.

"I am not acquainted with Lord Kitchener," said Susan, composedly, "but
I dare say he makes mistakes as often as other people. Your father says
it will be over in a few months and I have as much faith in his opinion
as I have in Lord Anybody's. So just let us be calm and trust in the
Almighty and get this place tidied up. I am done with crying which is a
waste of time and discourages everybody."

Jem and Jerry went to Charlottetown that night and two days later they
came back in khaki. The Glen hummed with excitement over it. Life at
Ingleside had suddenly become a tense, strained, thrilling thing. Mrs.
Blythe and Nan were brave and smiling and wonderful. Already Mrs.
Blythe and Miss Cornelia were organizing a Red Cross. The doctor and
Mr. Meredith were rounding up the men for a Patriotic Society. Rilla,
after the first shock, reacted to the romance of it all, in spite of
her heartache. Jem certainly looked magnificent in his uniform. It was
splendid to think of the lads of Canada answering so speedily and
fearlessly and uncalculatingly to the call of their country. Rilla
carried her head high among the girls whose brothers had not so
responded. In her diary she wrote:

"He goes to do what I had done
Had Douglas's daughter been his son,"

and was sure she meant it. If she were a boy of course she would go,
too! She hadn't the least doubt of that.

She wondered if it was very dreadful of her to feel glad that Walter
hadn't got strong as soon as they had wished after the fever.

"I couldn't bear to have Walter go," she wrote. "I love Jem ever so
much but Walter means more to me than anyone in the world and I would
die if he had to go. He seems so changed these days. He hardly ever
talks to me. I suppose he wants to go, too, and feels badly because he
can't. He doesn't go about with Jem and Jerry at all. I shall never
forget Susan's face when Jem came home in his khaki. It worked and
twisted as if she were going to cry, but all she said was, 'You look
almost like a man in that, Jem.' Jem laughed. He never minds because
Susan thinks him just a child still. Everybody seems busy but me. I
wish there was something I could do but there doesn't seem to be
anything. Mother and Nan and Di are busy all the time and I just wander
about like a lonely ghost. What hurts me terribly, though, is that
mother's smiles, and Nan's, just seem put on from the outside. Mother's
eyes never laugh now. It makes me feel that I shouldn