Rilla flushed. It did not matter to her if Kenneth Ford walked home with
Ethel Reese a dozen times--it did not! Nothing that he did mattered to
her. He was ages older than she was. He chummed with Nan and Di and
Faith, and looked upon her, Rilla, as a child whom he never noticed
except to tease. And she detested Ethel Reese and Ethel Reese hated her
--always had hated her since Walter had pummelled Dan so notoriously in
Rainbow Valley days; but why need she be thought beneath Kenneth Ford's
notice because she was a country girl, pray? As for Mary Vance, she was
getting to be an out-and-out gossip and thought of nothing but who
walked home with people!

There was a little pier on the harbour shore below the House of Dreams,
and two boats were moored there. One boat was skippered by Jem Blythe,
the other by Joe Milgrave, who knew all about boats and was nothing loth
to let Miranda Pryor see it. They raced down the harbour and Joe's boat
won. More boats were coming down from the Harbour Head and across the
harbour from the western side. Everywhere there was laughter. The big
white tower on Four Winds Point was overflowing with light, while its
revolving beacon flashed overhead. A family from Charlottetown,
relatives of the light's keeper, were summering at the light, and they
were giving the party to which all the young people of Four Winds and
Glen St. Mary and over-harbour had been invited. As Jem's boat swung in
below the lighthouse Rilla desperately snatched off her shoes and donned
her silver slippers behind Miss Oliver's screening back. A glance had
told her that the rock-cut steps climbing up to the light were lined
with boys, and lighted by Chinese lanterns, and she was determined she
would not walk up those steps in the heavy shoes her mother had insisted
on her wearing for the road. The slippers pinched abominably, but nobody
would have suspected it as Rilla tripped smilingly up the steps, her
soft dark eyes glowing and questioning, her colour deepening richly on