Alinya, were you reading over my shoulder as I was writing this? Parno, I have and I am. You are so good and generous to your characters and Maud's world. Your Threads are like the best kind of pudding, light, yet rich, crammed full of flavour, spice, and the most important ingredient: love. I'm especially taken with your use of one line to link the scenes together and mark the seasons and time. Those are like the bright copper pennies stirred into it. They absolutely shine! Was Ken a 'ladykiller'? I'm fairly sure I got that impression when I read RoI, but you've seen how fast and loose I play with characters, so there's every chance it was my take. I'm really pleased that Ken and Una's unlikely friendship is going down so well. And I love the anticipation you seem to be feeling. I am very aware that posting every day is something a lot of readers just don't have the time for, I think one of you said you are panting to keep up. I'm sorry for that, it's just I can't write another story until this one is complete, and no story is complete without sharing it with you. Love, k.

22

The next morning Ken woke early to what he considered a promising sign. He got up, bathed, shaved and donned a collar and tie. No uniform today, dash the rules, he was going to call in on his sweetheart. Today was the day to sort it all out.

He checked himself in the mirror above the washstand. "Still got it, Ford, still got it."

His head was so big that the directions to Ingleside must have got lost in the vastness, because he nearly strode through the gate of the Manse. He hid it by doing a neat little pivot in his father's scuffed up brogues. He only had his standard issues with him, and they did not really go with his summer holiday ensemble of pale yellow double-breasted blazer and cuffed, linen slacks.

Bruce was sitting on the porch step with that impatient, jumpy look about him as if he was waiting to get on with his chores so that he could get them over and done. When his sister appeared from the front door he leapt as though a bee had stung him. There was some small talk between them, and then Una ducked inside to retrieve her cardigan and the bowl that must have been sitting on the hall stand.

"Morning early birds!" Ken called to them both and tipped his hat.

"'s'ten o'clock," said Bruce shutting the black iron gate.

Una pulled her brother along with barely a sideways glance at Ken in the hope he wouldn't be walking with them. It was a pointless hope. She and her brother were heading to Ingleside on the flimsy excuse of exchanging the wrong bowl for the right one. And there was nowhere else Ken would be going at this time of day in those kinds of clothes.

They hustled through the valley, and then curiously Una slowed right down and started peering into every honeysuckle blossom and fingering every fern as if she had all the time in the world.

"Come on!"

Bruce was getting impatient, were they in a hurry or not. He could have made it there and back by now. Why had Una even come with him, it was just an old bowl.

"I thought I'd pick something for the table," said Una.

Ken saw the wisdom in this and started searching the bushes for a likely buttonhole.

"What do you say," he asked Una, of the tiny violets in his hand.

"Fine," she murmured.

"Keep them," Ken said and poked them into her hair.

She wasn't wearing her headscarf today, and one of the buttons on her cardigan was in the wrong hole. That wasn't like Una Meredith, and neither was her tarrying over her work.

Bruce decided to take the matter and the bowl into his own hands and grabbing it away from his sister he dashed off into the trees.

Jingle, jangle, jingle, jangle the Tree Lovers sang. Ken began to whistle. Una began walking even more slowly.

Was she… Did she want to talk to him privately? It wasn't like her to hold back. Not when it came to him.

"Was there something you wanted to tell me?" Ken said as they walked.

Una let a lot of air out through her nose. "Not everything is about you."

Right. So that's how it was going to be. "Good day then, Miss Meredith." Ken tipped his hat once more and picking up his pace marched quickly past.

There were more people on the veranda at Ingleside. Rilla was sitting next to Nan with her arm around her shoulder. She looked quite pale and anxious. Nan looked an utter fright, and as soon as she saw Ken she shot up and ran into the house.

"I don't want to see anyone, tell Ken to go away!"

"That's a nice greeting," Ken said. He bent down to give Rilla a kiss on the cheek. She smelled like a rose, but she was beginning to look just as frightful as her sister. "Sweetheart, what's happened? Everyone is behaving very oddly today. First Una. Now Nan. It's not… it's not Shirley, is it?"

Shirley was currently on reconnaissance in some undisclosed location assisting with new aerial maps. Probably northern France. Every landmark there was gone. Villages just as pretty as Glen St Mary had been blasted into oblivion…

"Ken?"

"Sorry, yes." He realised he was chewing on his thumbnail and crossed his arms.

"I said Shirley's fine." Rilla stood up and patted his shoulder. How different he was without his khakis. That boater was just the ticket! And that lemon jacket, only Ken Ford could get away with such a colour. "Where are you off to, you look very smart?"

"To see you." He wished he had saved those violets because this would have been the perfect moment, instead he doffed his hat and grinned. "I seem to recall we had some unfinished business to attend to before we were interrupted last night and had another quarrel."

The smooth talk did not have the effect Ken assumed it would. The tentative smile on Rilla's face dissolved into the wan mask of before.

"You are going to let me make it up to you, aren't you, Rill? We can't dally about; I'm heading back in four days."

"No. Yes. I…"

She looked back at the door which was wide open – even if Nan had been upset, she was not the door slamming type. Curiously for such a bustling house there appeared to be no one else about.

