Rilla-my-Rilla , if it were n't for your letters -- your dear , bright , merry , funny , comical , believing letters -- I think I 'd give up . And Una 's ! Una is really a little brick , is n't she ? There 's a wonderful fineness and firmness under all that shy , wistful girlishness of her . She has n't your knack of writing laugh-provoking epistles , but there 's something in her letters -- I do n't know what -- that makes me feel at least while I 'm reading them , that I could even go to the front . Not that she ever says a word about my going -- or hints that I ought to go -- she is n't that kind . It 's just the spirit of them -- the personality that is in them . Well , I ca n't go . You have a brother and Una has a friend who is a coward . '' `` Oh , I wish Walter would n't write such things , '' sighed Rilla . `` It hurts me . He is n't a coward -- he is n't -- he is n't ! '' She looked wistfully about her -- at the little woodland valley and the grey , lonely fallows beyond . How everything reminded her of Walter ! The red leaves still clung to the wild sweet-briars that overhung a curve of the brook ; their stems were gemmed with the pearls of the gentle rain that had fallen a little while before . Walter had once written a poem describing them . The wind was sighing and rustling among the frosted brown bracken ferns , then lessening sorrowfully away down the brook . Walter had said once that he loved the melancholy of the autumn wind on a November day . The old Tree Lovers still clasped each other in a faithful embrace , and the White Lady , now a great white-branched tree , stood out beautifully fine , against the grey velvet sky . Walter had named them long ago ; and last November , when he had walked with her and Miss Oliver in the Valley , he had said , looking at the leafless Lady , with a young silver moon hanging over her , `` A white birch is a beautiful Pagan maiden who has never lost the Eden secret of being naked and unashamed . ''
Miss XXXXX had said , `` Put that into a poem , Walter , '' and he had done so , and read it to them the next day -- just a short thing with goblin imagination in every line of it .
Eden Oliver Pagan Rilla Rilla-my-Rilla Una Valley Walter day girlishness