Chapter 10 - Page 2

when I wish I had never been born. Life has always seemed such a beautiful thing to me­and now it is a hideous thing. Rilla-my-Rilla, if it weren't for your letters­your dear, bright, merry, funny, comical, believing letters­I think I'd give up. And Una's! Una is really a little brick, isn't she? There's a wonderful fineness and firmness under all that shy, wistful girlishness of her. She hasn't your knack of writing laugh-provoking epistles, but there's something in her letters­I don't know what­that makes me feel at least while I'm reading them, that I could even go to the front. Not that she ever says a word about my going­or hints that I ought to go­she isn't that kind. It's just the spirit of them­the personality that is in them. Well, I can't go. You have a brother and Una has a friend who is a coward."

"Oh, I wish Walter wouldn't write such things," sighed Rilla. "It hurts me. He isn't a coward­he isn't­he isn't!"

She looked wistfully about her­at the little woodland valley and the grey, lonely fallows beyond. 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 day­just a short thing with goblin imagination in every line of it. Oh, how happy they had been then!

Well­Rilla scrambled to her feet­time was up. Jims would soon be awake­his lunch had to be prepared­his little slips had to be ironed­there was a committee meeting of the Junior Reds that night­there was her new knitting bag to finish­it would be the handsomest bag in the Junior Society­handsomer even than Irene Howard's­she must get home and get to work. She was busy these days from morning till night. That little monkey of a Jims took so much time. But he was growing­he was certainly growing. And there were times when Rilla felt sure that it was not merely a pious hope but an absolute fact that he was getting decidedly better looking. Sometimes she felt quite proud