Brothers and playmate and sweetheart--they were all gone, never, it might be, to return.

Yet still the Piper piped and the dance of death went on.
When Rilla walked slowly back to the house Susan was still sitting by the veranda table and Susan was sniffing suspiciously.
"I have been thinking, Rilla dear, of the old days in the House of Dreams, when Kenneth's mother and father were courting and Jem was a little baby and you were not born or thought of.

It was a very romantic affair and she and your mother were such chums.

To think I should have lived to see her son going to the front.

As if she had not had enough trouble in her early life without this coming upon her! But we must take a brace and see it through." All Rilla's anger against Susan had evaporated.