Blythe. I couldn't if it was my pore boy." And mother--
oh, mother could always be depended on! How her grey eyes flashed in her
pale face. "It might have been worse, Mrs. Drew. I might have had to
urge him to go." Mrs. Drew did not understand but Rilla did. She flung
up her head. Her brother did not have to be urged to go.
Rilla found herself standing alone and listening to disconnected scraps
of talk as people walked up and down past her.
"I told Mark to wait and see if they asked for a second lot of men. If
they did I'd let him go--but they won't," said Mrs. Palmer Burr.
"I think I'll have it made with a crush girdle of velvet," said Bessie
Clow.
"I'm frightened to look at my husband's face for fear I'll see in it
that he wants to go too," said a little over-harbour bride.
"I'm scared stiff," said whimsical Mrs. Jim Howard. "I'm scared Jim
will enlist--and I'm scared he won't."
"The war will be over by Christmas," said Joe Vickers.
"Let them European nations fight it out between them," said Abner Reese.
"When he was a boy I gave him many a good trouncing," shouted Norman
Douglas, who seemed to be referring to some one high in military circles
in Charlottetown. "Yes, sir, I walloped him well, big gun as he is now."
"The existence of the British Empire is at stake," said the Methodist
minister.
"There's certainly something about uniforms," sighed Irene Howard.
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