"You didn't used to be very fond of babies," said Cousin Sophia.

"I'm not a bit fonder of babies in the abstract than ever I was," said
Rilla, frankly. "But I do love Jims, and I'm afraid I wasn't really
half as glad as I should have been when Jim Anderson's letter proved
that he was safe and sound."

"You wasn't hoping the man would be killed!" cried Cousin Sophia in
horrified accents.

"No--no--no! I just hoped he would go on forgetting about Jims, Mrs.
Crawford."

"And then your pa would have the expense of raising him," said Cousin
Sophia reprovingly. "You young creeturs are terrible thoughtless."

Jims himself ran in at this juncture, so rosy and curly and kissable,
that he extorted a qualified compliment even from Cousin Sophia.

"He's a reel healthy-looking child now, though mebbee his colour is a
mite too high--sorter consumptive looking, as you might say. I never
thought you'd raise him when I saw him the day after you brung him
home. I reely did not think it was in you and I told Albert's wife so
when I got home. Albert's wife says, says she, 'There's more in Rilla
Blythe than you'd think for, Aunt Sophia.' Them was her very words.
'More in Rilla Blythe than you'd think for.' Albert's wife always had a
good opinion of you."

Cousin Sophia sighed, as if to imply that Albert's wife stood alone in
this against the world. But Cousin Sophia really did not mean that. She
was quite fond of Rilla in her own melancholy way; but young creeturs
had to be kept down. If they were not kept down society would be
demoralized.

"Do you remember your walk home from the light two years ago tonight?"
whispered Gertrude Oliver to Rilla, teasingly.

"I should think I do," smiled Rilla; and then her smile grew dreamy and
absent; she was remembering something else--that hour with Kenneth on
the sandshore. Where would Ken be tonight? And Jem and Jerry and Walter
and all the other boys who had danced and moonlighted on the old Four
Winds Point that evening of mirth and laughter--their last joyous
unclouded evening. In the filthy trenches of the Somme front, with the
roar of the guns and the groans of stricken men for the music of Ned
Burr's violin, and the flash of star shells for the silver sparkles on
the old blue gulf. Two of them were sleeping under the Flanders
poppies--Alec Burr from the Upper Glen, and Clark Manley of Lowbridge.
Others were wounded in the hospitals. But so far nothing had touched
the manse and the