The summer passed in a haze of days one golden-green afternoon blurring into the next. For the first time Bertha did not find herself running under the sun-dappled trees to Orchard Slope every day, up the stairs to Doss's room. Dorothy's little bedroom at the top of the stairs had been shut up and locked. Her presence was sorely lacking in the little house. A note of cheerfulness had gone out of the bright tune of the place.

For a while, Bertha had forgotten, in her grief, that there was a war going on. Slowly, she came round to realize it again. Bertha threw herself into the war effort with an energy bordering on fervor. She took over Dorothy's little Victory garden and expanded it. She scoured the village for scrap metal. She saved bacon grease and rationing tickets. She wrote long notes and assembled care packages for all of the boys she knew. She worked herself into a frenzy through the day, knowing that hard work to the point of exhaustion would be the only way she could get any sleep at night.

"You must conserve your strength," Mrs. Wright chided her. Bertha waved her away.

"Let me work—let me work," she said numbly. "It helps me, Mother. It lets me forget—for a time."

How bittersweet it was to forget! She did not want to forget about Doss. But it was less painful than remembering. If one could only forget all the time! Remembering was the part that hurt. Bertha tried not to think about Dorothy. She tried not to think about Teddy, and how he had become, over the past months, a stranger to her. Instead, she thought about Georgie, fighting in Sicily, and prayed that nothing might happen to him. He could not be taken, not after Doss.

In the still moments, often in the twilight hours, when the work of the day was done, Bertha thought of Jordan, still training for the war, in faraway Georgia. He had been there for a year. Perhaps he would never have to go overseas. Perhaps the war would be over before his turn came to go.

Somehow, the tide of the war had changed without her realizing it. The British and Italians surrendered in North Africa, and the newspapers reported that German Grossadmiral Dönitz had suspended his terrible battle operations in the Atlantic. The Americans were cutting a swath through occupied Italy and the Allies were 'bombing the Dickens' out of Hamburg, Regensburg, Schweinfurt. Still, the people of Avonlea were not convinced. Old Sabery Andrews had been walking along the shore at night only two weeks ago and he had seen a mysterious black shape rise streaming from the quiet waters of the gulf. Of course he wasn't sure it had been a German U-boat—but then, what else could it be?

The one Japanese family in the entire district had been under strict suspicion since the start of the war, and was now regarded with increasing skepticism, since stories about the horrible doings of the Japanese had begun to circulate over the wires and through the gossip-grapevine that is so much a part of small-town life. Regina Gillis had been to Boston, and had seen a War Department film chronicling the bloody battle of Tarawa, in the South Pacific. Within days of her return, everyone in Avonlea felt as though they had seen the film, too, from Regina's detailed reports. Bodies washed up on the beach, buried in the sand. Forgotten men bobbing on the indifferent waves. Bertha thought of Doss, her black hair slick with water, and shuddered.

Diana Wright did her best to dispel gossip. "I just don't think Mrs. Akoyo or any of her family could be capable of such bloody behavior," she said to her family. "I think I shall have her to tea, and I want all of you to be here to help me welcome her."

"I can't, Mother," said Bertha regretfully. "I've taken a job in Blewitt's Canning factory down the shore."

"Canning!" wondered Mr. Wright. "Why, Bertha! I never thought we'd have a regular 'Rosie the Riveter' under our own roof. Do you think you shall like going out to work?"

"No," said Bertha. "But I'm doing it all the same.

To her surprise, she liked it far more than she expected. Bertha went out every day with her hair tied up in a kerchief, and spent six hours counting casings for mortars and artillery, separating them, sifting them into neat groups of ten and twelve. It was dull, numbing work, but it required her whole attention lest she miscount and have one box end up with nine or thirteen casings. She could not think about Doss, or Teddy, while engaged in such a task.

She did, however, find time to think about Jordan.

In the middle of this maelstrom, the Wright twins turned eighteen. Bertha awoke late in the day. She had been to a dance at White Sands the night before—her first dance without Dossie. She had not wanted to go. It would be the first time she had ever done up her own hair, chosen her own dress, without Dorothy's help, her comradeship. The first time she had ever gone to a party and not had Doss to talk it over with, after. But she must try, for Jordan's sake, to let some of the light back into her life again. She moved her stiff lips into a smile and kept it planted there, and if it did not reach her eyes, it was, at least, a start. She had fallen into bed a very tired girl of seventeen; and woken in the morning as a woman.

Eighteen. Bertha tried the word, tasting it on her lips. She was practically grown-up now, ready to really begin her life. But what would she do with her life? She had missed the Redmond entrance exams and no one had said anything about making them up. Bertha found that she did not even really want to. She did not want to go away to Kingsport and study and learn as if—as if nothing had happened.

She got up slowly and dressed, taking extra time with her hair. Downstairs she heard the chatter of voices. She heard Dad go out into the fields, heard mother go out and start the car in the driveway. She probably had another I.O.D.E. or Red Cross meeting. Teddy, Bertha supposed, was out celebrating the day in his own way. Her heart beat painfully in her chest. 'Her own way' or 'his own way' had never been part of their twinship before.

