The little red house stood on the hill and watched as the two girls climbed toward it. It was alone, apart from the other houses, but it was not lonely. It had memories enough to keep it full--happy memories--memories that washed over Cecilia as she neared it.

It was the darlingest little house. However could Mother and Father left it? Cecilia loved their grand stone house in the city--it was a friend, a good chum, full of bright sunshine and faded quilts--but this house was more. It was full of shadows--golden shadows made by the sun streaming through the leaves of the many apple trees--it had mystery--contentedness--and allure. The yard was as green as a jewel and the gulf glittered blue in the distance. The wide board porch was shady and sun-warmed, and the most charming wooden sign hung at the end of the lane, reading Red Apple Farm, with bluest of blue morning glories twined around it.

"Let's go in," said the forthright Trudy. Her eyes shimmered like emeralds and her hair was as ruddy as the red road that lead to the door. Why, this was a magical house! It made everyone and everything look more beautiful.

The doors were locked tight and the windows shuttered up, but Cecilia managed to climb up the rose trellis to a skylight. She opened it--removed her skirt from the catch on which it was caught--and shimmied down.

She was met by a feeling of calm. The house smelled like cinnamon and apple peel--and something else? Lavender and beeswax. The furniture was shrouded with dropcloths to keep it from being dusty. It should have looked sad and uninviting--but it didn't.

"It's like a real, live play house!" Trudy exclaimed, looking around with awe when Cecilia let her in. "With a real kitchen--we can't use it, of course, the gas isn't on. But won't it be fun to pretend? Come on, Cecilia--do you remember which room is yours?"

They ran through the near-empty rooms to the back of the house, where Cecilia threw open a little door.

"My room!" she said. "Oh, I remember you!" She laughed--and her laughter echoed so it was like the house was laughing, too.

* * *

"Where do you two urchins go all day!" Aunt Rilla exclaimed as Cecilia and Trudy showed up for one night late for supper. "You disappear all day--I call and call and you all don't come so I know you're not in Rainbow Valley. And then you show up--and you look like you've been rolling around in the dirt!"

Cecilia and Trudy exchanged glances. They had been going to the little house almost every day--and setting it up--it was very dusty. They'd spent the better part of the week cleaning the floors and the furniture--how was it that they disliked doing chores around Ingleside and the House of Dreams so much, but at Red Apple Farm it was fun?

They'd found all sorts of treasures in the house. A box of baby clothes in the garret that were so tiny that they fit perfectly on a doll. A crystal chandelier with almost all of the glass missing--but the ones that remained reflected dancing fairy rainbows all over. The girls strung them on fishing wire and hung them at the windows, and the walls of the house were patterned with shining, shimmering color. Old dresses--they spent a lot of time playing dress up in front of a gilt mirror in one of the bedrooms that was like looking into an enchanted glass--Cecilia felt she had never looked prettier than she looked in that mirror. It was part of the house's magic.

There was a very old clock with hanging brass plates that rang to mark the changing of the tide. How good it had felt to set it ticking again! There were china plates painted with apple blossoms--and two green china dogs on the mantle, one looking right, and one looking left.

But the most amazing thing Cecilia had found had been a book of poems on the top of a high shelf in the garret. There was a faded old letter tucked between the pages addressed to Aunt Rilla herself! A letter than made their eyes flood with tears--a letter that seemed to have been written from beyond the grave--a letter that made them hear far-off, distant music of the Piper. And some of the poetry had been underlined, two lines especially,

Her eyes of lovely steadfastness

Were deep and midnight dark, and blue.

"That sounds like something Blythe would write," Cecilia breathed, thrilling to the tips of her toes with the delight of a mystery.

"It sounds like something he would write about you. Look at the name on the flyleaf," Trudy said. "The letter's addressed to Mother--but the name in the book is your mother's, Cecilia. Una Meredith--it must have been before she and Uncle Shirley got married."

And the name of the author--of book and letter--was Walter Cuthbert Blythe.

The girls talked over the mystery of the book and letter for a long time, sitting together in the sunlit parlor until the big windows grew dusky with twilight .

"I wonder if we'll ever know why Mother kept these things?" Cecilia mused. "And if they were important enough to keep--why leave them here? And did Uncle Walter write those lines about Mother?"

"I don't know," Trudy said, clasping her brown hands around her knees. "And we'll probably never know. I hate to ask Mother or Grandmother about Uncle Walter--they get so sad and their eyes look as if they are seeing something very far away. I don't like it when Mother cries. It's strange--a Mother shouldn't cry."

