Nan had a letter from Jerry Meredith . `` I came back to consciousness at dawn , '' he wrote . `` Could n't tell what had happened to me but thought that I was done for . I was all alone and afraid -- terribly afraid . Dead men were all around me , lying on the horrible grey , slimy fields . I was woefully thirsty -- and I thought of David and the Bethlehem water -- and of the old spring in Rainbow Valley under the maples . I seemed to see it just before me -- and you standing laughing on the other side of it -- and I thought it was all over with me . And I did n't care . Honestly , I did n't care . I just felt a dreadful childish fear of loneliness and of those dead men around me , and a sort of wonder how this could have happened to me . Then they found me and carted me off and before long I discovered that there was n't really anything wrong with me . I 'm going back to the trenches tomorrow . Every man is needed there that can be got . '' `` Laughter is gone out of the world , '' said Faith Meredith , who had come over to report on her letters . `` I remember telling old Mrs. Taylor long ago that the world was a world of laughter . But it is n't so any longer . '' `` It 's a shriek of anguish , '' said Gertrude Oliver . `` We must keep a little laughter , girls , '' said Mrs. Blythe . `` A good laugh is as good as a prayer sometimes -- only sometimes , '' she added under her breath . She had found it very hard to laugh during the three weeks she had just lived through -- she , Anne Blythe , to whom laughter had always come so easily and freshly .
And what hurt most was XXXXX Rilla 's laughter had grown so rare -- Rilla whom she used to think laughed over-much .
around as before for from of that to under with