Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/363

 “I created a sensation!

“The funny part was, that just as I said it, the girl did snatch out the knife and stab the soldier with it!

“Everybody in the house laughed. I came to my senses and fell back in my seat, overcome with mortification. Mother was shaking with laughter. I could have shaken her. Why hadn’t she pulled me down and choked me before I had made such an idiot of myself. She protests that there wasn’t time.

“Fortunately the house was dark, and I don’t believe there was anybody there who knew me. And I thought I was becoming sensible and self-controlled and womanly! It is plain I have some distance to go yet before I attain that devoutly desired consummation.”

September 20th, 1918

“In the east Bulgaria has asked for peace, and in the west the British have smashed the Hindenburg line; and right here in Glen St. Mary little Bruce Meredith has done something that I think wonderful—wonderful because of the love behind it. Mrs. Meredith was here tonight and told us about it—and mother and I cried, and Susan got up and clattered the things about the stove.

“Bruce always loved Jem very devotedly, and the child has never forgotten him in all these years. He has been as faithful in his way as Dog Monday was in his. We have always told him that Jem would come back. But it seems that he was in Carter Flaggs’ store last night and he heard his Uncle Norman flatly declaring that Jem Blythe would never come back and that the Ingleside folks might as well give up hoping he would.