Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/135

 “Monday has become quite famous. A reporter of the Enterprise came out from town and photographed him and wrote up the whole story of his faithful vigil. It was published in the Enterprise and copied all over Canada. But that doesn’t matter to poor little Monday, Jem has,gone away—Monday doesn’t know where or why—but he will wait until he comes back. Somehow it comforts me: it’s foolish, I suppose, but it gives me a feeling that Jem will come back or else Monday wouldn’t keep on waiting for him.

“Jims is snoring beside me in his cradle. It is just a cold that makes him snore—not adenoids. Irene had a cold yesterday and I know she gave it to him, kissing him. He is not quite such a nuisance as he was; he has got some backbone and can sit up quite nicely, and he loves his bath now and splashes unsmilingly in the water instead of twisting and shrieking. Oh, shall I ever forget those first two months! I don’t know how I lived through them. But here I am and here is Jims and we are both going to ‘carry on.’ I tickled him a little bit tonight when I undressed him—I wouldn't bounce him but Morgan doesn’t mention tickling—just to see if he would smile for me as well as for Irene. And he did—and out popped the dimples. What a pity his mother couldn’t have seen them!

“I finished my sixth pair of socks today. With the first three I got Susan to set the heel for me. Then I thought that was a bit of shirking, so I learned to do it myself. I hate it—but I have done so many things I hate since the fourth of August that one more or less doesn’t matter. I just think of Jem joking about the mud on Salisbury Plain and I go at them.”