Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/280

 Walter’s heart. Perhaps some day a new kind of gladness will be born in my soul—but the old kind will never live again.

“Winter set in awfully early this year. Ten days before Christmas we had a big snowstorm—at least we thought it big at the time. As it happened, it was only a prelude to the real performance. It was fine the next day and Ingleside and Rainbow Valley were wonderful, with the trees all covered with snow, and big drifts everywhere, carved into the most fantastic shapes by the chisel of the northeast wind. Father and mother went up to Avonlea. Father thought the change would do mother good and they wanted to see poor Aunt Diana, whose son Jack had been seriously wounded a short time before. They left Susan and me to keep house and father expected to be back the next day. But he never got back for a week. That night it began to storm again, and it stormed unbrokenly for four days. It was the worst and longest storm that Prince Edward Island has known for years. Everything was disorganized—the roads were completely choked up, the trains blockaded, and the telephone wires put entirely out of commission.

“And then Jims took ill.

“He had a little cold when father and mother went away and he kept getting worse for a couple of days, but it didn’t occur to me that there was danger of anything serious. I never even took his temperature and I can’t forgive myself, because it was sheer carelessness. The truth is I had slumped just then. Mother was away, so I let myself go. All at once I was tired of keeping up and pretending to be brave and cheerful, and I just gave up for a few days and spent most of