As they looked lovingly out at him above Carl 's uniform the pale minister suddenly remembered the day when for the first and last time he had tried to whip Carl for his prank with the eel . That was the first time he had realised how much Carl 's eyes were like Cecilia 's . Now he realised it again once more . Would he ever again see his dead wife 's eyes looking at him from his son 's face ? What a bonny , clean , handsome lad he was ! It was -- hard -- to see him go . John Meredith seemed to be looking at a torn plain strewed with the bodies of `` able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five . '' Only the other day Carl had been a little scrap of a boy , hunting bugs in Rainbow Valley , taking lizards to bed with him , and scandalizing the Glen by carrying frogs to Sunday School . It seemed hardly -- right -- somehow that he should be an `` able-bodied man '' in khaki . Yet John Meredith had said no word to dissuade him when Carl had told him he must go . Rilla felt Carl 's going keenly . They had always been cronies and playmates . He was only a little older than she was and they had been children in Rainbow Valley together . She recalled all their old pranks and escapades as she walked slowly home alone . The full moon peeped through the scudding clouds with sudden floods of weird illumination , the telephone wires sang a shrill weird song in the wind , and the tall spikes of withered , grey-headed golden-rod in the fence corners swayed and beckoned wildly to her like groups of old witches weaving unholy spells . On such a night as this , long ago , Carl would come over to Ingleside and whistle her out to the gate . `` 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 XXXXX all , hence the mutual vow in Rainbow Valley .
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