"He's a reel healthy-looking child now, though mebbee his colour is a
mite too high--sorter consumptive looking, as you might say. I never
thought you'd raise him when I saw him the day after you brung him home.
I reely did not think it was in you and I told Albert's wife so when I
got home. Albert's wife says, says she, 'There's more in Rilla Blythe
than you'd think for, Aunt Sophia.' Them was her very words. 'More in
Rilla Blythe than you'd think for.' Albert's wife always had a good
opinion of you."
Cousin Sophia sighed, as if to imply that Albert's wife stood alone in
this against the world. But Cousin Sophia really did not mean that. She
was quite fond of Rilla in her own melancholy way; but young creeturs
had to be kept down. If they were not kept down society would be
demoralized.
"Do you remember your walk home from the light two years ago tonight?"
whispered Gertrude Oliver to Rilla, teasingly.
"I should think I do," smiled Rilla; and then her smile grew dreamy and
absent; she was remembering something else--that hour with Kenneth on the
sandshore. Where would Ken be tonight? And Jem and Jerry and Walter and
all the other boys who had danced and moonlighted on the old Four Winds
Point that evening of mirth and laughter--their last joyous unclouded
evening. In the filthy trenches of the Somme front, with the roar of the
guns and the groans of stricken men for the music of Ned Burr's violin,
and the flash of star shells for the silver sparkles on the old blue
gulf.
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