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cried all night, Mrs. Meredith says, when he heard Jem and Jerry were going. And he wanted to know if the 'K of K.' his father talked about was the King of Kings. He is the dearest kiddy. I just love him--though I don't really care much for children. I don't like babies one bit--though when I say so people look at me as if I had said something perfectly shocking. Well, I don't, and I've got to be honest about it. I don't mind looking at a nice clean baby if somebody else holds it--but I wouldn't touch it for anything and I don't feel a single real spark of interest in it. Gertrude Oliver says she just feels the same. (She is the most honest person I know. She never pretends anything.) She says babies bore her until they are old enough to talk and then she likes them--but still a good ways off. Mother and Nan and Di all adore babies and seem to think I'm unnatural because I don't. "I haven't seen Kenneth since the night of the party. He was here one evening after Jem came back but I happened to be away. I don't think he mentioned me at all--at least nobody told me he did and I was determined I wouldn't ask--but I don't care in the least. All that matters absolutely nothing to me now. The only thing that does matter is that Jem has volunteered for active service and will be going to Valcartier in a few more days--my big, splendid brother Jem. Oh, I'm so proud of him! "I suppose Kenneth would enlist too if it weren't for his ankle. I think that is quite providential. He is his mother's only son and how dreadful she would feel if he went. Only sons should never think of going!" Walter came wandering through the valley as Rilla sat there, with his head bent and his hands clasped behind him. When he saw Rilla he turned abruptly away; then as abruptly he turned and came back to her. "Rilla-my-Rilla, what are you thinking of ?" "Everything is so changed, Walter," said Rilla wistfully. "Even you--you're changed. A week ago we were all so happy--and--and-- now I just can't find myself at all. I'm lost." Walter sat down on a neighbouring stone and took Rilla's little appealing hand. "I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face that fact." "It's so terrible to think of Jem," pleaded Rilla. "Sometimes I forget for a little while what it really means and feel excited and proud--and then it comes over me again like a cold wind." "I envy Jem!" said Walter moodily. "Envy Jem! Oh, Walter you--you don't want to go too." "No," said Walter, gazing straight before him down the emerald vistas of the valley, "no, I don't want to go. That's just the trouble. Rilla, I'm afraid to go. I'm a coward." 21 "You're not!" Rilla burst out angrily. "Why, anybody would be afraid to go. You might be--why, you might be killed." "I wouldn't mind that if it didn't hurt," muttered Walter. "I don't think I'm afraid of death itself--it's of the pain that might come before death--it wouldn't be so bad to die and have it over--but to keep on dying! Rilla, I've always been afraid of pain--you know that. I can't help it--I shudder when I think of the possibility of being mangled or--or blinded. Rilla, I cannot face that thought. To be blind--never to see the beauty of the world again--moonlight on Four Winds--the stars twinkling through the fir-trees--mist on the gulf. I ought to go--I ought to want to go--but I don't--I hate the thought of it--I'm ashamed--ashamed." "But, Walter, you couldn't go anyhow," said Rilla piteously. She was sick with a new terror that Walter would go after all. "You're not strong enough." "I am. I've felt as fit as ever I did this last month. I'd pass any examination--I know it. Everybody thinks I'm not strong yet--and I'm skulking behind that belief. I--I should have been a girl," Walter concluded in a burst of passionate bitterness. "Even if you were strong enough, you oughtn't to go," sobbed Rilla. "What would mother do? She's breaking her heart over Jem. It would kill her to see you both go." "Oh, I'm not going--don't worry. I tell you I'm afraid to go--afraid. I don't mince the matter to myself. It's a relief to own up even to you, Rilla. I wouldn't confess it to anybody else--Nan and Di would despise me. But I hate the whole thing--the horror, the pain, the ugliness. War isn't a khaki uniform or a drill parade--everything I've read in old histories haunts me. I lie awake at night and see things that have happened--see the blood and filth and misery of it all. And a bayonet charge! If I could face the other things I could never face that. It turns me sick to think of it--sicker even to think of giving it than receiving it--to think of thrusting a bayonet through another man." Walter writhed and shuddered. "I think of these things all the time--and it doesn't seem to me that Jem and Jerry ever think of them. They laugh and talk about 'potting Huns'! But it maddens me to see them in the khaki. And they think I'm grumpy because I'm not fit to go." Walter laughed bitterly. "It