"I never took you for an artist," Hero remarked from her library sofa as she watched the movement of Seraph's eyes over the top of the large drawing pad he was using.

It was their second morning on the ship, and with no fresh newspapers to read and weather too grey and dull to encourage a promenade, Seraph seemed to have turned to other pursuits.

His lips twitched momentarily from their accustomed horizontal mien into what, for Seraph, was a self-deprecating smile. "I'm not. That is to say I have never had sufficient leisure time in which to practice so that I might become proficient. I'm working on something far more mundane."

"Oh?" Hero encouraged.

"I'm trying to design potential layouts for the apothecary and the workrooms. It will all depend on what sort of parcels of land are available, I know, but I thought if I roughed out some ideas, then it would at least give an architect something to work from once we purchase a plot."

"Do people use architects?" Hero lowered her voice to ask. "Or do they just go and chop down a few acres of the nearest forest and build a cabin?"

"Frankly, Miss Grayson, I have no idea what your average frontiersman might do. I, however, would rather not end up living and working in a home that might collapse like a house of cards as a result of a single unanticipated chemical reaction, so I will use an architect. Besides, unless we purchase a separate plot for living quarters, I imagine that a prime retail site will be sufficiently expensive that we will probably want at least two full floors and the attic space for our personal rooms."

"I thought you might like the privacy of living away from the shop," Hero suggested.

"Possibly later. At first, there will be so much brewing to do that I doubt I will often be far from the laboratory. Perhaps once the shop is fully stocked and we know how well the various items sell, I will be able to arrange things so that I have more free evenings and I might look into purchasing a separate residence." He smirked. "I might even learn to draw, but probably not in the first year, possibly not even the first two or three."

"Well, I hope you've given me my own area in the laboratory?" Hero teased.

"Of course," Seraph answered smoothly. "There would be little point in employing you, if there was not space for us both. In some versions, you even get a laboratory all of your own... Just in case you decide to specialise in something other than chemistry."

"Not so you can send me away when my questions get too annoying?"

"Don't be silly, girl. I don't need a separate lab for that. I would just send you to work on the shop floor. Having to answer the customers' dunderheaded questions might even help cure you." He smiled again, almost a real smile on anyone. "Though I doubt it."

---

Hero set aside her book, placing it on the coffee table between her and Seraph. "I'll be back in a few minutes," she informed her companion.

Seraph barely looked up. "I told you you would regret drinking all that coffee."

Hero gave a strained smile. "Yes, you did," she conceded before bustling from the room.

It took some time before Seraph began to wonder what was keeping his charge, and even longer before he began to be concerned, but when twenty minutes had passed since her departure, he closed his own book and picked up the one Hero had left on the table. Checking the title, he hastily stuffed both books back into one of the wire-fronted cabinets at random, and headed for their suite as fast as decorum would allow.

He barged into the parlour area with such urgency that Hero couldn't help thinking that his suit should have billowed dramatically. "Damn you, girl," he muttered as he took in her tear-stained face and almost foetal position on the tiny sofa.

Hero gave an inelegant sniff in reply, though her mouth worked as if she was searching for something to say.

Seraph produced a handkerchief from his jacket and held it out to her. Then he drew the leather upholstered club chair up opposite her. "Don't talk until you're ready," he instructed softly. "A good cry won't do you any harm. I'd probably cry, too, if I had been reading that mawkish nonsense."

Even in her misery, Hero couldn't help but snort at the idea of Seraph S. Smith in tears over a children's book. "You cry about a book? I don't see it." She shifted into a semi-upright position, leaning against one arm of the couch with her feet flat on the cushions. She dabbed at her eyes and then gave her nose a loud blow. "And how do you know it's mawkish? I wouldn't have thought you would be the 'Anne of Green Gables' type."

Seraph sighed. "There was a time that I would read any book I could lay my hands on. It just so happened that at that time I knew a young girl with red hair and freckles. She loaned me the books. Does that satisfy your overly-inquisitive little mind?"

"No, but at least I can understand why you've read the book now. I'm sorry, Seraph. It's stupid. I don't know why it set me off..."

"Don't be a dunce, Grayson. A maudlin story about a know-it-all orphan with nightmare hair and a tendency to talk all the time, who gets shipped off to live with strangers on some Canadian island she'd probably never heard of. I can't for the life of me imagine why you might identify with that," he added snidely.

"She's just so lonely, and she doesn't fit in."

"She fits in fine," Seraph countered. "It just takes her a little time to train all those new people, but right from the start she always had the brother."

"Is that a hint?" Hero asked.

"If you're Gryffindor enough to interpret it as one," Seraph answered, switching to the sofa and lifting her into his lap. He waited until the tears had run their course, holding her and stroking the hair that had worked its way free of its pins.

"Of course, the brother dies at the end of the first book, but I have no intention of following that example any time soon."

"You better not!" Hero retorted before nuzzling deeper into his shirt front.

---

Additional Author's Note: Anne in the book is adopted not by a married couple, but by an elderly brother and sister. Matthew and Marilla send a message to someone they know who is planning to adopt a little girl to pick up a boy from the orphanage on the mainland to help them on the farm as Matthew is getting too old to do everything on his own. 

Along the way, the message gets changed and the person going to the orphanage is told to bring back a girl. Matthew picks Anne up from the train station where she's been dropped off and takes her back to the farm until they can get the mix up sorted out. He falls for her straight away and wants to keep her. Marilla is determined to send her back and get the boy they originally wanted. So, 'the brother' is her adoptive father/grandfather figure...