Rilla grabbed his arm and called down the hallway. "I'm just heading out for a tick, Ken's come to take me for a stroll!"

"This way," she said next and led him in the direction of the valley stream. When they got there, she announced, "I'm afraid I have some dreadful news."

It was dreadful too. The Rilla of yesterday might have exaggerated for effect, but the new girl for this new age did not mince words. In fact, Ken was having a hard time taking it in.

Jerry had gone to Ingleside earlier that morning before Dr Blythe made his Wednesday rounds. He went into the study and came out ten minutes later with a look on his face as though someone had just proved to him that there was no God. Bereft didn't even begin to cover it. Even Jem looked alarmed, and he had been stuck inside an upturned tank with Jerry for two days with no food or water or ammunition.

Nan had been pacing out in the hall. One look at her beloved and she knew. No one could get any answer out of Jerry, but Nan was determined to get one from her father. She shouted so loud the entire household overheard: What did he mean by refusing!

"Because I don't approve," Gilbert had said in his soothing frightened patients voice, "nor can I pretend to. But I won't stand in your way, if you and Jerry wish to go through with this then that's up to you."

Ironically it was Gilbert's love of Jerry that brought him to this conclusion, though Nan was in no frame of mind to concede that point. Jerry was a brilliant scholar and had won as many accolades and prizes as Gilbert had. That being so, Gilbert was in the perfect position to apprise the situation and he could see that giving up the prestige of Redmond for a provincial college with a limited curriculum and second-rate staff would be an act he would regret forever. Never mind that as a student he would have no income to support a wife.

"But I would live with you, or the Merediths, just until Jerry graduated," Nan had said. "The term only runs from September to April."

"Exactly," said Gilbert. "You are asking Jerry to give it all up for eight short months. I know you've missed one another terribly, and I do understand. It was three years before I could marry your mother. You don't think every day I wanted her by my side, but we did it because –"

"Don't, Father. Don't you say it. Don't for one moment try to compare my situation to yours. You were only at medical school; Jerry was at war."

"Nan, the war is over, and I am not going to let the damage it caused change what I am. I would never have approved of this before the war, you know that I wouldn't – and you wouldn't have wanted it either. I can't imagine you being satisfied with a wedding without all your family there."

"Shirley wouldn't give two figs, and Faith would understand. She'll have even longer to wait, and Jerry and I can be together right now. You've forgotten what that's like, that's all. You think the war hasn't changed you, Father? Oh, but it has. It's made you old!"

"Nan really said that?" said Ken.

Rilla nodded. "Poor Father, he was heartsore. And Mother was all confused and didn't know who to console and ended up making both feel worse. And then of course, there's the Merediths. You know how close we all are. If they take this badly, if they take Jerry's side then… oh Ken, it's all too awful."

Ken's appearance was very close to Rilla's now, he felt a bit faint and lay back on the bank. The sound of the murmuring waters was both comforting and harrowing. If there was any place he thought of as his Walter's, it was here.

"Where does that leave us, then?"

His voice sounded very far away, Rilla's was as pointed and direct and a pin.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It must have occurred to you. If your father said no to Jerry, then it stands to reason that he might say no to me."

"It never occurred to me at all. Haven't you completed your degree?"

"Sure. But I don't have much money behind me. I don't even know where we would live. Say your father does approve, say it all goes swimmingly, say we even get married. What then?"

"I-I don't know. I hadn't thought that far. Three days ago, I was sure you'd forgotten all about me. And then you turn up out of the blue –"

"And if I hadn't, what would you have done then?"

Ken rolled onto his side, it was a difficult manoeuvre, as though his brain had to be reminded what to do. Hip lift, buttock turn, once that was managed gravity usually did the rest. He only bothered because he wanted to see Rilla's face when she answered; wondered if she would mention Redmond.

"Oh, I don't know," she made a long girlish sigh, "pined away for the rest of my life."

"Like Una, you mean."

Rilla shook her head and sighed again. Ken guessed she must be thinking of Walter too. Grief was like a sniper; you never knew when it was going to hit.

But no, it seemed Rilla had dodged that bullet because the sigh turned into a pithy laugh.

"Una is far more romantic than me. She doesn't belong in some prosaic old Island town; she belongs in a Bronte novel. Do you know who she reminds me of?"

Ken didn't even need to think about it, when a week before he would have struggled to remember her face.

"Jane Eyre."

"Not her, the other one. She just can't let Walter go. I think she's forgotten how. Do you know what I was thinking, just yesterday it occurred to me. Teddy and Una! What do you say?"

Ken undid all his work and rolled onto his back again. The day-moon looked like one of the Blythe's best dishes, only cracked in half. He could hear the tree bells chime in the distance; saw foxes and frying pans in the clouds.

"I say you're crazy, Rill. Una and Teddy are nothing alike."

"Which means they should be perfect together," she tickled his nose with a stem of long grass, "because in case you haven't noticed, Ken, we aren't either."

...

Chapter 23 to follow (thanks to the reader who spotted the wrong number, you're a champ!)