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They were standing before a creature called the meercat, which reminded them both of old days on the veldt. Without turning her head she said, as if to the little animal: "Do you know that your fairy princess, as you call her, is going to have what is known as a war-baby?" The sound of his "What!" gave her quite a stab. It was so utterly horrified.
Then the fire went out of Susan and she retreated to her kitchen, laid her faithful old head on the table and wept bitterly for a time. Then she went to work and ironed Jims's little rompers. Rilla scolded her gently for it when she herself came in to do it. "I am not going to have you kill yourself working for any war-baby," Susan said obstinately.
In a few minutes Jims was sound asleep; and, as Rilla listened to his soft, regular breathing and felt the little body warm and contented against her, she realized that at last she loved her war-baby. "He has got to be such a darling," she thought drowsily, as she drifted off to slumberland herself.
"At all events he is provided for, and in such a fashion that Jim Anderson can't squander his inheritance if he wanted to. Now, if the new English stepmother is only a good sort I shall feel quite easy about the future of my war-baby. "I wonder what Robert and Amelia think of it. I fancy they will nail down their windows when they leave home after this!"
Like Susan and Rilla," concluded Mrs. Blythe, achieving a laugh, "I am determined to be a heroine." "You're all good stuff," said the doctor, "I'm proud of my women folk. Even Rilla here, my 'lily of the field, is running a Red Cross Society full blast and saving a little life for Canada. That's a good piece of work. Rilla, daughter of Anne, what are you going to call your war-baby?"
Jims, my little war-baby, whatever is going to become of you?" Jims was not in the least concerned over what was to become of him. He was gleefully watching the antics of a striped chipmunk that was frisking over the roof of the little siding. As the train pulled out Jims leaned eagerly forward for a last look at Chippy, pulling his hand from Rilla's.
It was, no doubt, a ridiculous thing to sit and cuddle a contrary war-baby when your best young man was making his farewell call, but there was nothing else to be done. Jims was supremely happy. He kicked his little pink-soled feet rapturously out under his white nighty and gave one of his rare laughs.
He wept for his mother, aged and bowed by trouble, bewildered, ready to give up the struggle his little sister now forced into erotic girlhood, blind, wilful, bold, on the wrong path, doomed beyond his power or any earthly power the men he had met, warped by the war, materialistic, lost in the maze of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement, dead to chivalry and the honor of women Mel Iden, strangest and saddest of mysteries a girl who had been noble, aloof, proud, with a heart of golden fire, now disgraced, ruined, the mother of a war-baby, and yet, strangest of all, not vile, not bad, not lost, but groping like he was down those vast and naked shores of life.
They all seemed rather stunned by the mere fact of Rilla adopting a war-baby; perhaps, too, the doctor had issued instructions. Walter, of course, never had teased her over anything; one day he told her she was a brick. "It took more courage for you to tackle that five pounds of new infant, Rilla-my-Rilla, than it would be for Jem to face a mile of Germans.
Rilla had, without any warning, brought her a war-baby once upon a time. Was she now, with equal suddenness, going to produce a husband? "Yes, a wedding-cake a scrumptious wedding-cake, Susan a beautiful, plummy, eggy, citron-peely wedding-cake. And we must make other things too. I'll help you in the morning.