Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/370

 spoiled. Nevertheless her heart was anxious behind her smile. She, too, thought much about the new Mrs. Anderson and wondered uneasily what she would be like.

“I can’t give Jims up to a woman who won't love him,” she thought rebelliously.

“I b'lieve it’s agoing to rain,” said Cousin Sophia. “We have had an awful lot of rain this fall already. It’s going to make it awful hard for people to get their roots in. It wasn’t so in my young days. We gin’rally had beautiful Octobers then. But the seasons is altogether different now from what they used to be.”

Clear across Cousin Sophia’s doleful voice cut the telephone bell. Gertrude Oliver answered it. “Yes—what? What? Is it true—is it official? Thank you—thank you.”

Gertrude turned and faced the room dramatically, her dark eyes flashing, her dark face flushed with feeling. All at once the sun broke through the thick clouds and poured through the big crimson maple outside the window. Its reflected glow enveloped her in a weird, immaterial flame. She looked like a priestess performing some mystic, splendid rite.

“Germany and Austria are suing for peace,” she said.

Rilla went crazy for a few minutes. She sprang up and danced around the room, clapping her hands, laughing, crying.

“Sit down, child,” sald Mrs. Clow, who never got excited over anything, and so had missed a tremendous amount of trouble and delight in her journey through life.

“Oh,” cried Rilla, “I have walked the floor for