have rain or high wind before morning. Doc is as good as a barometer."

"Well, I am thankful he has gone on the rampage outside this time and
not into my kitchen," said Susan. "And I am going out to see about
supper. With such a crowd as we have at Ingleside now it behooves us to
think about our meals betimes."



CHAPTER II

DEW OF MORNING

Outside, the Ingleside lawn was full of golden pools of sunshine and
plots of alluring shadows. Rilla Blythe was swinging in the hammock
under the big Scotch pine, Gertrude Oliver sat at its roots beside her,
and Walter was stretched at full length on the grass, lost in a romance
of chivalry wherein old heroes and beauties of dead and gone centuries
lived vividly again for him.

Rilla was the "baby" of the Blythe family and was in a chronic state of
secret indignation because nobody believed she was grown up. She was so
nearly fifteen that she called herself that, and she was quite as tall
as Di and Nan; also, she was nearly as pretty as Susan believed her to
be. She had great, dreamy, hazel eyes, a milky skin dappled with little
golden freckles, and delicately arched eyebrows, giving her a demure,
questioning look which made people, especially lads in their teens, want
to answer it. Her hair was ripely, ruddily brown and a little dent in
her upper lip looked as if some good fairy had pressed it in with her
finger at Rilla's christening. Rilla, whose best friends could not deny