There's a bit in this chapter where regional accents come up. Would you believe when I was researching, I found a website that had collected and recorded the old accents and dialects of Canada. Aren't people cool! I just had to listen to the PEI accent, because I was curious. What struck me most was how fast they all talk. When I think of a Canadian accent I think of those lovely, slow, sing-songy tones you find in places like Alberta (similar to the Dakota accent in Fargo). And while I know Toronto is famously known as Tronno, I put this down to fast talking city people. But in PEI Charlottetown is pronounced Sharledon -which blew my mind for some reason.

I'm heartened that you like the relationships I've drawn. There seems to me to be a dearth of healthy, open, trusting relationships between children and parents, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters being depicted these days. While it makes for good conflict, I suppose, it didn't ring true in this world. The conflict is mainly kept between the lovers here, because this is a romance after all!

Love, k.

12

Rilla was in her bedroom picking out an entirely new outfit now that she had decided to go with different shoes. Her silver slippers would be too obvious. She was only going to deliver some linen and food supplies to Ken. At least that was the ostensible reason, and the one she wanted everyone to believe.

She was making more of a meal of this deception than she needed to because every occupant at Ingleside had more than an ounce of imagination. Most folk attributed this to the Doctor's wife, who, even after all these years of being an exemplary wife, mother, and neighbour was still considered rather queer. She had a way of saying the thing most people wouldn't dare to, but she said it in such a way that no one realised how daring she had been until they thought about it later.

The Doctor, however, was due some credit for his imaginative family, though he would have called it perceptiveness. The story was he fell for Anne when she struck his head with a dictionary, and in that moment he knew. It hit him like the thunderbolt those lady novelists wrote about. Then again, Dr Blythe was a man of science so perhaps he yelled Eureka. Though Anne knew he thanked God for her coming, and so did she.

While Rilla was upstairs changing her plain shawl for her lacy one and then back again, the Doctor was examining Teddy's eye. Anne was in the wash house hunting out extra soap and clicked her tongue when she saw some blood-stained laundry soaking in the tub.

"Now if you could just read this one," said Doctor Blythe, in his surgery-cum-study. He held out an eye chart exactly six feet away from Teddy and listened to him read some lines of verse.

"You're from N.B. originally, I'd say."

"How did you work that out?"

"Your Ts gave it away."

Teddy laughed. "And there I was thinking I had said it clearly." He thought he sounded fairly posh himself.

"That's why I test eyes with a verse rather than a set of letters. I don't know what it is about eye tests, even when patients know they need glasses they are determined not to fail them. Everyone knows the shape of a letter and can make a vague guess, but give them a line of poetry, good poetry that is, and they tend to lose themselves in the words."

"Forget themselves, you mean?"

"Did you want to forget New Brunswick, Teddy?"

"I don't have a feeling for the place one way or the other, I've always moved around. Well thanks, Doctor Blythe," he stood up. "How much do I owe you?"

"Whatever you might owe, my lad, you've paid back a thousand-fold." Gilbert put down the eye chart and shook Teddy's cleaned up hand. "I appreciate you taking the time to come all the way out here. It means a lot to us."

Teddy saw the head of the Blythe house was now prepared to hear the unvarnished truth of what they all must know he held in his possession. He was never quite sure if he could relinquish this treasure, but the Doctor's hand seemed very steady. His hazel eyes were so like his daughter's. His wife's eyes were a silvery grey rather than the steel of the Fords.

"He didn't look like you," Teddy blurted quickly, "or your wife, or Jem or your daughters. When I first saw him, I can't explain. He was covered in mud - like we all were - but somehow it didn't touch him."

Gilbert swallowed and nodded for Teddy to go on.

"I was the only one who made it across, the only one left. The first time I saw your son, I thought I must be dead too, that's how unreal he seemed. He took my message, because that's what I was doing out there, delivering fresh orders from my command to his. So, once I was in my senses, I ordered Walter to take the message back himself because I was too weak to move. He did it without a quibble, and then he came back for me."

"Walter went into No Man's Land twice?"

Teddy gave Gilbert a weak smile. "He said he liked my singing. That was the thing about Walter, the thing I could never get out of my head. The fellow went headlong into everything like he was taking some joy out of what he was doing. I don't mean to say he enjoyed it… Sorry, I'm not very good with words even if I used to be a teacher."

His eyes darted about the room seeking a way to change the direction of their conversation without it looking like a retreat.

"Huh," he said, and strode over to the fireplace to the left of the cherrywood desk. "That's Walter, isn't it?"

Teddy picked up the photograph on the marble mantle. It was taken in the summer of 1912 on a fishing expedition. There was Jem, even in black and white you could tell he had red hair, and a smaller lad, probably the pilot who couldn't get home until the end of the year. That was the Doctor of course, and Owen Ford too, and there was Walter in a big straw hat grinning like a loon.

"Walter took that photograph," said Gilbert. "I think you've mistaken him for Ken. They were very alike growing up, physically at least."

"My word, yes. They're closer to twins than your Di and Nan." The photograph was returned to its place on the mantel next to the posy Gilbert's daughters unfailingly placed there every morning. "Well, if that's all, sir."

"Yes, that's all," said Gilbert wryly. "You're dismissed."

...