He was a good infant , generally sleeping and digesting as Morgan decreed . Occasionally he smiled but he had never laughed , in spite of all efforts to make him . This worried Rilla also , because Morgan said that babies usually laughed aloud from the third to the fifth month . Jims was five months and had no notion of laughing . Why had n't he ? Was n't he normal ? One night Rilla came home late from a recruiting meeting at the Glen where she had been giving patriotic recitations . Rilla had never been willing to recite in public before . She was afraid of her tendency to lisp , which had a habit of reviving if she were doing anything that made her nervous . When she had first been asked to recite at the Upper Glen meeting she had refused . Then she began to worry over her refusal . Was it cowardly ? What would Jem think if he knew ? After two days of worry Rilla phoned to the president of the Patriotic Society that she would recite . She did , and lisped several times , and lay awake most of the night in an agony of wounded vanity . Then two nights after she recited again at Harbour Head . She had been at Lowbridge and over-harbour since then and had become resigned to an occasional lisp . Nobody except herself seemed to mind it . And she was so earnest and appealing and shining-eyed ! More than one recruit joined up because Rilla 's eyes seemed to look right at him when she passionately demanded how could men die better than fighting for the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods , or assured her audience with thrilling intensity that one crowded hour of glorious life was worth an age without a name .
Even stolid Miller Douglas was so fired one night that it took Mary Vance a good hour XXXXX talk him back to sense .
after as because from if in of since than to