Rainbow Valley, Part 2 of 15

Thanks for coming tonight. Before we get stuck in, did you know you can listen to the sleepy bookshelf ad free by joining our premium feed? You'll also get exclusive bonus episodes and a seven day free trial, so you can decide whether you like it or not. Follow the link in the show notes to learn more. The bank account takes some of the strain, like expensing, with real-time visibility and spend limits all managed in one app, so she's free to cook up a storm without having to make a meal of the admin. Make the switch and join over 800,000 other UK businesses already banking with us. Search Monzo Business today. Team plan starts from £25 a month. UK sole traders or limited company directors only. Tees and seas apply. In case you didn't know our company, Slumber Studios also has a sleep app called Slumber. With well over 1000 episodes, it has every kind of sleep-inducing content you might want. From stories, meditations, audio books and history to sound scapes and music. New episodes are added each week too. You can even search by narrator and listen to episodes narrated by me that you may never have heard before on the Sleepy Bookshelf. There are other unique features in Slumber 2, like the ability to add and adjust background sounds to create the perfect mix to match your preferences. So I highly recommend you give Slumber a try. It's available in the App Store and Google Play, and as a listener of the Sleepy Bookshelf, you can unlock all of the content in the app, free for one month. Let's go to slumber.fm forward slash bookshelf. That's slumber.fm forward slash bookshelf to get instant access to all of the content in Slumber free for one month. Good evening and welcome to this Sleepy Bookshelf where we put down our worries from the day to pick up a good book. I'm your host, Elizabeth, and I'm so glad you chose to be here tonight. Because this evening we are returning to Rainbow Valley. But before that, let's focus on calming our minds and bodies. Take a few deep breaths on your own, and now find a more natural rhythm of breathing. Really focus on where you notice the breath the most. Focus it on the entrance to your note as the cooler air comes in and the slightly warmer air sweeps out or maybe it's in the expanding of your ribcage or the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe in and out in and out. Wherever you do feel it the most, keep your attention there and each time your mind wanders just bring it back to that place. And when you are ready, feel free to focus on the sound of my voice as I recap our last episode. And Shirley and her family had just returned to four winds harbor after a three month trip away, first to England and then to Green Gables. Four of their children, Gem, Walter and the twins, were eager to head into the valley, their favorite place in the world. Rilla who was six and the youngest was curled up on the front porch asleep. And Shirley who was shared between Anne and Susan, their helper and the house was asleep on that other woman's lap. Miss Cornelia arrived promptly to talk Anne through all the goings on in their absence, namely the new minister who had been called in, Reverend John Knox Meredith who was by far the best they had seen, though he had his downfalls. In Miss Cornelia's opinion he lacked common sense and while they had thought he was married, as he had four children, he was in fact a widower and had brought along his 75-year-old aunt to look after the mants. The children were lovely but veered on the wild side when not in school. And after all was said Anne decided that they sounded like they all might belong to the race that knows Joseph, which is to say her kind of people. Anne shared that Owen and Leslie were going to Japan for Owen's new research for his novel and Miss Cornelia left, saying she would make sure to write with her concerns about that trip for their children's sake at least. Tonight we are introduced a little more to the blithe children, so just lie back and relax as I turn to the next pages of Rainbow Valley. Chapter 3 The Ingle Side Children In daytime, the blithe children liked very well to play in the rich, soft greens and glooms of the big maple grove between Ingle Side and the glencent Mary pond. But for evening gravels, there was no place like the little valley behind the maple grove. It was a fairy realm of romance to them. Chapter 3 Once looking from the attic windows of Ingle Side through the mist and aftermath of a summer thunderstorm, they had seen the beloved spot arched by glorious rainbow, one end of which seemed to dip straight down to where a corner of the pond ran up into the lower end of the valley. Let us call it Rainbow Valley, said Walter delightedly and Rainbow Valley thenceforth it was. Chapter 3 Outside of Rainbow Valley, the wind might be rollicking and boisterous. Here it always went gently. Little winding fairy paths ran here and there over spruce roots cushioned with moss. Wild cherry trees that in blossom time would be misty white were scattered all over the valley mingling with the dark spruces. Chapter 3 A little brook with amber waters ran through it from the glen village. The houses of the village were comfortably far away. Only at the upper end of the valley was a little tumble down deserted cottage referred to as the old Bailey house. It had not been occupied for many years but a