"Are you so pleased at
finding you're not all alone, lost in a huge, big, black room?" Then she
knew she wanted to kiss him and she did. She kissed his silky, scented
little head, she kissed his chubby little cheek, she kissed his little
cold hands. She wanted to squeeze him--to cuddle him, just as she used
to squeeze and cuddle her kittens. Something delightful and yearning and
brooding seemed to have taken possession of her. She had never felt like
this before.
In a few minutes Jims was sound asleep; and, as Rilla listened to his
soft, regular breathing and felt the little body warm and contented
against her, she realized that--at last--she loved her war-baby.
"He has got to be--such--a--darling," she thought drowsily, as she
drifted off to slumberland herself.
In February Jem and Jerry and Robert Grant were in the trenches and a
little more tension and dread was added to the Ingleside life. In March
"Yiprez," as Susan called it, had come to have a bitter significance.
The daily list of casualties had begun to appear in the papers and no
one at Ingleside ever answered the telephone without a horrible cold
shrinking--for it might be the station-master phoning up to say a
telegram had come from overseas. No one at Ingleside ever got up in the
morning without a sudden piercing wonder over what the day might bring.
"And I used to welcome the mornings so," thought Rilla.
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