Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/241

 mighty conflict, crystallized in three brief immortal verses. A Canadian lad in the Flanders trenches had written the one great poem of the war. “The Piper,” by Pte. Walter Blythe, was a classic from its first printing.

Rilla copied it in her diary at the beginning of an entry in which she poured out the story of the hard week that had just passed.

“It has been such a dreadful week,” she wrote, “and even though it is over and we know that it was all a mistake that does not seem to do away with the bruises left by it. And yet it has in some ways been a very wonderful week and I have had some glimpses of things I never realized before—of how fine and brave people can be even in the midst of horrible suffering. I am sure I could never be as splendid as Miss Oliver was.

“Just a week ago today she had a letter from Mr. Grant’s mother in Charlottetown. And it told her that a cable had just come saying that Major Robert Grant had been killed in action a few days before.

“Oh, poor Gertrude! At first she was crushed. Then after just a day she pulled herself together and went back to her school. She did not cry—I never saw her shed a tear—but oh, her face and her eyes!

“‘I must go on with my work,’ she said. ‘That is my duty just now.’

“I could never have risen to such a height.

“She never spoke bitterly except once, when Susan said something about spring being here at last, and Gertrude said,

“‘Can the spring really come this year?’

“Then she laughed—such a dreadful little laugh,