I'm sure I did fly
--I can't remember my feet ever touching the ground. I met Gertrude on
her way home from school in the glade of spruces where we used to play,
and I just gasped out the news to her. I ought to have had more sense,
of course. But I was so crazy with joy and excitement that I never
stopped to think. Gertrude just dropped there among the golden young
ferns as if she had been shot. The fright it gave me ought to make me
sensible--in this respect at least--for the rest of my life. I thought
I had killed her--I remembered that her mother had died very suddenly
from heart failure when quite a young woman. It seemed years to me
before I discovered that her heart was still beating. A pretty time I
had! I never saw anybody faint before, and I knew there was nobody up at
the house to help, because everybody else had gone to the station to
meet Di and Nan coming home from Redmond. But I knew--theoretically--
how people in a faint should be treated, and now I know it practically.
Luckily the brook was handy, and after I had worked frantically over her
for a while Gertrude came back to life. She never said one word about my
news and I didn't dare to refer to it again. I helped her walk up
through the maple grove and up to her room, and then she said, 'Rob--is
--living,' as if the words were torn out of her, and flung herself on
her bed and cried and cried and cried.
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