CHAPTER VIII RILLA DECIDES Families and individuals alike soon become used to new conditions and accept them unquestioningly . By the time a week had elapsed it seemed as it the Anderson baby had always been at Ingleside . After the first three distracted nights Rilla began to sleep again , waking automatically to attend to her charge on schedule time . She bathed and fed and dressed it as skilfully as if she had been doing it all her life . She liked neither her job nor the baby any the better ; she still handled it as gingerly as if it were some kind of a small lizard , and a breakable lizard at that ; but she did her work thoroughly and there was not a cleaner , better-cared-for infant in Glen St. Mary . She even took to weighing the creature every day and jotting the result down in her diary ; but sometimes she asked herself pathetically why unkind destiny had ever led her down the Anderson lane on that fatal day . Shirley , Nan , and Di did not tease her as much as she had expected . They all seemed rather stunned by the mere fact of Rilla adopting a war-baby ; perhaps , too , the doctor had issued instructions . Walter , of course , never had teased her over anything ; one day he told her she was a brick . `` It took more courage for you to tackle that five pounds of new infant , Rilla-my-Rilla , than it would be for Jem to face a mile of Germans . I wish I had half your pluck , '' he said ruefully . Rilla was very proud of Walter 's approval ; nevertheless , she wrote gloomily in her diary that night : -- `` I wish I could like the baby a little bit . It would make things easier . But I do n't . I 've heard people say that when you took care of a baby you got fond of it -- but you do n't -- I do n't , anyway . And it 's a nuisance -- it interferes with everything . It just ties me down -- and now of all times when I 'm trying to get the Junior Reds started . And I could n't go to Alice Clow 's party last night and I was just dying to . Of course father is n't really unreasonable and I can always get an hour or two off in the evening when it 's necessary ; but I knew he would n't stand for my being out half the night and leaving Susan or mother to see to the baby . I suppose it was just as well , because the thing did take colic -- or something -- about one o'clock .
It did n't kick or stiffen out , so I knew that , according to Morgan , it was n't crying for temper ; and it was n't hungry and no pins were sticking XXXXX it .
After as at because by for in of that to