`` She has n't got the sense she was born with where he is concerned . He walked home with her from the over-harbour church last prayer-meeting night and the airs she has put on since would really make you weary of life . As if a Toronto boy like Ken Ford would ever really think of a country girl like Ethel ! '' Rilla flushed . It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with Ethel Reese a dozen times -- it did not ! Nothing that he did mattered to her . He was ages older than she was . He chummed with Nan and Di and Faith , and looked upon her , Rilla , as a child whom he never noticed except to tease . And she detested Ethel Reese and Ethel Reese hated her -- always had hated her since Walter had pummelled Dan so notoriously in Rainbow Valley days ; but why need she be thought beneath Kenneth Ford 's notice because she was a country girl , pray ? As for Mary Vance , she was getting to be an out-and-out gossip and thought of nothing but who walked home with people ! There was a little pier on the harbour shore below the House of Dreams , and two boats were moored there . One boat was skippered by Jem Blythe , the other by Joe Milgrave , who knew all about boats and was nothing loth to let Miranda Pryor see it . They raced down the harbour and Joe 's boat won . More boats were coming down from the Harbour Head and across the harbour from the western side . Everywhere there was laughter . The big white tower on Four Winds Point was overflowing with light , while its revolving beacon flashed overhead . A family from Charlottetown , relatives of the light 's keeper , were summering at the light , and they were giving the party to which all the young people of Four Winds and Glen St. Mary and over-harbour had been invited . As Jem 's boat swung in below the lighthouse Rilla desperately snatched off her shoes and donned her silver slippers behind Miss Oliver 's screening back . A glance had told her that the rock-cut steps climbing up to the light were lined with boys , and lighted by Chinese lanterns , and she was determined she would not walk up those steps in the heavy shoes her mother had insisted on her wearing for the road . The slippers pinched abominably , but nobody would have suspected it as Rilla tripped smilingly up the steps , her soft dark eyes glowing and questioning , her colour deepening richly on her round , creamy cheeks .
The very minute she reached the top of the steps an over-harbour boy asked her to dance and the next moment they were XXXXX the pavilion that had been built seaward of the lighthouse for dances .
As because below but for from in of on up