I 'm sure I did fly -- I ca n't remember my feet ever touching the ground . I met Gertrude on her way home from school in the glade of spruces where we used to play , and I just gasped out the news to her . I ought to have had more sense , of course . But I was so crazy with joy and excitement that I never stopped to think . Gertrude just dropped there among the golden young ferns as if she had been shot . The fright it gave me ought to make me sensible -- in this respect at least -- for the rest of my life . I thought I had killed her -- I remembered that her mother had died very suddenly from heart failure when quite a young woman . It seemed years to me before I discovered that her heart was still beating . A pretty time I had ! I never saw anybody faint before , and I knew there was nobody up at the house to help , because everybody else had gone to the station to meet Di and Nan coming home from Redmond . But I knew -- theoretically -- how people in a faint should be treated , and now I know it practically . Luckily the brook was handy , and after I had worked frantically over her for a while Gertrude came back to life . She never said one word about my news and I did n't dare to refer to it again . I helped her walk up through the maple grove and up to her room , and then she said , ` Rob -- is -- living , ' as if the words were torn out of her , and flung herself on her bed and cried and cried and cried . I never saw anyone cry so before . All the tears that she had n't shed all that week came then . She cried most of last night , I think , but her face this morning looked as if she had seen a vision of some kind , and we were all so happy that we were almost afraid . `` Di and Nan are home for a couple of weeks . Then they go back to Red Cross work in the training camp at Kingsport . I envy them .
Father says I 'm doing just as good work here , XXXXX Jims and my Junior Reds .
about after at because before for from of on with