Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/291

 trenches—of Nan and Di and Rilla, waiting—waiting—waiting, while the golden years of youth passed by—and she wondered if she could bear any more. She thought not; surely she had given enough.

Yet that night she told Shirley that he might go.

They did not tell Susan right away. She did not know it until, a few days later, Shirley presented himself in her kitchen in his aviation uniform. Susan didn’t make half the fuss she had made when Jem and Walter had gone. She said stonily,

“So they’re going to take you, too.”

“Take me? No. I’m going, Susan—got to.”

Susan sat down by the table, folded her knotted old hands, that had grown warped and twisted working for the Ingleside children, to still their shaking, and said,

“Yes, you must go. I did not see once why such things must be but I can see now.”

“You're a brick, Susan,” said Shirley. He was relieved that she took it so coolly—he had been a little afraid, with a boy’s horror of “a scene.” He went out whistling gaily; but half an hour later, when pale Anne Blythe came in, Susan was still sitting there, with unwashed dishes around her.

“Mrs. Dr. dear,” said Susan, making an admission she would once have died rather than make “I feel very old. Jem and Walter were yours but Shirley is mine. And I cannot bear to think of him flying—and his machine crashing down—the life crushed out of his body—the dear little body I nursed and cuddled when he was a wee baby.”

“ Susan—don’t,” cried Anne.

“Oh, Mrs. Dr. dear, I beg your pardon. I ought