Cecilia's own Mother never cried. Not even when Susan had died--dear little Susan--not once. Cecilia sometimes wished she would cry. Maybe that would get rid of the terribly anguished look in her eyes. Had Mother cried yet? Father wrote that she was getting better every day--was that terrible look in her eyes still there?

"No," said Cecilia dully. "A mother shouldn't cry."

* * *

Susan had been the sweetest baby. She had had lovely rosy curls all over her head--she had a smooth, browned skin like Father--she had deep, chocolatey brown eyes like Grandfather Blythe. She had smiled--really smiled--at Cecilia not an hour after her birth, and Cecilia had felt that she and her new sister had known each other from somewhere before--maybe in a past life, maybe during their time as baby angels, waiting to be born.

She had been the sweetest baby--and the sweetest little girl. They never had to ask Cecilia to look after Susan--the girls were always together anyway. Cecilia could still feel the pressure of Susan's chubby little hand in her own. Sometimes, at night, she woke up and thought she was in the little room they shared, and that she could hear little Susan lisping her name. How nice it had been to come home from school and see Susan's shining crimson head at the window, waiting for and waving at her.

They had been such a happy little family, Mother, Father, and the two girls. Their little house was always so full of laughter and singing. But after Susan--died--all of that had gone away. Father tried to laugh but it was a bitter sound, and Cecilia sang by herself for a while--but she didn't like the sound of her voice without Susan's blending in. And Mother--Mother hadn't seemed to notice anything was amiss. She sat by the window and grew paler and thinner than she had ever been--and Mother had been pale and thin to begin with. She wouldn't eat--and she still talked as if Susan were alive--to hear her do so had chilled Cecilia to the bone.

The aunts and uncles probably knew the truth--but the cousins had simply been told that Auntie Una was ill and in hospital. Cecilia didn't want them to know the truth, but she told Blythe one day, as they sat near the babbling brook in Rainbow Valley. It was so easy--so natural--to tell things to Blythe.

"It is a hospital--but it's for people who are sad," she explained. "Oh, I hated visiting Mother there. She looked at me like she was seeing through me--and there was always the sound of someone, somewhere, crying."

"It sounds awful," Blythe said, his eyes telling her that she could go on.

"I can write to her." Cecilia choked back a sob. "But I can't write anything that might upset her. It's so hard. Mother and I were always such good chums--we always talked about everything together. Oh, Bly, you can't tell the others--promise you won't. I'm--so--ashamed."

"I won't tell," Blythe said. "I give you my word as an Islander I won't. But--Cecilia--you shouldn't be ashamed of your mother."

"I'm not--I'm not!" said Cecilia vehemently. "I could never be ashamed of Mother-- dear Mother! I'm ashamed of myself--I feel as though I'm not enough--that if I tried harder and was better, I could make her happy myself."

Blythe was an old soul in a young person's body, and despite his happy life in the Glen, he knew, somehow, that it ran deeper than that. But since he was a young boy he didn't know how to say it. Instead he just squeezed his pretty cousin's hand and dropped a kiss on her cheek. How was it that she looked so pretty even when she was crying? Her blue eyes sparkled like wet diamonds in the afternoon light.

* * *

"Look at the state of you children! You look like you've been playing in the cinder heap!" Auntie Nan echoed Aunt Rilla's statement of days early when the three cousins, Trudy, Cecilia, and Blythe, showed up exceedingly smudged and dirty on the doorstep of the manse one late summer evening.

Thecousins shared a glance. Oh, what an afternoon they'd had at Red Apple Farm! They'd packed a basket of food from the Ingleside pantry, telling Grandmother they were going for a picnic, and had such a feast at the dining room table of the little house. Cecilia had polished it until it shone--they ate off of the apple-blossom plates--and Bly had tried to light a fire in the fireplace for "atmosphere."

Blythe was very big on creating atmosphere.

But oh--they hadn't opened the flu! They hadn't known to. And ash had gone all over their faces and clothes. Cecilia didn't even mind that her pretty gingham dress from Merry was so dirty--they'd had a wonderful time, laughing loudly in the little house, until their sides ached. And it seemed the very walls had soaked up their laughter. Cecilia loved the little house more and more each time she visited it.

"You should have washed off in the stream before you came home," Aunt Nan was scolding. "You know I don't like seeing you in such a state!"

"But we did, Mother," Blythe grinned. "You should have seen the state of us before."

* * *

Yes, the had told Blythe about the house. Somehow--Cecilia couldn't keep secrets from him, no matter how hard she tried. He had been as enraptured with it as Cecilia was herself--Trudy liked the house and thought it very sweet, but Cecilia and Blair loved it fiercely.

