Avonlea

Things are not going well in the Pettibone house beyond the one bright light of Arthur being home having graduated from veterinary school and about to take over the local practice. Izzy is still feeling uncomfortable with the new feminine influence of Muriel in their family, Izzy thinking that Muriel has taken her place in the home. Izzy is also still not speaking to Felix, who tries repeatedly to apologize and Morgan is home unexpectedly having been expelled from military college, which he hated. The final straw in his expulsion was a bookful of caricatures, albeit well done ones, he drew of his superiors, including one of Clive. Feeling the need for some fonder times, Izzy takes it upon herself to invite her maternal aunt, Lillian Hepworth, to visit from Boston. Lillian has not seen the family in years since she and Clive do not get along as she felt her sister Jessica settled for a life of domestic drudgery in marrying Clive, whereas Lillian went into business as a women's milliner. Upon Lillian's arrival in Avonlea, she impresses her feelings about her sister's life to Izzy, which further places a strain between herself and Clive but she also fails to tell the Pettibones that her business has failed, leaving her penniless. Instead, she pretends still to be a woman of means and regales stories of the rich and famous that she knows and of high society. Izzy,wanting to escape what she sees as her problems, wants a life much like her aunt's and as such wants to live in Boston with Lillian and Morgan wants not to return to military college but enroll in a liberal arts program at Dalhousie. Arthur and Muriel act as the mediators in the family issues, the latter who knows of Lillian's precarious financial situation.