just couldn't be happy if I had any secret from you, dearest--but I
would never betray his. I tell him everything--I even show him my
diary. And it hurts me dreadfully when he doesn't tell me things. He
shows me all his poems, though--they are marvellous, Miss Oliver. Oh, I
just live in the hope that some day I shall be to Walter what
Wordsworth's sister Dorothy was to him. Wordsworth never wrote anything
like Walter's poems--nor Tennyson, either."

"I wouldn't say just that. Both of them wrote a great deal of trash,"
said Miss Oliver dryly. Then, repenting, as she saw a hurt look in
Rilla's eye, she added hastily,

"But I believe Walter will be a great poet, too--some day--and you will
have more of his confidence as you grow older."

"When Walter was in the hospital with typhoid last year I was almost
crazy," sighed Rilla, a little importantly. "They never told me how ill
he really was until it was all over--father wouldn't let them. I'm glad
I didn't know--I couldn't have borne it. I cried myself to sleep every
night as it was. But sometimes," concluded Rilla bitterly--she liked to
speak bitterly now and then in imitation of Miss Oliver--"sometimes I
think Walter cares more for Dog Monday than he does for me."

Dog Monday was the Ingleside dog, so called because he had come into the
family on a Monday when Walter had been reading Robinson Crusoe. He
really belonged to Jem but was much attached to Walter also. He was
lying beside Walter now with nose snuggled against his arm, thumping his
tail rapturously whenever Walter gave him an absent pat. Monday was not
a collie or a setter or a hound or a Newfoundland. He was just, as Jem
said, "plain dog"--very plain dog, uncharitable people added.