Booking Through Thursday ~ Favorite Literary Couples

In the land of blogging I am learning all about memes. Today I ran across this one compliments of The Book Lady's Blog. So thanks, Book Lady. Anyway, on an occasional Thursday if I like the question (or have something halfway interesting to say about it), I'll post. 

Here is today's Booking Through Thursday meme:

Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.

It wasn't hard for me to narrow this answer down. As soon as I read the question, I knew the answer. 

Emily Byrd Starr and Teddy Kent ~ Emily Series by LM Montgomery 

The second book, Emily Climbs features one of the turning points in my reading life. It's the first time I clearly remember where I was (on my white lace bedspread), eating (saltine crackers), doing (petting my cat), and what I read. I was fourteen and the scene hit me so hard because it revealed the thing I most wished would happen to me even though I didn't know it at the time. 

Emily attended prayer meeting on a Wednesday night. It was hot, the summer air thick with the tension of a coming storm. Emily passed the time by jotting down notes on a stray piece of paper found in the back of her bible. The paper slipped from her bible as she left the church and she returned to get it for her notes contained fancies about the people around her. If anyone found it, she would be disgraced. Unfortunately, Emily is locked inside the church and finds that she is not alone. In a panic she screams for Teddy who cannot possibly hear her. He comes though, from a mile distant, and saves her from the church. They sit on a grave stone in the cemetery while she recovers her wits and in time, they start to feel something more and their friendship is never the same. 

"Emily," Teddy whispered, "you're the sweetest girl in the world."

The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many milllons of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life.

My 14 year old heart longed for that moment. I didn't know until I read the words that it was what I wanted most in the world but I read those sentences and I was forever changed. I think in that moment, I started the transformation from childhood to young adulthood. And, as the author entreats, as a "madam" fourteen years later, I admit I still thrill when I read those words again. 

And that is why Emily and Teddy will always be my favorite literary couple. They opened a door for me. 

I think I am a complete sap. 

I have other favorite couples, but none like Emily and Teddy. The first is pretty obvious, but then, I'm an obvious sort of girl. 

Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy ~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe ~ Anne Series by LM Montgomery

Penelope Featherington and Colin Bridgerton ~ Romancing Mr. Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

Charlotte Gray and Peter Gregory ~ Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks