it," cried Rilla, laughing. "I want
everything--everything a girl can have. I'll be fifteen in another
month, and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer. I heard someone
say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in
a girl's life. I'm going to make them perfectly splendid--just fill
them with fun."

"There's no use thinking about what you're going to do--you are
tolerably sure not to do it."

"Oh, but you do get a lot of fun out of the thinking," cried Rilla.

"You think of nothing but fun, you monkey," said Miss Oliver
indulgently, reflecting that Rilla's chin was really the last word in
chins. "Well, what else is fifteen for? But have you any notion of
going to college this fall?"

"No--nor any other fall. I don't want to. I never cared for all those
ologies and isms Nan and Di are so crazy about. And there's five of us
going to college already. Surely that's enough. There's bound to be one
dunce in every family. I'm quite willing to be a dunce if I can be a
pretty, popular, delightful one. I can't be clever. I have no talent at
all, and you can't imagine how comfortable it is. Nobody expects me to
do anything so I'm never pestered to do it. And I can't be a
housewifely, cookly creature, either. I hate sewing and dusting, and
when Susan couldn't teach me to make biscuits nobody could. Father says
I toil not neither do I spin. Therefore, I must be a lily of the
field," concluded Rilla, with another laugh.

"You are too young to give up your studies altogether, Rilla."

"Oh, mother will put me through a course of reading next winter. It
will polish up her B.A. degree. Luckily I like reading. Don't look at
me so sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest. I can't be sober and
serious--everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me. Next month I'll
be fifteen--and next year sixteen--and the year after that seventeen.
Could anything be more enchanting?"

"Rap wood," said Gertrude Oliver, half laughingly, half seriously. "Rap
wood, Rilla-my-Rilla."

CHAPTER III

MOONLIT MIRTH

Rilla, who still buttoned up her eyes when she went to sleep so that
she always looked as if she were laughing in her slumber, yawned,
stretched, and smiled at Gertrude Oliver. The latter had come over from
Lowbridge the previous evening and had been prevailed upon to remain
for the dance at the Four Winds lighthouse the next night.

"The new day is knocking at the window. What will it bring us, I
wonder."