She knew that Rilla longed to be `` out '' -- to go to parties as Nan and Di did , and to have dainty evening dresses and -- yes , there is no mincing matters -- beaux ! In the plural , at that ! As for Walter , Miss Oliver knew that he had written a sequence of sonnets `` to Rosamond '' -- i.e. , Faith Meredith -- and that he aimed at a Professorship of English literature in some big college . She knew his passionate love of beauty and his equally passionate hatred of ugliness ; she knew his strength and his weakness . Walter was , as ever , the handsomest of the Ingleside boys . Miss Oliver found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks -- he was so exactly like what she would have liked her own son to be . Glossy black hair , brilliant dark grey eyes , faultless features . And a poet to his fingertips ! That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of twenty to write . Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift . Rilla loved Walter with all her heart . He never teased her as Jem and Shirley did . He never called her `` Spider . '' His pet name for her was `` Rilla-my-Rilla '' -- a little pun on her real name , Marilla . She had been named after Aunt Marilla of Green Gables , but Aunt Marilla had died before Rilla was old enough to know her very well , and Rilla detested the name as being horribly old-fashioned and prim . Why could n't they have called her by her first name , Bertha , which was beautiful and dignified , instead of that silly `` Rilla '' ? She did not mind Walter 's version , but nobody else was allowed to call her that , except Miss Oliver now and then . `` Rilla-my-Rilla '' in Walter 's musical voice sounded very beautiful to her -- like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook . She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good , so she told Miss Oliver . Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of fifteen are -- and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Di more of his secrets than he told her .
`` He thinks I 'm not grown up enough XXXXX understand , '' she had once lamented rebelliously to Miss Oliver , `` but I am !
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