If there had not been a war on, what a party the twins might have had to mark their eighteenth year! But butter, sugar, and eggs were in short supply, and so there was no cake. They might have had a clam-bake on the shore that evening except that it was strictly forbidden to light a fire of any kind. In the end, Bertha had gone to her mother and begged her to forget the day.

"I don't want anything," she told her. "It wouldn't feel right with Dorothy—well. I'm sure Teddy feels the same way."

Mrs. Wright nodded, and promised that there would be no party that year, if Bertha's heart was not in it. There was a package of nylons on the table as her present, though. Bertha pocketed them with a small smile.

She spent the morning reading the papers, and the afternoon boxing baked goods for her chums. So many of the boys from Avonlea High School were overseas, now. Those tall, well-fed county boys! How many of them would never come home?

In the late afternoon, the hairs on the back of Bertha's neck stood up and she shivered. "Teddy," she murmured, and she went out to the old orchard and waited there, under the trees, so that she could see his car come up the lane.

She waited there a long time. Mr. Wright's motor flashed around the bend and Bertha had a glimpse of her twin's face. She did not go up to the house; she stayed where she was. She knew that he would come and find her—and something told her that she must not hasten the moment of reckoning which she knew must be coming. Oh, she would enjoy these last few minutes before everything changed—again.

She had known for some time what her twin would do—must do—but she still was not prepared for the sight of Teddy, coming through the trees, tall and splendid in his khaki, his beautiful auburn curls shorn close to his scalp. He looked so much like a man—and so unfamiliar to her—that she placed a hand to her heart and dropped down among the ferny grasses as though she had been shot.

"Oh, Teddy, no," she said, as he came to her. "Why?" she wept, as the tears began to course down her face. "Why are you going to leave us?"

Teddy had a funny, bitter half-smile on his suntanned face. "I must go, Bertha," he told her in a low voice. "Do you think that I could bear to stay here—now that she is gone?"

His hand went around her shoulders, lifting her up. Bertha gasped, realization dawning. "You—you loved Doss," she choked. It was all so clear now—their close friendship, the secret signals they had, the special bond that had existed between them. Teddy and Doss had been closer than most cousins. She saw it now: they had been more than friends.

"Yes," Teddy said simply.

"And," Bertha was remembering the way that Dorothy's face would light up from within in the quiet moments, "she loved you, too."

Teddy only shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "It doesn't matter if she did or didn't. But do you see now that I can't stay here, Bertha? Not without her."

"If you're looking for a change of pace, you might try Redmond or McGill," said Bertha sarcastically. "You don't need to go all the way to Europe, Teddy!"

"Well, it's a done deal," said Teddy, jamming his hands into his pockets. "I can't take it back. And I want to go, Bertha. Dorothy would have wanted me to go."

"No, she wouldn't!" Bertha cried, but as she did, she realized she was wrong. Doss wouldn't have wanted him to go—but she couldn't have ever loved a man who was fit and able and stayed at home, letting others go to do the dirty work instead. "She wouldn't," Bertha said again, but her voice trembled. "She—would. Oh, Teddy, she would have wanted you to go."

"And come back safely," he finished. "Which I shall do, Bertha—you may mark my words." Teddy rose and put his arm around his sister's shoulders. "Today is our day, sister-mine. Let's not spoil it by weeping. Let's go out and roam through our old places and pretend that we are the carefree little scamps we used to be. We'll take a picnic lunch and go down to Hester Gray's garden—and then for a walk along the shore. There will be plenty of time for us to say goodbye when goodbyes have to be said."

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Bertha found it was not too hard to say goodbye to Teddy when she thought of what Dorothy would have done. Dorothy would have sent him off with a smile and a faithful, believing little heart. So Bertha tried her best to bid him farewell with a smile on her lips.

But when he had gone, Green Gables seemed utterly desolate. Bertha floated through the days like a ship come loose from its moorings. Her brother was at Valcartier—Doss had gone where no mortal may follow. All of her chums were overseas or away at college. Bertha had a lover, whom she had never met, who was at this very moment on his way across the Atlantic to England. It was too ridiculous!

At times she wondered if Jordan really was her lover—could she be in love with a man she had never seen? She wished she had a photo of him, in his lieutenant's uniform, to pin up on her wall like other girls did. At times she sat down and tried to imagine out what he looked like. She spent hours detailing his face, his eyes, and his hair—but the picture was never quite right. The thing that made Jordan Jordan was always missing.

He still wrote faithfully, but never again had he reproduced the passion of that one love note that she kept under her pillow. Occasionally he would call her dear or darling, but he did not allude again to loving her. Her own notes were shy, and she found she could not put into written word the depth of her feeling. Their letters to each other were tentative, now, as if each were testing the waters.

"I wonder if anything will ever be the way it used to," Bertha sighed, crumpling a half-finished letter in her hand. At that moment, she had little hope.