Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/243

 “‘I suffered the loss of two good kind partners,’ she said, ‘but it did not affect me like that.’

“I should think it wouldn’t! Those poor men must have been thankful to die.

“I heard Gertrude walking up and down her room most of the night. She walked like that every night. But never so long as that night. And once I heard her give a dreadful sudden little cry as if she had been stabbed. I couldn’t sleep for suffering with her; and I couldn’t help her. I thought the night would never end. But it did; and then ‘joy came in the morning’ as the Bible says. Only it didn’t come exactly in the morning but well along in the afternoon. The telephone rang and I answered it. It was old Mrs. Grant speaking from Charlottetown, and her news was that it was all a mistake—Robert wasn’t killed at all; he had only been slightly wounded in the arm and was safe in the hospital out of harm’s way for a time anyhow. They hadn’t learned yet how the mistake had happened but supposed there must have been another Robert Grant.

“I hung up the telephone and flew to Rainbow Vallew. I’m sure I did fly—I can’t remember my feet ever touching the ground. I met Gertrude on her way home from school in the glade of spruces where we used to play, and I just gasped out the news to her. I ought to have had more sense, of course. A doctor’s daughter to do such a thing! But I was so crazy with joy and excitement that I never stopped to think. Gertrude just dropped there among the golden young ferns as if she had been shot. The fright it gave me ought to make me sensible—in this respect at least—for the