good kind partners,' she said, 'but it did
not affect me like that.'

"I should think it wouldn't! Those poor men must have been thankful to
die.

"I heard Gertrude walking up and down her room most of the night. She
walked like that every night. But never so long as that night. And once
I heard her give a dreadful sudden little cry as if she had been
stabbed. I couldn't sleep for suffering with her; and I couldn't help
her. I thought the night would never end. But it did; and then 'joy
came in the morning' as the Bible says. Only it didn't come exactly in
the morning but well along in the afternoon. The telephone rang and I
answered it. It was old Mrs. Grant speaking from Charlottetown, and her
news was that it was all a mistake--Robert wasn't killed at all; he had
only been slightly wounded in the arm and was safe in the hospital out
of harm's way for a time anyhow. They hadn't learned yet how the
mistake had happened but supposed there must have been another Robert
Grant.

"I hung up the telephone and flew to Rainbow Valley. I'm sure I did
fly--I can't remember my feet ever touching the ground. I met Gertrude
on her way home from school in the glade of spruces where we used to
play, and I just gasped out the news to her. I ought to have had more
sense, of course. But I was so crazy with joy and excitement that I
never stopped to think. Gertrude just dropped there among the golden
young ferns as if she had been shot. The fright it gave me ought to
make me sensible--in this respect at least--for the rest of my life. I
thought I had killed her--I remembered that her mother had died very
suddenly from heart failure when quite a young woman. It seemed years
to me before I discovered that her heart was still beating. A pretty
time I had! I never saw anybody faint before, and I knew there was
nobody up at the house to help, because everybody else had gone to the
station to meet Di and Nan coming home from Redmond. But I
knew--theoretically--how people in a faint should be treated, and now I
know it practically. Luckily the brook was handy, and after I had
worked frantically over her for a while Gertrude came back to life. She
never said one word about my news and I didn't dare to refer to it
again. I helped her walk up through the maple grove and up to her room,
and then she said, 'Rob--is--living,' as if the words were torn out of
her, and flung herself on her bed and cried and cried and cried. I
never saw anyone cry s