now where
there's a pot of goose-grease in Cornelia's tidy pantry and it beats
all the fancy cold creams in the world. I'll put some on your heels
before you go to bed."

Goose-grease on your heels! So this was what your first party and your
first beau and your first moonlit romance ended in!

Rilla gave over crying in sheer disgust at the futility of tears and
went to sleep in Mary Vance's bed in the calm of despair. Outside, the
dawn came greyly in on wings of storm; Captain Josiah, true to his
word, ran up the Union Jack at the Four Winds Light and it streamed on
the fierce wind against the clouded sky like a gallant unquenchable
beacon.

CHAPTER V

"THE SOUND OF A GOING"

Rilla ran down through the sunlit glory of the maple grove behind
Ingleside, to her favourite nook in Rainbow Valley. She sat down on a
green-mossed stone among the fern, propped her chin on her hands and
stared unseeingly at the dazzling blue sky of the August afternoon--so
blue, so peaceful, so unchanged, just as it had arched over the valley
in the mellow days of late summer ever since she could remember.

She wanted to be alone--to think things out--to adjust herself, if it
were possible, to the new world into which she seemed to have been
transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half
bewildered as to her own identity. Was she--could she be--the same
Rilla Blythe who had danced at Four Winds Light six days ago--only six
days ago? It seemed to Rilla that she had lived as much in those six
days as in all her previous life--and if it be true that we should
count time by heart-throbs she had. That evening, with its hopes and
fears and triumphs and humiliations, seemed like ancient history now.
Could she really ever have cried just because she had been forgotten
and had to walk home with Mary Vance? Ah, thought Rilla sadly, how
trivial and absurd such a cause of tears now appeared to her. She could
cry now with a right good will--but she would not--she must not. What
was it mother had said, looking, with her white lips and stricken eyes,
as Rilla had never seen her mother look before,

"When our women fail in courage,
Shall our men be fearless still?"

Yes, that was it. She must be brave--like mother--and Nan--and
Faith--Faith, who had cried with flashing eyes, "Oh, if I were only a
man, to go too!" Only, when her eyes ached and her throat burned like
this she had to hide herself in Rainbow Valley for a little