`` Let 's go on a moon-spree , Rilla , '' he would say , and the two of them would scamper off to Rainbow Valley . Rilla had never been afraid of his beetles and bugs , though she drew a hard and fast line at snakes . They used to talk together of almost everything and were teased about each other at school ; but one evening when they were about ten years of age they had solemnly promised , by the old spring in Rainbow Valley , that they would never marry each other . Alice Clow had `` crossed out '' their names on her slate in school that day , and it came out that `` both married . '' They did not like the idea at all , hence the mutual vow in Rainbow Valley . There was nothing like an ounce of prevention . Rilla laughed over the old memory -- and then sighed . That very day a dispatch from some London paper had contained the cheerful announcement that `` the present moment is the darkest since the war began . '' It was dark enough , and Rilla wished desperately that she could do something besides waiting and serving at home , as day after day the Glen boys she had known went away . If she were only a boy , speeding in khaki by Carl 's side to the Western front ! She had wished that in a burst of romance when Jem had gone , without , perhaps , really meaning it . She meant it now . There were moments when waiting at home , in safety and comfort , seemed an unendurable thing . The moon burst triumphantly through an especially dark cloud and shadow and silver chased each other in waves over the Glen . Rilla remembered one moonlit evening of childhood when she had said to her mother , `` The moon just looks like a sorry , sorry face . '' She thought it looked like that still -- an agonised , care-worn face , as though it looked down on dreadful sights . What did it see on the Western front ? In broken Serbia ? On shell-swept Gallipoli ? `` I am tired , '' Miss Oliver had said that day , in a rare outburst of impatience , `` of this horrible rack of strained emotions , when every day brings a new horror or the dread of it .
No , do n't look reproachfully XXXXX me , Mrs. Blythe .
If On at besides in of since that though to