grass-grown dike surrounded it and inside was an ancient garden where the Ingle Side children could find violets and daisies and June lilies still blooming in season. Chapter 3 For the rest the garden was overgrown with caraway that swayed and foamed in the moonshine of summer eaves like seas of silver. To the sort lay the pond and beyond it the ripened distance lost itself in purple woods. Save where on a high hill a solitary old grey homestead looked down on glen and harbour. There was a certain wild wood-sceness and solitude about rainbow valley in spite of its nearness to the village which endeared it to the children of Ingle Side. The valley was full of deer friendly hollows and the largest of these was their favourite stomping ground. Here they were assembled on this particular evening. There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow with a tiny grassy glade in its heart opening on the bank of the brook. By the brook grew a silver birch tree, a young incredibly straight thing which Walter had named the white lady. In this glade too were the tree lovers as Walter called a spruce and maple which grew so closely together that their bowels were inextricably intertwined. Gem had hung an old string of sleighbells given him by the glen blacksmith on the tree lovers and every visiting breeze called out sudden fairy tingles from it. How nice it is to be back! said Nan, after all none of the avanly places are quite as nice as rainbow valley. But they were very fond of the avanly places for all that. A visit to green gables was always considered a great treat. Aunt Marilla was very good to them and so was Mrs. Rachel Lind, who is spending the leisure of her old age in knitting cotton warp quilts against the days when Ann's daughters should need a setting out. There were jolly playmates there too. Uncle Davies children and Aunt Diana's children. They knew all the spots their mother had loved so well in her girlhood at old green gables. The long lovers lane that was pink hedged in wild rose time. The always neat yard with its willows and poplars. The dry adds bubble, loosened and lovely as of your. The lake of shining waters and willow me. The twins had their mother's old porch gable room and Aunt Marilla used to come in at night when she thought they were asleep to gloat over them. But they all knew she loved gem the best. Gem was at present busily occupied in frying a mess of small trout which he had just caught in the pond. His stove consisted of a circle of red stones with a fire kindled in it. And his culinary utensils were an old tin can hammered out flat and a fork with only one time left. Nevertheless, ripping good meals had before now been thus prepared. Gem was the child of the house of dreams. All the others had been born at single side. He had curly red hair like his mothers and frank hazel eyes like his fathers. He had his mothers fine nose and his father's steady humorous mouth. And he was the only one of the family who had ears nice enough to please Susan. But he had a standing feud with Susan because she would not give up calling him little gem. It was outrageous thought 13 year old gem. Mother had more sense. I'm not little anymore mother. He had cried indignantly on his eighth birthday. I'm all for big. Mother had sighed and laughed and sighed again. And she never called him little gem again in his hearing at least. He was and always had been a sturdy, reliable little chap. He never broke a promise. He was not a great talker. His teachers did not think him brilliant. But he was a good all around student. He never took things on faith. He always liked to investigate the truth of a statement for himself. Once, Susan had told him that if he touched his tongue to a frosty latch, all the skin would tear off it. Gem had promptly done it just to see if it was so. He found it was so at the cost of a very sore tongue for several days. But Gem did not grudge suffering in the interests of science. By constant experiment and observation, he learned a great deal and his brothers and sisters thought his extensive knowledge of their little world quite wonderful. Gem always knew where the first and ripest berries grew, where the first pale violets shyly wakened from their winter sleep. And how many blue eggs were in a given robins nest in the maple grove. He could tell fortunes from daisy petals and suck honey from red clovers and grub up all sorts of edible roots on the banks of the pond, while Susan went in daily fear that they would all be poisoned. He knew where the finest spruce gum was to be found, impale amber knots on the likened bark. He knew where the nuts grew thickest in the beach woods around the harbourhead, and where the best trouting places up the brook swap. He could mimic the call of any wild bird or beast in four winds, and he knew the haunt of every wild flower from spring to autumn. Walter Blight was sitting under the white lady with a volume of perms lying beside him, but he was not reading. He was gazing now at the emerald misted willows by the pond. And now at the flock of clouds, like little silver sheep, heard it by the wind that were drifting over Rainbow Valley, with rapture in his wide, splendid eyes. Walter's eyes were very wonderful. All the joy and sorrow and laughter and loyalty and aspiration of many generations lying under the sod looked out of their dark grey depths. Walter Walter