Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/294

 the Glen went out in an eclipse of sudden shadow,—and thousands of miles away the Canadian boys in khaki—the living and the dead—were in possession of Vimy Ridge.

Vimy Ridge is a name written in crimson and gold on the Canadian annals of the Great War. “The British couldn’t take it and the French couldn’t take it,” said a German prisoner to his captors, “but you Canadians are such fools that you don’t know when a place can’t be taken!”

So the “fools” took’ it—and paid the price.

Jerry Meredith was seriously wounded at Vimy Ridge—shot in the back the telegram said.

“Poor Nan,” said Mrs. Blythe, when the news came. She thought of her own happy girlhood at old Green Gables. There had been no tragedy like this in it. How the girls of today had to suffer! When Nan came home from Redmond two weeks later her face showed what those weeks had meant to her. John Meredith, too, seemed to have grown old suddenly in them. Faith did not come home; she was on her way across the Atlantic as a V. A. D. Di had tried to wring from her father consent to her going also but had been told that for her mother’s sake it could not be given. So Di, after a flying visit home, went back to her Red Cross work in Kingsport.

The mayflowers bloomed in the secret nooks of Rainbow Valley. Rilla was watching for them. Jem had once taken his mother the earliest mayflowers; Walter brought them to her when Jem was gone; last spring Shirley had sought them out for her; now, Rilla thought, she must take the boys’ place in this. But before she had discovered any, Bruce Meredith came