But if I had n't I might never got really acquainted with you . Anne , please tell me over again that you like me a little bit . I yearn to hear it . '' `` I like you a big bit -- and I think you 're a dear , sweet , adorable , velvety , clawless , little -- kitten , '' laughed Anne , `` but I do n't see when you ever get time to learn your lessons . '' Phil must have found time for she held her own in every class of her year . Even the grumpy old professor of Mathematics , who detested coeds , and had bitterly opposed their admission to Redmond , could n't floor her . She led the freshettes everywhere , except in English , where Anne Shirley left her far behind . Anne herself found the studies of her Freshman year very easy , thanks in great part to the steady work she and Gilbert had put in during those two past years in Avonlea . This left her more time for a social life which she thoroughly enjoyed . But never for a moment did she forget Avonlea and the friends there . To her , the happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came from home . It was not until she had got her first letters that she began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home there . Before they came , Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away ; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same , instead of two hopelessly segregated existences . The first batch contained six letters , from Jane Andrews , Ruby Gillis , Diana Barry , Marilla , Mrs. Lynde and Davy . Jane 's was a copperplate production , with every `` t '' nicely crossed and every `` i '' precisely dotted , and not an interesting sentence in it . She never mentioned the school , concerning which Anne was avid to hear ; she never answered one of the questions Anne had asked in her letter . But she told Anne how many yards of lace she had recently crocheted , and the kind of weather they were having in Avonlea , and how she intended to have her new dress made , and the way she felt when her head ached . Ruby Gillis wrote a gushing epistle deploring Anne 's absence , assuring her she was horribly missed in everything , asking what the Redmond `` fellows '' were like , and filling the rest with accounts of her own harrowing experiences with her numerous admirers . It was a silly , harmless letter , and Anne would have laughed over it had it not been for the postscript . `` Gilbert seems to be enjoying Redmond , judging from his letters , '' wrote Ruby .
`` I do n't XXXXX Charlie is so stuck on it . ''
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