Walter Walter was a hop out of kin as far as looks went. He did not resemble any known relative. He was quite the handsomeest of the Ingleside children with straight black hair and finely modelled features, but he had all his mother's vivid imagination and passionate love of beauty. Frost of winter, invitation of spring, dream of summer, and glamour of autumn, all meant much to Walter. In school where gem was achieved in, Walter was not thought highly of. He was supposed to be girly and milk-soppish because he never fought and seldom joined in the school sports, preferring to heard by himself in out of the way corners and read books, especially poetry books. Walter loved the poets and poured over their pages from the time he could first read. The music was woven into his growing soul, the music of the immortals. Walter cherished the ambition to be a poet himself someday. The thing could be done. A certain uncle Paul, so called out of courtesy, who lived now in that mysterious realm called The States, was Walter's model. Uncle Paul had once been a little schoolboy in Avon Lee, and now his poetry was read everywhere. But the Glenn schoolboys did not know of Walter's dream, and would not have been greatly impressed if they had. In spite of his lack of physical prowess, however, he commanded a certain unwilling respect because of his power of talking book talk. Nobody in Glenn's at Mary's school could talk like him. He sounded like a preacher one boy said, and for this reason he was generally left alone and not persecuted, as most boys were who were suspected of disliking or searing fisticuffs. But ten-year-old Ingolstadt twins, violated twin tradition by not looking in the least alike. Anne, who was always called Nan, was very pretty, with velvety-nott brown eyes, and silky-nott brown hair. She was a very blithe and dainty little maiden, blithe by name, and blithe by nature one of her teachers had said. Her complexion was quite faultless, much to her mother's satisfaction. I'm so glad I have one daughter who can wear pink, Mrs. Blithe was want to say dubiently. Diana Blithe, known as Die, was very like her mother, with grey green eyes that always shone with a peculiar luster and brilliancy in the dusk, and red hair. Perhaps this was why she was her father's favorite. She and Walter were special chums. Die was the only one whom he would ever read the verses he wrote to himself, the only one who knew that he was secretly hard at work on an epic, strikingly resembling mamiya in some things, if not in others. She kept all his secrets, even from Nan, and told him all hers. Won't you soon have those fish ready, Gem? Said Nan, sniffing with her dainty nose. Smell makes me awfully hungry. They're nearly ready, said Gem, giving one a dextrous turn. Get out the bread and the plates, girls. Walter, wake up. How the air shines tonight, said Walter dreamily. Not that he despised fried trout either by any means, but with Walter food for the soul always took first place. The flower angel has been walking over the world today, calling to the flowers. I can see his blue wings on that hill by the woods. Any angel's wings I ever saw were white, said Nan. The flower angels aren't. They are a pale, misty blue, just like the haze in the valley. Oh, I wish I could fly. It must be glorious. One does fly in dreams sometimes, said die. I never dreamed that I'm flying exactly, said Walter. So I often dream that I'm just rise up from the ground and float over the fences and the trees. It's delightful. And I always think this isn't a dream like it's always been before. This is real. And then I wake up after all. It's heartbreaking. Nan had produced the banquet board, a board literally as well as figuratively, from which many of feast seasoned as no vians were elsewhere had been eaten in rainbow valley. It was converted into a table by propping it on two large mossy stones. Newspapers served as tablecloth and broken plates and handle the scops from Susan's discard furnished the dishes. From a tin box secreted at the root of a spruce tree, Nan brought forth bread and salt. The brook gave Adam's ale of unsurpassed crystal. For the rest there was a certain source compounded a fresh air and appetite of youth, which gave to everything a divine flavor. To sit in rainbow valley steeped in a twilight half gold, half amethyst rife with the odors of balsam fir and woodsea growing things in their springtime prime, with the pale stars of wild strawberry blossoms all around you. And with the sour of the wind and the tinkle of bells in the shaking treetops and eat fried trout and dry bread, with something which the mighty of earth might have embied them. Sit in invited Nan as gem placed his sizzling tin platter of trout on the table. It's your turn to say grace, gem. I've done my part frying the trout, protested gem who hated sangrace. Let Walter say it. He liked sangrace and cut it short to Walter, I'm starving. But Walter said no grace, short or long just then. An interruption occurred. He said, he's coming down from the man's hill, said die. Chapter 4 The Man's Children Aunt Martha might be and was a very poor housekeeper. The reverend John Knox Meredith might be and was a very absent-minded, indulgent man. But it could not be denied that there was something very home-like and lovable about the glencent Mary man's in spite of its untidiness. Even the critical