Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/49

 “Ah yes, you’re young enough not to be afraid of perfect things. Well, here we are at the House of Dreams. It seems lonely this summer. The Fords didn’t come?”

“No—at least Mr. and Mrs. Ford and Persis didn’t. Kenneth did—but he stayed with his mother’s people over-harbour. We haven’t seen a great deal of him this summer. He’s a little lame, so didn’t go about very much.”

“Lame? What happened to him?”

“He broke his ankle in a football game last fall and was laid up most of the winter. He has limped a little ever since but it is getting better all the time and he expects it will be all right before long. He has been up to Ingleside only twice.”

“Ethel Reese is simply crazy about him,” said Mary Vance. “She hasn’t got the sense she was born with where he is concerned. He walked home with her from the over-harbour church last prayer meeting night and the airs she has put on since would really make you weary of life. As if a Toronto boy like Ken Ford would ever really think of a country girl like Ethel!”

Rilla flushed. It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with Ethel Reese a dozen times—it did ''not! Nothing'' that he did mattered to her. He was ages older than she was. He chummed with Nan and Di and Faith, and looked upon her, Rilla, as a child whom he never noticed except to tease. And she detested Ethel Reese and Ethel Reese hated her,—always had hated her since Walter had pummelled Dan so notoriously in Rainbow Valley days; but why need she be thought beneath Kenneth Ford’s notice because she was a country girl, pray? As for Mary