Apologies for working the church calendar so much into this story. I really didn't mean to. It plays a part in my life and I feel Una would probably pay attention to it, even if none of the others do. I am trying to, to keep them suitably Presbyterian, because that is how LMM wrote them, but I am such a hopeless Presbyterian (and I really was confirmed one) and a better Anglo-Catholic that I may have failed in this. If so, more apologies and at least you know why I've gone wrong.


Carl had his answer as ordinary time turned over into Candlemas. It was not a day the Manse observed, except Rosemary, ever quietly Episcopalian, and she only said, 'Oh good, a grey day. That means the end of winter and won't it be a blessing to put the laundry to air outside again?' But Episcopalian or not, the name had always held a charm for Una from a girl, implying as it did magic and far-away fancies.


It was in keeping then, with the spirit of the day, when Carl came to find her, beaming as he had not since –but Una does not remember when.

'Thanks for talking sense into me,' he said. He made no mention of doomed sailors that evening. If they're ought in this weather, Una thought, they were doomed anyway.

'I'm glad you listened. When do I have to see you off?'

'With the Coltsfoot, but Rosemary says it doesn't matter because it will all be in the care of the Four Winds house and you won't have to do anything.'

'Don't be a goose. We'll have you're trunk to pack. You aren't leaving an awful lot of time. Why on earth didn't you say before that you'd spoken to Persis as long ago as December? If you think we won't have things to do getting you ready...'

'The Coltsfoot might be late,' he ventured.

'It might. But the daffodils are more likely to be. Besides, I don't believe your professor really sets his calendar by the Coltsfoot in the Glen.'

'Just because you don't find those things interesting…'

'I knew enough to know you meant March. Give me a little credit.' They laughed. Then Carl stopped and said anxiously,

'You wouldn't keep a secret from me, would you?'

This confused Una, who could not see how it had anything to do with anything, or where it had come from. Never mind that there were myriad things she had never told Carl. But then, it wasn't like him to ask.

'What are you thinking of?'

'I'm not really…but Rilla did seem to think there was a chance you might be…it was only an idea,' he says, rapidly reforming his sentence, startled by the colour she has turned.

'Do you really think I wouldn't tell you a thing like that?' she asks now. She will not look at him.

'No-o, I don't know. But you never do say half of what you're thinking…'

'Carl, the last time I said what I thought, it was to Irene Howard over the flower rota and a lot of good that did everyone.'

'I expect it did Irene the world of good. People don't tell her what they think nearly often enough, and you probably felt better for it.'

'Not much, and it didn't help Rilla's Red Cross efforts either.'

It occurred to Una now that she ought to have let him finish, because really there are several ways his thoughts may have been running.

'It's neither here nor there about Irene Howard,' said Carl. 'But if you were thinking of…well it would be nice to know beforehand if we have to let you go, that's all.'

'Rilla doesn't really think that, does she?'

'There isn't anything in it?'

'Don't sound so startled. I really would have said if it was something like that. I'd have had to.'

She hoped that would be the end of it. She had been cherishing having Carl back and confiding in her, but somehow this was not a conversation she wanted to have with him. Nor did she want to have to admit that she and Rosemary had talked increasingly often this way, about the sentiments and ideas he was trying to bring up.

'You make it sound almost likely,' he said cautiously. 'Is it?'

'I don't know,' and she began to comb her hair with a vengeance. But Carl continued to sit on the edge of the bed, impossibly patient.

'It may come to nothing Carl, and there's no point trying to work out if it will. Goodness knows I've tried. And every time I do, I feel sure that I'll worry it into not happening, and not the other way around. Now, tell me about your letter.'

So he told her about the plans he has begun to sketch about going away, the things in the letter that came in the post, what she will need to put by for him. Then she forcibly turned him out because she had yet to say prayers and the moon was high, and as he went he turned back and said,

'I'm sure it will come to something you know.'

He did not hear, because she never fully formed the 'I hope so,' that wove its way into her prayers.


'I think you're making an awful lot of fuss, Una,' said Bruce, because he could not say that he was slightly jealous of all the attention she had been giving to Carl's going away. Not so long ago Faith had taken up lots of her time and Bruce hadn't minded, because, well because that was Faith and it was completely different,and anyway, he had got a model aeroplane out of it.

'Not at all, Februaruy's the shortest month in the year,' said Una without looking up from her ironing.