housewives of the glen felt it and were unconsciously mellowed in judgment because of it. Perhaps its charm was in part due to accidental circumstances, the luxuriant divine clustering over its grey, clapped-borded walls, the friendly acacia's and balm of gilliads that crowded about it with the freedom of older acquaintance. And the beautiful views of harbour and sand dunes from its front windows. But these things had been there in the reign of Mr. Meredith's predecessor, when the man's had been the primest, neatest, and drearious house in the glen. So much of the credit must be given to the personality of its new inmates. There was an atmosphere of laughter and commerorship about it. The doors were always open and inner and outer worlds joined hands. Love was the only law in the glencent Mary man's. The people of his congregation said that Mr. Meredith spoiled his children. Very likely he did. It is certain that he could not bear to scold them. They have no mother. He used to say to himself with a sigh when some unusually glaring Piccadillo forced itself upon his notice. But he did not know the half of their goings on. He belonged to the sect of dreamers. The windows of his study looked out on the graveyard. But as he paced up and down the room, reflecting deeply on the immorality of the soul, he was quite unaware that Jerry and Carl were playing leapfrog hilariously over the flaps stones in that abode of dead Methodists. Mr. Meredith had occasional acute realizations that his children were not so well looked after, physically or morally as they had been before his wife died. And he had always a dim subconsciousness that house and meals were very different under Aunt Martha's management from what they had been under Cecilius. For the rest, he lived in a world of books and abstractions. And therefore, although his clothes were seldom brushed, and although the glen housewives concluded from the ivory-like pallerv, his clear cut features and slender hands, that he never got enough to eat. He was not an unhappy man. If ever a graveyard could be called a cheerful place, the old Methodist graveyard at Glensent Mary might be so called. The new graveyard at the other side of the Methodist church was in neat and proper and dullful spot. But the old one had been left so long to nature's kindly and gracious ministries that had become very pleasant. It was surrounded on three sides by a dike of stones and sod, topped by grey and uncertain paling. Outside the dike grew a row of tall furtories, with thick balsamic bows. The dike, which had been built by the first settlers of the glen, was old enough to be beautiful, with mosses and green things growing out of its crevices, violets purpling at its base in the early spring days, and asters and golden rod making an autumnal glory in its corners. Little ferns clustered, companionably between its stones, and here and there a big bracken grew. On the eastern side there was neither fence nor dike. The graveyard there straggled off into a young fur plantation, ever pushing nearer to the graves and deepening eastward into a thick wood. The air was always full of the harp-like voices of the sea, and the music of grey old trees, and in the spring mornings the choruses of birds in the elms around the two churches, Sang of life and not of death. The merideth children loved the old graveyard. Blue-eyed ivy, garden spruce, and mint ran riot over the sunken graves. Blue-brea bushes grew lavishly in the sandy corner next to the furward. The varying fashions of tombstones for three generations were to be found there, from the flat oblong, red sandstone slabs of old settlers, down through the days of weeping willows and clasped hands to the latest monstrosities of tall monuments and draped earns. One of the latter, the biggest and ugliest in the graveyard, was secret to the memory of a certain Alec Davis, who had been born a Methodist, but had taken to himself a Presbyterian bride of the Douglas clan. She had made him turn Presbyterian and kept him towing the Presbyterian mark all his life. But when he died, she did not dare to doom him to a lonely grave in the Presbyterian graveyard over Habba. His people were all buried in the Methodist cemetery. So Alec Davis went back to his own in there, and his widow consoled herself by erecting a monument which cost more than any of the Methodists could afford. The Meredith children hated it without just knowing why, but they loved the old flat, bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Cherry, tired of leapfrog, was playing on a mouth-hop. Carl was lovingly pouring over a strange beetle he had found. Una was trying to make a dull stress, and Faith leaning back on her slender brown wrists was swinging her bare feet in lively time to the mouth-hop. Cherry had his father's black hair and large black eyes, but in him the latter were flashing instead of dreamy. Faith who came next to him wore her beauty like a rose, careless and glowing. She had golden brown eyes, golden brown curls, and crimson cheeks. She laughed too much to please her father's congregation, and had shocked old Mrs. Taylor, the disconsolate spouse of several departed husbands, by saucy declaring in the church porch at that. The word isn't veil of tears, Mrs. Taylor. It's a world of laughter. Little dreamy Una was not given to laughter. Her braids of straight, dead black hair betrayed no