Rilla of Ingleside: Excerpts

From chapter 18, “A War Wedding”:

“By the way, that reminds me – I found a grey hair this morning – my very first,” said Mrs. Blythe.

“I have noticed that grey hair for some time, Mrs. Dr. dear, but I did not speak of it. Thought I to myself, ‘She has enough to bear.’ But now that you have discovered it let me remind you that grey hairs are honourable.”

“I must be getting old, Gilbert,” Mrs. Blythe laughed a trifle ruefully. “People are beginning to tell me I look so young. They never tell you that when you are young. But I shall not worry over my silver thread. I never liked red hair. Gilbert, did I ever tell you of that time, years ago at Green Gables, when I dyed my hair? Nobody but Marilla and I knew about it.”

“Was that the reason you came out once with your hair shingled to the bone?”

“Yes. I bought a bottle of dye from a German Jew pedlar. I fondly expected it would turn my hair black – and it turned it green. So it had to be cut off.”

“You had a narrow escape, Mrs. Dr. dear,” exclaimed Susan. “Of course you were too young then to know what a German was. It was a special mercy of Providence that it was only green dye and not poison.”

“It seems hundreds of years since those Green Gable days,” sighed Mrs. Blythe. “They belonged to another world altogether. Life has been cut in two by the chasm of the war. What is ahead I don’t know – but it can’t be a bit like the past. I wonder if those of us who have lived half our lives in the old world will ever feel wholly at home in the new.”

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