Rilla of Ingleside

The body grows slowly and steadily but the soul grows by leaps and bounds. It may come to its full stature in an hour.

There was something in her movements that made you think she never walked but always danced.

It does not do to laugh at the pangs of youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that 'this, too, will pass away.

I heard someone once say that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl's life.

The only thing I envy about a cat is its purr," remarked Dr. Blythe once, listening to Doc's resonant melody. "It is the most contented sound in the world.

Without shedding of blood there is no anything… Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again… I don’t think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price which we may not live to see but which our children’s children will inherit.

Before this war is over,' [Walter] said - or something said through his lips - 'every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it - you, Mary, will feel it - feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come - and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over - years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break.

Don't look at me so sorrowfully and so disapprovingly, dearest. I can't be sober and serious - everything looks so rosy and rainbowy to me.

Rilla's heart skipped a beat - or, if that be a pysiological impossibility, she thought it did.

She wanted to be alone - to think things out - to adjust herself, if it were possible, to the new world in which she seemed to have been transplanted with a suddenness and completeness that left her half bewildered to her own identity.

Rilla was fond of italics, as most girls of fifteen are.

Our sacrifice is greater than his," cried Rilla passionately. "Our boys give only themselves. We give them.

War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.

And two years ago this morning I woke wondering what delightful gift the new day would give me. These are the two years I thought would be filled with fun." "Would you exchange them - now - for two years filled with fun " "No " said Rilla slowly. "I wouldn't. It's strange - isn't it - They have been two terrible years - and yet I have a queer feeling of thankfulness for them - as if they had brought me something very precious in all their pain. I wouldn't want to go back and be the girl I was two years ago not even if I could. Not that I think I've made any wonderful progress - but I'm not quite the selfish frivolous little doll I was then. I suppose I had a soul then Miss Oliver - but I didn't know it. I know it now - and that is worth a great deal - worth all the suffering of the past few years.

Nobody whom this war has touched will ever be happy again in quite the same way. But it will be a better happiness, I think, little sister - a happiness we've earned.

I will keep faith, Walter," she said steadily. "I will work ­and teach ­and learn ­and laugh, yes, I will even laugh ­through all my years, because of you and because of what you gave when you followed the call.

There are moments when we have real fun because, just for the moment, we don't think about things and then--we remember--and the remembering is worse than thinking of it all the time would have been.

I'm afraid our old world has come to an end, Rilla. We've got to face the fact. (Walter)

Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price - which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit.

He had also the reputation of being a bit of a lady killer. But that probably accrued to him from his possession of a laughing, velvety voice which no girl could hear without a heartbeat, and a dangerous way of listening as if she were saying something that he had longed all his life to hear.

I could spank Constantine and skin him alive afterwards, that I could," she exclaimed bitterly. "Oh, Susan, I'm surprised at you," said the doctor, pulling a long face. "Have you no regard for the proprieties? Skin him alive by all means but omit the spanking.

How wicked I was to wish that something dramatic would happen!' she thought. 'Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant days back again! I would *never* grumble about them again.

I doubted God last Sunday " said Rilla "but I don't doubt Him today. Evil cannot win. Spirit is on our side and it is bound to outlast flesh.

When will the others come? "And there is one who will never come. At least we will not see him if he does. But, oh, when I think he will be there--when our Canadian soldiers return there will be a shadow army with them--the army of the fallen. We will not *see* them--but they will be there!

It was less humiliating to admit crying because of your feet than because - because somebody had been amusing himself with you and your friends had forgotten you, and other people patronised you.

I would like to turn the Kaiser into a good man – a very good man – all at once if I could. That is what I would do. Don't you think, Mrs. Blythe, that would be the very worstest punishment of all?" "Bless the child," said Susan, "how do you make out that would be any kind of a punishment for that wicked fiend?" "Don't you see," said Bruce, looking levelly at Susan, out of his blackly blue eyes, "if he was turned into a good man he would understand how dreadful the things he has done are, and he would feel so terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable than he could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful – and he would go on feeling like that forever. Yes" – Bruce clenched his hands and nodded his head emphatically, "yes, I would make the Kaiser a good man – that is what I would do – it would serve him 'zackly right.

An hour ago on the sand-shore he has been looking at her as if she were the only being of any importance in the world. And now she was a nobody.

If only she were a boy, speeding in khaki by Carol's side to the western front! She had wished that in a burst of romance when Jem had gone, without perhaps, meaning it. She meant it now. There were moments when waiting at home, in safety and comfort, seemed an unendurable thing.

The other day Nan said, 'Nothing can ever be quite the same for any of us again.' It made me feel rebellious. Why shouldn't things be the same again - when everything is over and Jem and Jerry are back? We'll all be happy and jolly again and these days will seem just like a bad dream.

Well, that is all the notes and there is not much else in the paper of any importance. I never take much interest in foreign parts. Who's this Archduke man who has been murdered?" "What does it matter to us?" asked Miss Cornelia, unaware of the hideous answer to her question, which destiny was even then preparing. "Someone is always murdering or being murdered in those Balkan States. It's their normal condition and I don't really think that our papers ought to publish such shocking things.