Chapter 2 - Page 2

some big college. She knew his passionate love of beauty and his equally passionate hatred of ugliness; she knew his strength and his weakness.

Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys. Glossy black hair, brilliant dark grey eyes, faultless features. And a poet to his fingertips! Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift. That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of twenty to write.

Rilla loved Walter with all her heart. He never teased her as Jem and Shirley did. He never called her "Spider." His pet name for her was "Rilla-my-Rilla"­a little pun on her real name, Marilla. She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables, but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well, and Rilla detested the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim. Why couldn't they have called her by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss Oliver now and then. She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of fifteen are­and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Di more of his secrets than he told her.

"He thinks I'm not grown up enough to understand," she had once lamented rebelliously to Miss Oliver, "but I am! And I would never tell them to a single soul­not even to you, Miss Oliver. I tell you all my own­I just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you, dearest­but I would never betray his. I tell him everything­I even show him my diary. And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me things. He shows me all his poems, though­they are marvellous, Miss Oliver. Oh, I just live in the hope that some day I shall be to Walter what Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was to him. Wordsworth never wrote anything like Walter's poems­nor Tennyson, either."

"I wouldn't say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash," said Miss Oliver dryly. Then, repenting, as she saw a hurt look in Rilla's eye, she added hastily, "But I believe Walter will be a great poet, too­some day­and you will have more of his confidence as you grow older."

"When Walter was in the hospital with typhoid last year I was almost crazy," sighed Rilla, a little importantly. "They never told me how ill he really was until it was all over­father wouldn't let them. I'm glad I didn't know­I couldn't have borne it. I cried myself to sleep every night as it was. But sometimes," concluded Rilla bitterly­she liked to speak bitterly now and then in imitation of Miss Oliver­"sometimes I think Walter cares more for Dog Monday than he does for me."

Dog Monday was the Ingleside dog, so called because he had come into the family on a