Chapter II
In early May, Faith had a little girl whom she and Jem called Julia Una Blythe. "Julia" as it means 'youthful', and "Una" for Faith's dear baby-sister of course. Julia turned out to be the sweetest baby of the new generation. "And the very first girl!" Jem said proudly while holding a small bundle of joy in his arms. Julia's hair was just as red as her father's hair was, she had eight perfect frecles on her nose and she inherited Jem's hazel-eyes. Her Grandmother Anne, looked down on her first granddaughter and said: "I am dreadfully sorry dearest Julia, for your hair and frecles. But I do think that you are very sweet indeed." she kissed Julia's chubby hand "And I promise you, I will never think that "Julienne" is a nicer name than "Julia", like I once did."
Faith had to stay in bed for the next month and so Di volunteered to come everyday for a few hours and help her out with the children, cleaning and cooking. Di loved coming to the House on the Hill, it always seemed so big, and the atmosphere inside was so homey and just nice. Di humed while cleaning the kitchen, polishing the floor, wiping the windows and she sang and shouted like a little girl herself when she was playing with the naughty Merry and funny Walt. She thought that it must be so nice to have a home of her own, to have a family of her own. She smiled whenever this splendid thought crossed her mind, or whenever she was kissing Merry on the cheek, Walt on the forehead or Julia's wee hand.
"Isn't she just the sweetest baby you have ever seen, Di?" Faith said tenderly when she cradled her little girl to her breast. At the end of each day, Di was going upstairs with the boys and talked with Faith, as they waited for Jem to come back from work. And so Did was doing exactly that on one afternoon, two weeks after Julia's birth.
Di smiled at her sister-in-law "I think that all the newborn children are the sweetest." she replied and tickled Walt who was looking with interest at his small sister.
Faith smiled at Di and looked down at the bundle in her arms with shining eyes "You are just right about that, Di." she said and she jumped suddenly "Well, there's Jem coming home now. Di, I won't thank you enough for coming everyday and helping me." she touched Di's hand gently.
"Faith, really, there's nothing to be thankful for." she replied joyfully and kissed her on the cheek "I absolutely love all of your kiddies and besides, I know that I would get bored at home otherwise." she winked at her and Faith chuckled.
But Di wasn't bored when Faith didn't need her help anymore. She was reading books, sometimes taking up her own pen and trying to write something of her own, she was visiting each of her siblings regularly, and playing with her nephews and little Julia whenever she could visit them.
May quickly turned into June, and in the second week, a tall young man started walking towards Ingleside, straight from the Manse where he left all of his luggage. It was a handsome young man, with brown hair and golden glints shining through it, pointy chin, and dark-blue eyes. His right eye was blind but it didn't bother him much, as long as he could still watch all the bugs and beatles between the grass, he was fine.
Di was alone at Ingleside as her Father was on the call and Mother with Susan were visiting Miss Cornelia, or rather as Susan Baker would call her: "Mrs Marshall Elliott". Therefore Di didn't expect anyone to knock on the door in at least another two or three hours. But someone did knock and she jumped from her seat asif someone pinched her. Who could it be? she thought while she was putting down "Jane Eyre" on the table beside her. She didn't want to stop reading, she felt almost annoyed that someone was at the front door and she had to let this person in.
But she wasn't annoyed at all when she saw who was waiting outside Ingleside "Carl Meredith!" she gasped and threw her arms around his neck "We didn't expect you until Saturday!" she said and kissed his cheek lightly.
Carl smiled at her warmly and gave a beautiful bouquet of roses straight into her hands "I made up my mind on making you all a surprise." he replied happily.
Di took the bouquet in her hands and hid her entire face into it "They're beautiful, Carl." she said and then looked at him seriously "Are you sure there aren't any bugs in them?" she asked him with a raised brow.
Carl chuckled and patted her hand "I checked. Twice." he said and it was Di's turn to let out a small laugh.
"Come on in, Carl." Di said and opened the door wider "It's just me at Ingleside at the moment, but I'm sure that Susan wouldn't mind if we would eat some of her apple-pie…" she started but Carl interjected her.
"Actually," he said "-I thought that we could go for a walk. It's such a nice weather outside, it's a sin to waste it." he grinned at her.
Di put the flowers aside and stepped closer to Carl "Let's go then." she said decidedly. The weather was utterly beautiful. The sun was shining high on the sky and on all the trees down in Rainbow Valley made everything around to glow in daylight, just like glasses full of water.
Di and Carl talked and talked, talked and talked, and they completely forgot about the world around them. That's how it is when two friends don't see each other for a long time, and when they finally meet, there's nothing more interesting nor more important than the fact that they have each other. Di forgot that she was wearing her very simple and old grey day-dress and a casual straw hat on her red locks, normally she would be really embarrassed to walk around people, or just men, in this kind of fashion. However she knew that Carl was her special friend, and she could never feel embarrassed next to him. But even though she wore a grey and dull dress and a simple straw hat on her head, she could outshine all of the daylight and the sun itself could be jealous of her rosy cheeks and perfect complexion.