lawless kinks, and her almond-shaped dark blue eyes had something wistful and sorrowful in them. Her mouth had a trick of falling open over her dainty white teeth, and a shy, meditative smile occasionally crept over her small face. She was much more sensitive to public opinion than faith, and had an uneasy consciousness that there was something as skew in their way of living. She longed to put it right, but did not know how. Now and then she dusted the furniture, but it was so seldom she could find the duster because it was never in the same place twice. And when the clothesbrush was to be found, she tried to brush her father's best suit on Saturdays, and once soared on a missing button with a coarse white thread. When Mr. Meredith went to church next day, every female eye saw that button, and the piece of the lady's aid was upset for weeks. Karl had the clear, bright dark blue eyes, fearless and direct of his dead mother, and her brown hair with its glints of gold. He knew the secrets of bugs, and had a sort of free masonry with beetles and bees. Boone never liked to sit near him, because she never knew what uncanny creature might be secreted about him. Jerry refused to sleep with him, because Karl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him. So Karl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bedfellows. Perhaps it was just as well that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed. All together, they were jolly, lovable little crew, and Cecilia Meredith's heart must have ached bitterly when she faced the knowledge that she must leave them. Where would you like to be buried if you were a Methodist? Asked faith cheerfully. They opened up an interesting field of speculation. There isn't much choice, the place is full, said Jerry. I'd like that corner near the road, I guess. I could hear the teams going past, and the people talking. I'd like that little hollow under the weeping birch, said Una. That birch is such a place for birts, and they sing like mad in the mornings. I'd take the port a lot, where there's so many children buried. I like lots of company, said faith. Karl where do you? I'd farther not be buried at all, said Karl. But if I had to be, I'd like the ant beds, ants are awfully interesting. Have very good all the people who are buried here must have been. Seduna, who had been reading the laudatory old epitaphs. There doesn't seem to be a single bad person in the whole graveyard. Methodists must be better than Presbyterians after all. Maybe the Methodists bury their bad people just like they do cats, suggested Karl. Maybe they don't bother bringing them to the graveyard at all. Nonsense, said faith. The people that are buried here weren't better than any other folks, Una. But when anyone is dead, you mustn't say anything of him but good, or he'll come back and answer. They aren't mother told me that. I asked Father if it was true and he just looked through me and muttered, true, true, what is true, what is truth? Oh, gesting pilot. I concluded from that that it must be true. I wonder if Mr. Alec Davis would come back and ham me if I threw a stone at the urn on the top of his tombstone. Said Jerry. Mrs. Davis would giggled faith. She just watches us in church like a cat watching mice. Last Sunday, I made a face at her nephew and he made one back at me and you should have seen her glare. I bet she boxed his ears when they got out. Mrs. Marshal Elliott told me we mustn't offend her on any account or it have made a face at her too. They say Jim Blythe stuck his tongue out as her once and she would never have his father again, even when her husband was dying, said Jerry. I wonder what the Blythe gang will be like. I like their looks, said faith. The man's children had been at the station that afternoon when the Blythe small fry had arrived. I like Jim's looks especially. They say in school that Walter's a sissy said Jerry. I don't believe it. Said Una who had thought Walter very handsome. Well, he writes poetry anyhow. He won the prize the teacher offered last year for writing a poem. Bertie Shakespeare drew told me. Bertie's mother said he should have got the prize because of his name but Bertie said he couldn't write poetry to save his soul. No more no no. I suppose we'll get acquainted with them as soon as they begin going to school. Mused faith. I hope the girls are nice. I don't like most of the girls around here. Even the nice ones are pokey. But the Blythe twins look jolly. I thought twins always looked alike but they don't. I think the red had one is the nicest. I like their mothers looks. Said Una with a little sigh. Una embied all children their mothers. She had only been six when her mother had died but she had some very precious memories treasured in her soul like jewels of twilight cuddlings and mourning frolics of loving eyes a tender voice and the sweetest gayest laugh. They say she isn't like other people. Said Jerry. Mrs. Elliot says that's because she never really grew up. Said Faith. She's taller than Mrs. Elliot. Yes, but it is inside. Mrs. Elliot says Mrs. Blythe just stayed a little girl on the inside. What do I smell? Interrupted Karl sniffing. They all smelled it now. A most delectable odor came floating up on the still evening air from the direction of the little woodsy del below the Mans Hill. That makes me hungry. Said Jerry. We had only bread and molasses for