The lilacs had lost their bloom and there were very few greengages left on the tree in the yard the evening Di said she was going away. It was one of those rare evenings when everyone was round at Ingleside, the Blythes have contrived it so, arranging that their children come together at least once a month, though often it was more than that.
'But why?' said Faith perplexedly.
'Of course you must go if you wish to,' said Anne, and she tried not to say it sadly, but her eyes were starry.
'How long have you been thinking of it?' Jem wanted to know.
'It will make you happy to go, won't it?' that was Una.
Di was grateful to her for understanding, unlooked for and instinctive as it always had been between them; they had been often thrown together in those years when their siblings were sweethearting and forgetful. Di did her best now to answer the others' questions and wished her father would say something. He looked so much older just then than she had ever thought of him. Susan said only,
'I'm sure the Almighty knows what He's doing, sending you to all the corners of the globe as He is, but I do sometimes wish he would hint what the good He sees in it might be,' and proceeded to divide a golden apple crumble into portions and send the creamer round. Everyone made a valiant effort not to laugh. Jem not quite managing this completely, was overcome with a bout of coughing.
'We haven't all gone away, Susan,' said Rilla, and there was laughter in her voice.
'And don't think I'm not thankful for it,' said Susan, looking more than a little pointedly at Shirley, that moment preoccupied with negotiating the creamer out of small Walter's hands because his father was still coughing and thus unable to. Faith was entirely the wrong side of the table to be of any use in battle her child was waging with his uncle.
'All the same,' said Anne wistfully, 'it is hard letting you all go. Why didn't you say before dearest?'
Di traced a pattern on the tablecloth. 'I wasn't sure, and there were other things to think of then. I didn't want to detract from anything.'
'You know you wouldn't have done,' said Una, catching the spoon baby Gilbert has just tried to drop. She handed it back to Rilla who smiled her thanks.
'I know but I didn't want to get in the way of…'
"I have been helping and learning to keep house far too long to need to get used to it,' said Una with gentle humour, intuiting Di's logic better than the rest of the assembled family.
Di laughed. Nan looked at Rilla; if you've told her, that look said, but even then Rilla was shaking her head. 'I never said…' she said to Nan over the table.
'You didn't need to,' said Una and rescued Gil's spoon again. 'I've known you too long. You talk too much with your eyes.'
Everyone had something for Di as she packed to go away. Rilla made up a neat dress in deep green cotton that would wear well. Nan wrote out and annotated all the recipes she had come to trust and bound them with the same kind of blue ribbon she had bought every year from Carter Flagg to tie her sister's birthday gifts with. Una bought over a shawl from Persis and Carl and a thick log-cabin quilt from Greengage Close. Mother gave her a framed photograph of the house, so she can 'think of home' when she looked on it, and Father a journal to write everything down, 'I want to know all about it,' he said affectionately.
'I may even come and visit,' and he had kissed the top of her head as he had been used to do when sending her off to bed as a little girl. It was this journal Di secretly came to cherish most in after years, because it would help to recapture those early days at the house called Hillside, when she was still finding her way.
They all came down to the station to see her off, and Di almost wished they would not because the sight of so much of her family congregated there made her think of the war. But she couldn't blame them for wanting to say a proper goodbye when she didn't know when she would be home again. She kissed the little boys, who were too little to really understand what was happening. To Nan she said,
'For goodness sake take care of yourself, and keep in touch. I want to know everything.'
She hugged her sister fiercely, in spite of the baby that she suspected Una of being right about, saying it was too big, and hissed in Nan's ear, 'and please let them look after you. I only wish I could stay to see it through.'
'I will be fine, everything will be fine,' said Nan into her sister's shoulder, 'and you take care. Travel safely, promise?'
'I promise.' She let Nan go and the last memory that her family were to have of her for a long while was of her smiling as she said her last goodbyes.
'It will be strange not having Di about,' said Nan when they sat down to dinner at Ingleside. This was Susan's idea, because she said, it had been too long since she had cooked for as few people as were now at Ingleside.
'You'll hear from her,' said Shirley, 'she was always a good correspondent.' Nan refrained from saying that that was not the same thing.
'And there's always the telephone when a letter won't do,' said Rilla, who seemed to understand slightly better.
'I don't know. Are the family she's going on a party line too? Come to that, how long can you have an international call for?'
This was aimed at Shirley, who could usually be relied upon to know things like this. He looked to Una and then to Faith, but neither of them had ever had cause to need to telephone Carl. Even if they had, Una reflected, she was not sure the Amazon was possessed of telephones.
'I think it's three minutes still,' said Faith. 'I think that's how long I used to have when I rang home during the war. Does that sound about right?' She looked at her sister hopefully.
'Yes, yes I remember now,' said Una, 'the only time we talked for longer it was when you rang to catch us up about Carl's eye –you were able to declare it an emergency so there was no restriction.'
Everyone about them went very still. The Merediths had tried before to communicate that there was no longer any sting in the memories connected with Carl's eye –especially now he was so well recovered, but the Blythes had never quite grasped this and it wasn't really their fault, Faith thought. She said, in an effort to lighten things, 'that call cost a fortune, I can't remember if I told you. The figures when they came through were the only thing I ever saw as a nurse that brought me close to fainting.'
Una laughed, shook her head, 'you never did tell me. Probably just as well, as it was running our house on a war-budget that taught me housekeeping. You can fit a lot into three minutes,' she said, smiling at Nan.
'Yes, I suppose you can,' said Nan, but she did not add that whatever she said was likely to be heard by all her near neighbours, it was the hazard of an open party line and they all knew it. How often must they have gone to pick up the phone to find someone else using the line? With a smile she remembered that this was how they had heard that Miranda Milgrave had had her baby; Mary had picked up the telephone and the news had been all round the Glen in half an hour.
'You're thinking of something,' said Jem teasingly, and when Nan told them they all really laughed for the first time that day and it felt good.
'Nothing's perfect,' said Gilbert thoughtfully, 'we'll just have to write often Nan, and maybe visit now and again.' Neither of them really believed they will visit but it is a pleasing castle-in-the-air, so for the time being they cling to it.