Carl looked at her with astonishement, he was sure that he had never seen a girl, a woman, as beautiful as Di was at that very moment. He always considered her as a beauty but only on that day he stopped 'considering' but he knew that she was a beauty. Carl himself looked very handsome with his blonde curls shining through his brown hair whenever the sun shone down on him. He was quite tall and Di always had to put up her head up high to face him when she or he talked.
"When I heard that you got a placement in our Glen school, I could jump up and down, I was so happy." Carl said to Di gaily as the two of them strolled down the Rainbow Valley "We will both teach at the same school! Isn't this exciting?"
Di chuckled at his sudden wave of excitement "Certainly so, dear Carl!" Di replied in the excatly the same excited tone, making Carl to laugh "I'm sure that we will be able to get through the tempers of the students, but we will be able to do that even more so now that we will have each other." she said.
"That's excatly what I'm talking about." Carl agreed with a smile and opened his mouth to say something more but there was Susan Baker who waved at them nervously with a towel in her hand. She was looking out of the window and her face was perfectly red from all the cooking she started doing in the kitchen.
"Carl and Diana! Come quickly or you will miss dinner, you two!" she shouted out.
Di and Carl laughed together and ran towards the Ingleside "For how long have we been talking then?" Di asked him.
"I don't know, Di, but that was enough to make Susan angry at us." he replied and the two of them chuckled while entering the house. "Dear Susan, I'm afraid I will have to go back home for dinner, Mother Rosemary will be disappointed if she would hear that I ate my first dinner after coming back from Redmond, at Ingleside and not at the Manse." Carl said kindly to the energetic Susan.
Susan turned to him and sighed helplessly "I thought you would say that." she said and then patted his cheek "But it's good to have you back." she told him warmly and Carl smiled at her.
Di walked to the door with Carl and he squeezed her hand before putting on his hat "It really is good to be home, Di!" he said to her.
"It really is." she agreed with him and with another grin, he exited the hall, whistling while walking down the lane in the direction of the Manse.
Di chuckled and closed the door. Before she returned to the kitchen, the mirror hanging on the wall just beside her caught Di's attention. She turned to face it and she gasped in horror "Good grief, how awful I looked like while welcoming my friend back from Redmond!" she put her hands on her cheeks dramatically and quickly took off her straw hat angrily, her cheeks flushing with scarlet "Di, you inappropriate future-teacher!" she scowled at herself and walked quickly back into the kitchen.
"The most delightful thing happened today." Di wrote in her diary at the beginning of July "Mother, Father, Susan and I were all invited, along with our entire family, to the House of Dreams for a family dinner.
"I simply love our family meetings, everyone talks and the children run around and laugh and randomly pat you on the shoulder and say a funny little thing which for them is nothing but serious. Just today, Gilly came up to me and and sat straight on my lap with a funny, cheeky expression crossing his dear face. "What are you doing, Gilly?" I whispered into his ear and he turned back to face me, then he put his little hands around his mouth and whispered back: "I'm running away from Thuthan." I tried my best not to laugh and then I asked him why he's running away from Susan for. "She wanth to give me more pie and I can't eat any more." he whispered back again and then Susan spotted him and shouted out his name, making Gil to jump back on the floor and start screaming and running away to the living room.
"But there, I was supposed to say what delightful thing happened today. At the dinner, Rilla announced that she is expecting a baby. We are all extremely happy for her, this baby-sister of mine! I still can't quite beleive that she is my younger sister, and that she's married and with a third baby on the way! And then there's me, Diana Blythe, twenty seven and still aging, with no plans on getting married probably till the rest of her life. But there, I am whining again. I am happy as I am, sometimes I even thank God that I don't have any husband to take care of! How many things one has to think about when one's married… No, that is not me entirely.
"When Rilla announced that she is to be a mother again, Una suddenly started laughing and when Rilla asked her why she's laughing, Una simply said that she was about to announce that she is expecting a baby too! I'm sure now that Rilla and Una will be always by each other's sides for the rest of their pregnancies, I'm quite positive about that. And I'm thrilled that I will become an auntie once again. Now, I have to get all the strength to find time to start knitting some of those baby clothes for my baby-sister and my sister-in-law.
"It is really quite hard for me to believe that September is almost here and that I will start teaching in seven weeks. I am getting nervous now, although I do tell everyone that I'm not nervous at all. But I think that Mother knows that I am, she gives me those looks that say everything they have to say to make me realise that she knows me better than I know myself.
"I'm afraid that the students in my class will be naughty, or not really interested in learning anything at all. I think that I'm scared because I don't know what the "teaching adventure" like Father called it, will turn out to be like for me.
"But really, it is ever so good that Carl is here, and that I can talk with him about my fears whenever I like. I can hardly believe what amount of patience he posses towards me. I think that Carl is much more relaxed and optimistic than I am. He says that he is not nervous at all, and that he is getting more and more excited for the first day of school. "It's weird though, isn't it Di," he said to me yesterday when we took a walk in Rainbow Valley "-that I am more excited about going to school now when I'm twenty five, than when I was a fifteen year old!".
"I have to go now, I can hear Susan opening the door and this means that Mary Vance, I apologise, Mrs Douglas came for a tea with her little sweet Marshall, to show me her newest baby clothes which she had been knitting this entire week for her upcoming new arrival.
"I shall go now, and I will try not to break another cup (not in front of Mary at least!).
"Yours,
"Di Blythe"