supper and cold ditto for dinner. Said Una plain tibly. Aunt Martha's habit was to boil a large slab of mutton early in the week and serve it up every day cold and greasy as long as it lasted. To this faith in a moment of inspiration had given the name of ditto and by this it was invariably known at the Mans. Let's go and see where that smell is coming from. Said Jerry. They all sprang up froliced over the lawn with the abandon of young puppies, climbed offence and tore down the mossy slope guided by the savoury lure that ever grew stronger. A few minutes later they arrived breathlessly in the sanctum sank torum of rainbow valley, where the Blythe children were just about to give thanks and eat. They halted shyly. Una wished they had not been so precipitated but die Blythe was equal to that and any occasion. She stepped forward with a comrade smile. I guess I know who you are. She said you belong to the Mans don't you. Faith knotted her face creased by dimples. We snatched your trout cooking and wondered what it was. You must sit down and help us eat them. Said die. Maybe you haven't more than you want yourselves. Said Jerry looking hungrily at the tin platter. We've heaps through a piece. Said Gem. Sit down. No more ceremony was necessary. Down they all sat on mossy stones. Mary was that feast and long. Nan and die would probably have died of horror had they known what faith and Una knew perfectly well that Carl had too young mice in his jacket pocket but they never knew it so it never had them. Where can folks get better acquainted than over a meal table? When the last trout had vanished the Mans children and the Ingol side children were sworn friends and allies. They had always known each other and always would. The race of Joseph recognized its own. They poured out the history of their little pasts. The Mans children heard of avanly in green gables of rainbow valley traditions and of the little house by the harbour shore where Gem had been born. The Ingol side children heard of Maywater where the meridates had lived before coming to the glan of Una's beloved one-eyed doll and faith's pet rooster. Faith was inclined to resent the fact that people laughed at her for petting a rooster. She liked the blives because they accepted it without question. A handsome rooster like Adam is just as nice as a pet dog or cat I think. She said, if he was a canary nobody would wander and I brought him up from a little wee yellow chicken. Mrs. Johnson at Maywater gave him to me. A weasel had killed all his brothers and sisters. I called him after her husband. I never liked dolls or cats. Cats are too sneaky and dolls are dead. Who lives in that house way up there? Ask Jerry. The Miss West's, Rose Marie and Ellen, Aunt Sidnan. Thine eye going to take music lessons from Miss Rose Marie this summer? Una gazed at the lucky twins with eyes whose longing was too gentle for envy. Oh if she could only have music lessons, it was one of the dreams of her little hidden life, but nobody ever thought of such a thing. Miss Rose Marie is so sweet and she always dresses so pretty, said die. Her hair is just the color of new molasses taffy. She added wistfully. For die like her mother before her was not resigned to her own ruddy dresses. I like Miss Ellen too, Sidnan. She always used to give me candies when she came to church but dies afraid of her. Her brows are so black and she has such a great deep voice, said die. Oh how scared of her Kenneth Ford used to be when he was little. Mother says the first Sunday Mrs Ford brought him to church. Miss Ellen happened to be there, sitting right behind them and the minute Kenneth saw her he just screamed and screamed until Mrs Ford had to carry him out. Who is Mrs Ford? Asked Una wonderingly. Oh the Ford's don't live here. They only come here in summer and they're not coming this summer. They live in that little house way way down in the harbor shore where father and mother used to live. I wish you could see Purs is Ford. She's just like a picture. I've heard of Mrs Ford. Broke him faith. Bertie Shakespeare drew told me about her. She was married 14 years to a dead man and then he came to life. Nonsense, said man. That isn't the way it goes at all. Bertie Shakespeare can never get anything straight. I know the whole story and I'll tell it to you sometime but not now for it's far too long and it's time for us to go home. Mother doesn't like us to be out late these damn peeveenings. Nobody cared whether the man's children were out in the damp or not. Aunt Martha was already in bed and the minister was still too deeply lost in speculations concerning the immortality of the soul to remember the mortality of the body. But they went home too with visions of good times coming in their heads. I think Rainbow Valley is even nicer than the graveyard said Una and I just love those dear blights. It's so nice when you can love people because so often you can't. Father said in his sermon last Sunday that we should love everybody. But how can we? How could we love Mrs. Alec Davis? By father and he said that in the pulpit, said Faith Ereli. He has more sense than to really think it outside. The blithe children went up to Ingolside except Gem who slipped away for a few moments on a solitary expedition to a remote corner of Rainbow Valley. May flowers grew there and Gem never forgot to take his mother abok as long as they lasted.