Avonlea little girls had already heard queer stories about Anne.

Mrs.Lynde said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers like a crazy girl.

They looked at her and whispered to each other behind their quarterlies.

Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later on when the opening exercises were over and Anne found herself in Miss Rogerson's class.
Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school class for twenty years.

Her method of teaching was to ask the printed questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question.