You have spunk -- I thought you would feel so badly over Walter 's enlisting that you 'd hardly be able to bear up at all , and here you are as cool as a cucumber . I wish I had half your nerve . '' Rilla stood perfectly still . She felt no emotion whatever -- she felt nothing . The world of feeling had just gone blank . `` Walter -- enlisting '' -- she heard herself saying -- then she heard Irene 's affected little laugh . `` Why , did n't you know ? I thought you did of course , or I would n't have mentioned it . I am always putting my foot in it , are n't I ? Yes , that is what he went to town for to-day -- he told me coming out on the train to-night , I was the first person he told . He is n't in khaki yet -- they were out of uniforms -- but he will be in a day or two . I always said Walter had as much pluck as anybody . I assure you I felt proud of him , Rilla , when he told me what he 'd done . Oh , there 's an end of Rick MacAllister 's reading . I must fly . I promised I 'd play for the next chorus -- Alice Clow has such a headache . '' She was gone -- oh , thank God , she was gone ! Rilla was alone again , staring out at the unchanged , dream-like beauty of moonlit Four Winds . Feeling was coming back to her -- a pang of agony so acute as to be almost physical seemed to rend her apart . `` I can not bear it , '' she said .
And then came the awful thought XXXXX perhaps she could bear it and that there might be years of this hideous suffering before her .
MacAllister as at for in of over that to to-night