d went out to the garden. The spring evening
was very lovely. The long, green, seaward-looking glen was filled with
dusk, and beyond it were meadows of sunset. The harbour was radiant,
purple here, azure there, opal elsewhere. The maple grove was beginning
to be misty green. Rilla looked about her with wistful eyes. Who said
that spring was the joy of the year? It was the heart-break of the
year. And the pale-purply mornings and the daffodil stars and the wind
in the old pine were so many separate pangs of the heart-break. Would
life ever be free from dread again?

"It's good to see P.E.I. twilight once more," said Walter, joining her.
"I didn't really remember that the sea was so blue and the roads so red
and the wood nooks so wild and fairy haunted. Yes, the fairies still
abide here. I vow I could find scores of them under the violets in
Rainbow Valley."

Rilla was momentarily happy. This sounded like the Walter of yore. She
hoped he was forgetting certain things that had troubled him.

"And isn't the sky blue over Rainbow Valley?" she said, responding to
his mood. "Blue--blue--you'd have to say 'blue' a hundred times before
you could express how blue it is."

Susan wandered by, her head tied up with a shawl, her hands full of
garden implements. Doc, stealthy and wild-eyed, was shadowing her steps
among the spirea bushes.

"The sky may be blue," said Susan, "but that cat has been Hyde all day
so we will likely have rain tonight and by the same token I have
rheumatism in my shoulder."

"It may rain--but don't think rheumatism, Susan--think violets," said
Walter gaily--rather too gaily, Rilla thought.

Susan considered him unsympathetic.

"Indeed, Walter dear, I do not know what you mean by thinking violets,"
she responded stiffly, "and rheumatism is not a thing to be joked
about, as you may some day realize for yourself. I hope I am not of the
kind that is always complaining of their aches and pains, especially
now when the news is so terrible. Rheumatism is bad enough but I
realize, and none better, that it is not to be compared to being gassed
by the Huns."

"Oh, my God, no!" exclaimed Walter passionately. He turned and went
back to the house.

Susan shook her head. She disapproved entirely of such ejaculations. "I
hope he will not let his mother hear him talking like that," she
thought as she stacked the hoes and rake away.

Rilla was standing among the budding daffodils with tear-filled eyes.
Her eve