'Tell you what,' she said, relenting, 'go through to the kitchen and bring the cloves through and put them into the muslin pockets on the table.'

'Why?'

'It's how you keep things out of clothes,' she says patiently.

'It will take more than that to keep animals out of Carl's clothes, said Bruce darkly, but went off to the kitchen pleased to have something to do. Una turned a shirt so she was now doing the sleeves and thought Bruce was probably right. But it wouldn't be for want of trying.


The daffodils were not late and the Coltsfoot was decidedly early, coming up at the end of February. This affected arrangements not a whit, to the relief of all involved. It was mid-March just as Una and Rosemary finished with starching, folding and packing and there was time for one last conversation before Carl went to foreign lands. Una thought he could have got there just as well from the top of a cherry tree but didn't say so. She was sitting at the window, looking out over the Glen, when he came in.

'I never had you down as a night-person,' he said, coming and sitting opposite her, on the side of the bed nearer the window.

'Hmm? I'm not,' this somewhat distractedly.

'Where have you gone to,' he said, which had always been Carl's way of saying what are you thinking? She did not answer right away and when he asked again, she said,

'Only thinking. Imagining where it is you will be going to, what it will be like, what weather you will have.'

'Were you?' He said pleasantly, 'you were quite aways away, you must have been thinking very hard. Was that really all it was?' The thought that rose into her throat was, not this again but she only said,

'Carl, you are going away tomorrow. We've talked together and looked after each other, why shouldn't I be full of your going?'

'You weren't like this about Faith,' he said laughing, 'ought she to be jealous?'

'Nonsense doesn't suit you, you're too clever. Faith's only gone to the Upper Glen, and I see her often enough. You're going to God-Knows-Where to study insects, God-Knows-Why, to see us again Heaven-Knows-When.'

Carl beamed at her. 'That sounds about right.'

'And I'm not supposed to miss you?'

'Well, maybe a little. But you'll write all sorts of letters and mother Bruce within an inch of his life, and leave no mending for Rosemary, and all will soon be right with the world.'

Well as close to right as the world is likely to get for a while yet, she thought, and must have looked it because then Carl was saying,

'you've gone away again,' and she cursed herself for laughing fractionally too late, for looking so decidedly out the window.

'I'm back now.'

'Good. Will you tell me something?'

She looked at him warily.

''You said the last time you said all of what you thought, it was to Irene Howard. What did you say to her?' She could not help laughing.

'Gracious, Carl, you're making me think. It was during Lent, and you know how you can't have flowers on the altar in Lent; well Irene came in with daffodils, because it was one of those years when Easter fell just as late as it could manage, and said, 'won't these cheer things up? I notice we haven't had flowers in ever so long.' I tried, I really did, Carl, to coax her out of her preoccupation with those daffodils. I told her we could have them at Refreshment Sunday, which was next but one. We had all sorts of green, and I was trying to arrange that, and she wasn't helping a bit. But she kept on about how dull and dreary the church looked without 'a bit of colour' as if the purple stole didn't count - probably it didn't with Irene –and I ran out of patience and said it was hardly my fault no one had tried to explain the liturgical year to her, and if she wanted to do without it, the United Church was flexible about observing it and wanted members. Anyway, she left in a huff and never would give me the opening to make it up. She refused after that to be on the flower or coffee rota with me, which was fair enough and I can't say I minded, although I ought to have done because it's unchristian not to let a thing go.'

Carl laughed heartily, because the conversation as she relayed it is both like and unlike his sister. Of course if she were going to be sharp with anyone over anything it would have to do with church. Una laughed too, over the memory –what a nonsense it all was.

'Rilla said it was no great loss because Irene hasn't the knack of arranging flowers, even if she has got a voice from out of Heaven, which is perfectly true - her arrangements are all angles and no focus -but I shouldn't be telling you that either because it's both unkind and gossiping.'

'Irene's earned it,' said Carl, an he laughed again.


It was a comfort to her that their last conversation was a light-hearted one, that the picture he left her with was of him laughing as she kissed him Goodnight-God-Bless and sent him out of the room. She sat at the window only a little longer, saying to whatever God was there, 'God go with him, and please let him be sensible and come home happy and healthy as he went. Persis too.' She pulled the quilt back and remembering Bruce's foreboding about the ineffectiveness of cloves to ward off bugs, found herself thinking, and please God let Rilla have warned Persis what to expect, Heaven knows I haven't, before falling asleep.