Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/154

 it were meadows of sunset. The harbour was radiant, purple here, azure there, opal elsewhere. The maple grove was beginning to be misty green. Rilla looked about her with wistful eyes. Who said that spring was the joy of the year? It was the heart-break of the year. And all the pale-purply mornings and the daffodil stars and the wind in the old pine were so many separate pangs of the heart-break. Would life ever be free from dread again?

“It's good to see a P. E. I. twilight once more,” said Walter, joining her. “I didn’t really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in Rainbow Valley.”

Rilla was momentarily happy. This sounded like the Walter of yore. She hoped he was forgetting certain things that had troubled him.

“And isn’t the sky blue over Rainbow Valley?” she said, responding to his mood. “Blue—blue—you’d have to say ‘blue’ a hundred times before you could express how blue it is.”

Susan wandered by, her head tied up with a shawl, her hands full of garden implements. Doc, stealthy and wild-eyed, was shadowing her steps among the spirea bushes.

“The sky may be blue,” said Susan, “but that cat has been Hyde all day so we will likely have rain tonight and by the same token I have rheumatism in my shoulder.”

“It may rain—but don’t think rheumatism, Susan—think violets,” said Walter gaily—rather too gaily, Rilla thought.