How everything reminded her of Walter! The
red leaves still clung to the wild sweet-briars that overhung a curve of
the brook; their stems were gemmed with the pearls of the gentle rain
that had fallen a little while before. Walter had once written a poem
describing them. The wind was sighing and rustling among the frosted
brown bracken ferns, then lessening sorrowfully away down the brook.
Walter had said once that he loved the melancholy of the autumn wind on
a November day. The old Tree Lovers still clasped each other in a
faithful embrace, and the White Lady, now a great white-branched tree,
stood out beautifully fine, against the grey velvet sky. Walter had
named them long ago; and last November, when he had walked with her and
Miss Oliver in the Valley, he had said, looking at the leafless Lady,
with a young silver moon hanging over her, "A white birch is a beautiful
Pagan maiden who has never lost the Eden secret of being naked and
unashamed." Miss Oliver had said, "Put that into a poem, Walter," and he
had done so, and read it to them the next day--just a short thing with
goblin imagination in every line of it. Oh, how happy they had been
then!
Well--Rilla scrambled to her feet--time was up. Jims would soon be
awake--his lunch had to be prepared--his little slips had to be ironed
--there was a committee meeting of the Junior Reds that night--there
was her new knitting bag to finish--it would be the handsomest bag in
the Junior Society--handsomer even than Irene Howard's--she must get
home and get to work.
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