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. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded
very beautiful to her--like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook.
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 are--and 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 soul--not even to you, Miss Oliver. I tell you all my
own--I just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you,
dearest--but I would never betray his. I tell him everything--I even
show him my diary. And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me
things. He shows me all his poems, though--they 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 poems--nor 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, too--some day--and 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 over--father wouldn't let them. I'm glad
I didn't know--I couldn't have borne it. I cried myself to sleep every
night as it was. But sometimes," concluded Rilla bitterly--she 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 Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe. He
really belonged to Jem but was much attached to Walter also. He was