugging her knees .
allow blessed kissed mothered questioned ran said sat sitting thought