Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/187

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REALISM AND ROMANCE
173

Junior Red Cross committee meeting and was severely business-like.

“You would never suppose,” said Irene Howard to Olive Kirk afterwards, “that Walter had left for the front only this morning. But some people really have no depth of feeling. I suppose it is much the best thing for them. I often wish I could take things as lightly as Rilla Blythe.”

CHAPTER XVI
Realism and Romance

WARSAW has fallen,” said Dr. Blythe with a resigned air, as he brought the mail in one warm August day.

Gertrude and Mrs. Blythe looked dismally at each other, and Rilla, who was feeding Jims a Morganized diet from a carefully sterilized spoon, laid the said spoon down on his tray, utterly regardless of germs, and said, “Oh, dear me,” in as tragic a tone as if the news had come as a thunderbolt instead of being a foregone conclusion from the preceding week’s dispatches. They had thought they were quite resigned to Warsaw’s fall but now they knew they had, as always, hoped against hope.

“Now, let us take a brace,” said Susan. “It is not the terrible thing we have been thinking. I read a dispatch three columns long in the Montreal Herald