They loved it by the early morning light, when it was sleepy and watchful, they loved it in the bright midday sun when it was joyful and sunny, and they loved it by night when it was shadowy and alluring. By a great feat of trickery the cousins had managed to spend the night there. Trudy told Aunt Rilla she was spending the night at Aunt Nan's, Blythe told Aunt Nan he was spending the night at Ingleside, and Cecilia told Grandmother she would stay over at the House of Dreams. They had slept all night on the verandah of the little house, the night winds weaving through the trees and the stars brighter than ever before and the air sweet with the scent of apple blossoms.

Cecilia said her prayers, blessing all her kin--save Joy, who just that day had been snide at dinner time. She blessed her friends--sent a kiss to Bertie in Avonlea and Leslie at home, and then, on impulse blessed everyone who had seen her little red house and loved it, and everyone that had ever lived there. She blessed so many people that she thought Trudy and Blythe had both fallen asleep around he r, until Blythe spoke.

"Can you see that cloud up there!" he marvelled. "It's blocking out the moon--it looks like a witch on a broomstick."

"Don't be--spooky." Cecilia laughed and shivered all at once.

"Don't be frightened," Blair countered. "Because that cloud over the top of the fir tree is a floating, glimmering good witch--an angel--who will watch and protect us through the night."

"Bly," Cecilia said, still staring up at the night loveliness, which gave her the courage to finally voice her worry. "Why--doesn't--Joy like me?"

Blythe turned on his side and faced her.

"She likes you," he said.

"She doesn't! Why, just today at dinner she said--she said--"

"What?"

"She said I had a face like a gargoyle," Cecilia said miserably.

Blythe laughed. "Well you can make some gargoylish faces when you're mad. Your little brow furrows like a thundercloud. Joy is--Joy is just--"

Blythe floundered miserably himself. He was torn between loyalty for his sister--and desire to sooth the concern in his sweet cousin's eyes. A gargoyle! She wasn't--she was sweet--sweeter than the smell of apple blossoms on the wind.

"Jealous," he finished. "Joy is just--jealous."

"Of me!" Cecilia marveled. "But--why?"

"Because she knows I love you so," Blythe said forthrightly. "Joy and I are like twins--we were born on the same day a year apart. We're linked together forever. Sometimes I can tell what she's thinking when she hasn't even spoken. We love each other--so--but Joy's afraid if anyone else loves me, I'll love them more than her."

Cecilia tried to remember the way it had felt when little Susan had asked Leslie to do her hair--how she'd rathered that Mother tucked her into bed. Yes, that did smart. She--understood.

"I can't forgive Joyce for being so mean to me," she thought. "She should have more confidence in me--I don't want to steal Blythe--I just want to love him, too. No, I can't forgive her--but I can understand."

Blythe slipped off into slumberland, but Cecilia lay awake still. Something was niggling at her conscience. For good measure she added an addendum to her prayers and blessed all of the teachers at her school, everyone in the Glen and Four Winds, and everyone who was sick. And everyone who had to stay up late and run the lighthouses. What a lonely job that must be!

But still, sleep would not come. She tossed and turned, and finally gave a sigh and caved in.

"God bless Joyce, too," she grumbled. "Even if she is hateful to me sometimes. And God--if she really does like me--oh please let her show it. It would be--so--nice--to have one more sweet cousin."

Now she was feeling drowsy. Bly was right--that cloud over the moon did look like a witch--or a great, pale bird. Oh, how she loved this house! How glad she was that she was here.

"I love my little house at home," was Cecilia's last thought before she fell asleep. "But I think--I'd prefer--to never leave here."

* * *

A/N: Hope you liked this chapter! Thanks for all of the reviews. Faerie5, PLEEEEEEEEEEASE update your story soon. Sitara, I hope this clears things up for you, at least a little about what's wrong with Una, and I love Shirley as much as you do, I think. I'm not sure yet how much I want to reveal to Cecilia about Una's love for Walter, because I kind of want it to be in the past and stay there. I don't know, though. I wrote another fanfic about how Una and Shirley fell in love that explains what Rilla felt about Shirley and Una's marriageit's called The Way of the World and is posted a few pages back. And Miri, all will be revealed about Joy, and Leslie is Carl Meredith and Persis Ford's daughter, who lives near Cecilia in Montreal.

Stella Maynard, the other poems I quoted in the first chapters were Ozymandius, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," by Wordsworth. They're two of my favorites and I knew they would be two of Blythe's as well.

And last but most definitely not least, thank you, Terreis, for the complements. If you haven't read her storiesyou should!