Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/203



ILLA read her first love letter in her Rainbow Valley fir-shadowed nook, and a girl’s first love letter, whatever blasé, older people may think of it, is an event of tremendous importance in the teens. After Kenneth’s regiment had left Kingsport there came a fortnight of dully-aching anxiety and when the congregation sang in church on Sunday evenings,

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee For those in peril on the sea,”

Rilla’s voice always failed her, for with the words came a horribly vivid mind picture of a submarined ship sinking beneath pitiless waves amid the struggles and cries of drowning men. Then word came that Kenneth’s regiment had arrived safely in England; and now, at last, here was his letter. It began with something that made Rilla supremely happy for the moment and ended with a paragraph that crimsoned her cheeks with the wonder and thrill and delight of it. Between beginning and ending the letter was just such a jolly, newsy epistle as Ken might have written to any one; but for the sake of that beginning and ending Rilla slept with the letter under her pillow for weeks, sometimes waking in the night to slip her fingers under and just touch it, and looked with secret pity on other girls whose sweethearts could never have written them anything half so wonderful and exquisite. Kenneth was not the son of a famous novelist for nothing. He