Word had come from Red Cross headquarters that sheets and bandages would be required . Nan and Di and Rilla were hard at work . Mrs. Blythe and Susan were upstairs in the boys ' room , engaged in a more personal task . With dry , anguished eyes they were packing up Jem 's belongings . He must leave for Valcartier the next morning . They had been expecting the word but it was none the less dreadful when it came . Rilla was basting the hem of a sheet for the first time in her life . When the word had come that Jem must go she had her cry out among the pines in Rainbow Valley and then she had gone to her mother . `` Mother , I want to do something . I 'm only a girl -- I ca n't do anything to win the war -- but I must do something to help at home . '' `` The cotton has come up for the sheets , '' said Mrs. Blythe . `` You can help Nan and Di make them up . And Rilla , do n't you think you could organize a Junior Red Cross among the young girls ? I think they would like it better and do better work by themselves than if mixed up with the older people . '' `` But , mother -- I 've never done anything like that . '' `` We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us that we have never done before , Rilla . '' `` Well '' -- Rilla took the plunge -- `` I 'll try , mother -- if you 'll tell me how to begin . I have been thinking it all over and I have decided that I must be as brave and heroic and unselfish as I can possibly be . '' Mrs. Blythe did not smile at Rilla 's italics . Perhaps she did not feel like smiling or perhaps she detected a real grain of serious purpose behind Rilla 's romantic pose .
So here was Rilla hemming sheets and organizing a Junior Red Cross in her thoughts XXXXX she hemmed ; moreover , she was enjoying it -- the organizing that is , not the hemming .
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