is not a nice thing to feel yourself a coward." But Rilla got her arms about him and cuddled her head on his shoulder. She was so glad he didn't want to go--for just one minute she had been horribly frightened. And it was so nice to have Walter confiding his troubles to her--to her, not Di. She didn't feel so lonely and superfluous any longer. "Don't you despise me, Rilla-my-Rilla?" asked Walter wistfully. Somehow, it hurt him to think Rilla might despise him--hurt him as much as if it had been Di. He realized suddenly how very fond he was of this adoring kid sister with her appealing eyes and troubled, girlish face. "No, I don't. Why, Walter, hundreds of people feel just as you do. You know what that verse of Shakespeare in the old Fifth Reader says--'the brave man is not he who feels no fear.'" "No--but it is 'he whose noble soul its fear subdues.' I don't do that. We can't gloss it over, Rilla. I'm a coward." "You're not. Think of how you fought Dan Reese long ago." "One spurt of courage isn't enough for a lifetime." "Walter, one time I heard father say that the trouble with you was a sensitive nature and a vivid imagination. You feel things before they really come--feel them all alone when there isn't anything to help you bear them--to take away from them. It isn't anything to be ashamed of. When you and Jem got your hands burned when the grass was fired on the sandhills two years ago Jem made twice the fuss over the pain that you did. As for this horrid old war, there'll be plenty to go without you. It won't last long." "I wish I could believe it. Well, it's supper-time, Rilla. You'd better run. I don't want anything." "Neither do I. I couldn't eat a mouthful. Let me stay here with you, Walter. It's such a comfort to talk things over with someone. The rest all think that I'm too much of a baby to understand." So they two sat there in the old valley until the evening star shone through a pale-grey, gauzy cloud over the maple grove, and a fragrant dewy darkness filled their little sylvan dell. It was one of the evenings Rilla was to treasure in remembrance all her life--the first one on which Walter had ever talked to her as if she were a woman and not a child. They comforted and strengthened each other. Walter felt, for the time being at least, that it was not such a despicable thing after all to dread the horror of war; and Rilla was 22 glad to be made the confidante of his struggles--to sympathize with and encourage him. She was of importance to somebody. When they went back to Ingleside they found callers sitting on the veranda. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith had come over from the manse, and Mr. and Mrs. Norman Douglas had come up from the farm. Cousin Sophia was there also, sitting with Susan in the shadowy background. Mrs. Blythe and Nan and Di were away, but Dr. Blythe was home and so was Dr. Jekyll, sitting in golden majesty on the top step. And of course they were all talking of the war, except Dr. Jekyll who kept his own counsel and looked contempt as only a cat can. When two people foregathered in those days they talked of the war; and old Highland Sandy of the Harbour Head talked of it when he was alone and hurled anathemas at the Kaiser across all the acres of his farm. Walter slipped away, not caring to see or be seen, but Rilla sat down on the steps, where the garden mint was dewy and pungent. It was a very calm evening with a dim, golden afterlight irradiating the glen. She felt happier than at any time in the dreadful week that had passed. She was no longer haunted by the fear that Walter would go. "I'd go myself if I was twenty years younger," Norman Douglas was shouting. Norman always shouted when he was excited. "I'd show the Kaiser a thing or two! Did I ever say there wasn't a hell? Of course there's a hell--dozens of hells--hundreds of hells-- where the Kaiser and all his brood are bound for." "I knew this war was coming," said Mrs. Norman triumphantly. "I saw it coming right along. I could have told all those stupid Eng-lishmen what was ahead of them. I told you, John Meredith, years ago what the Kaiser was up to but you wouldn't believe it. You said he would never plunge the world in war. Who was right about the Kaiser, John? You--or I? Tell me that." "You were, I admit," said Mr. Meredith. "It's too late to admit it now," said Mrs. Norman, shaking her head, as if to intimate that if John Meredith had admitted it sooner there might have been no war. "Thank God, England's navy is ready," said the doctor. "Amen to that," nodded Mrs. Norman. "Bat-blind as most of them were somebody had foresight enough to see to that." "Maybe England'll manage not to get into trouble over it," said Cousin Sophia plaintively. "I dunno. But I'm much afraid." "One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already, up to her neck, Sophia Crawford," said Susan. "But your ways of thinking are beyond me and always were. It is my opinion that the British Navy will settle Germany in a jiffy
