Even stolid Miller Douglas was so fired one night that
it took Mary Vance a good hour to talk him back to sense. Mary Vance
said bitterly that if Rilla Blythe felt as bad as she had pretended to
feel over Jem's going to the front she wouldn't be urging other girls'
brothers and friends to go.

On this particular night Rilla was tired and cold and very thankful to
creep into her warm nest and cuddle down between her blankets, though
as usual with a sorrowful wonder how Jem and Jerry were faring. She was
just getting warm and drowsy when Jims suddenly began to cry--and kept
on crying.

Rilla curled herself up in her bed and determined she would let him
cry. She had Morgan behind her for justification. Jims was warm,
physically comfortable--his cry wasn't the cry of pain--and had his
little tummy as full as was good for him. Under such circumstances it
would be simply spoiling him to fuss over him, and she wasn't going to
do it. He could cry until he got good and tired and ready to go to
sleep again.

Then Rilla's imagination began to torment her. Suppose, she thought, I
was a tiny, helpless creature only five months old, with my father
somewhere in France and my poor little mother, who had been so worried
about me, in the graveyard. Suppose I was lying in a basket in a big,
black room, without one speck of light, and nobody within miles of me,
for all I could see or know. Suppose there wasn't a human being
anywhere who loved me--for a father who had never seen me couldn't love
me very much, especially when he had never written a word to or about
me. Wouldn't I cry, too? Wouldn't I feel just so lonely and forsaken
and frightened that I'd have to cry?

Rilla hopped out. She picked Jims out of his basket and took him into
her own bed. His hands were cold, poor mite. But he had promptly ceased
to cry. And then, as she held him close to her in the darkness,
suddenly Jims laughed--a real, gurgly, chuckly, delighted, delightful
laugh.

"Oh, you dear little thing!" exclaimed Rilla. "Are you so pleased at
finding you're not all alone, lost in a huge, big, black room?" Then
she knew she wanted to kiss him and she did. She kissed his silky,
scented little head, she kissed his chubby little cheek, she kissed his
little cold hands. She wanted to squeeze him--to cuddle him, just as
she used to squeeze and cuddle her kittens. Something delightful and
yearning and brooding seemed to have taken possession of her. She had
never fel