Mary does n't want to go to school , but I put my foot down and said that go she must . I shall NOT have the Methodists saying that I kept her out of school while I lolled in idleness . '' CHAPTER XIII . THE HOUSE ON THE HILL There was a little unfailing spring , always icy cold and crystal pure , in a certain birch-screened hollow of Rainbow Valley in the lower corner near the marsh . Not a great many people knew of its existence . The manse and Ingleside children knew , of course , as they knew everything else about the magic valley . Occasionally they went there to get a drink , and it figured in many of their plays as a fountain of old romance . Anne knew of it and loved it because it somehow reminded her of the beloved Dryad 's Bubble at Green Gables . Rosemary West knew of it ; it was her fountain of romance , too . Eighteen years ago she had sat behind it one spring twilight and heard young Martin Crawford stammer out a confession of fervent , boyish love . She had whispered her own secret in return , and they had kissed and promised by the wild wood spring . They had never stood together by it again -- Martin had sailed on his fatal voyage soon after ; but to Rosemary West it was always a sacred spot , hallowed by that immortal hour of youth and love . Whenever she passed near it she turned aside to hold a secret tryst with an old dream -- a dream from which the pain had long gone , leaving only its unforgettable sweetness . The spring was a hidden thing . You might have passed within ten feet of it and never have suspected its existence . Two generations past a huge old pine had fallen almost across it . Nothing was left of the tree but its crumbling trunk out of which the ferns grew thickly , making a green roof and a lacy screen for the water . A maple-tree grew beside it with a curiously gnarled and twisted trunk , creeping along the ground for a little way before shooting up into the air , and so forming a quaint seat ; and September had flung a scarf of pale smoke-blue asters around the hollow . John Meredith , taking the cross-lots road through Rainbow Valley on his way home from some pastoral visitations around the Harbour head one evening , turned aside to drink of the little spring . Walter Blythe had shown it to him one afternoon only a few days before , and they had had a long talk together on the maple seat .
John XXXXX , under all his shyness and aloofness , had the heart of a boy .
Crawford Martin Mary Meredith Methodists West evening hour left tryst