They broke the news to Ingleside, and everyone was very glum about it. Mrs. Blythe cried outright, and the doctor hid his eyes, and Susan sniffed, "Toronto!" in much the same way that people speak about Hades.

"Fancy that blessed boy growing up in Toronto!" she worried. "He would get lost –

he would be kidnapped – he would wander out into the street – he could be trampled under an automobile …"

"Susan, stop!" Rilla cried, clutching Gilly to her chest, her heart pounding with the idea of these things. Oh, how foolish she had been to agree to go! And Susan was right – these things could happen!

But when she told Kenneth later, he only smiled and chucked her under the chin.

"What a worried little mother hen you are!" he laughed, and Rilla's blood boiled. "Life in the city is no less dangerous than life anywhere else. Gilly won't be going anywhere on his own – he's barely walking – and when he is walking we will teach him to look before he crosses the street, et cetera, ad nauseum. Don't fret, darling."

Rilla resigned herself to it. They would go – they were going.

She wept bitterly as she packed up all their things. With everything in boxes, you would never know that they had ever lived here. "And we never will live here again," Rilla whispered, and then flew out into the garden and sobbed.

Una found her there – a white-faced Una – looking as depressed in spirits as Rilla felt. "I cannot believe you are going," she whispered. "When Father wrote me the news I had Shirley bring me home right away. Oh, Rilla – you are my best friend – you are my only friend. What will I do without you?"

"You will have Faith – and Nan – and Rosemary – and Shirley," Rilla wept. "And I will be alone and friendless in a city, with nobody of my own except Ken and Gilly. No girlfriend to talk to – no one to laugh with – no friends at all!"

"You will make friends," Una urged her and threw her arms around Rilla's shoulders. "And I'm going to visit you so often that you'll wish we'd never met!"

Rilla smiled in spite of herself. "There will always be the sparest of spare beds for you in our new house."

For she had seen her new house, in a picture Kenneth had brought. Rilla had rather expected that it would be a grand, stone affair on one of the more fashionable avenues – this was a little charmless bungalow far away from the city center. Yard like a postage stamp – horrid 'plantation' shutters on all the windows, blocking the light – the parlour paper a hideous mishmash of olive-green and pink zinnias. The worst part was that they would be renting, and so she must live with that horrid paper for as long as they stayed there. The landlord was apparently quite fond of it. Rilla had been disappointed when Ken showed her the pictures, and Ken had noticed, and was shamefaced about it.

"Of course we can't start out in a mansion," he told her – it was almost as though he were chiding her. "We'll have to live someplace humble for a while."

"I don't want a mansion, and I don't mind humble," Rilla told him. "But this – this is ugly, Kenneth!"

It was as though she had insulted him, instead of the house. His face became very closed off and he would not speak of it again.

The day of leaving grew near – nearer – and then it was there. Everything in the House of Dreams was boxed up, ready to be shipped, including Gilly's teething ring, which had somehow been packed away, and which meant he was red-faced and squalling as they loaded him into the car. Rilla could not blame him. He looked like she felt. If only she had not been so silly to tell the others not to come and bid them good-bye. "It isn't goodbye," she had told Mother and Father and Nan and Susan and the Merediths – but it was, really, and now she wanted them. She walked through the quiet rooms one last time and noticed how sad it looked, with all the furniture blanketed and all the shades drawn. The clock on the mantel had stopped and in all the hurry and haste of packing nobody had thought to start it again. Rilla reached out to set it going and then drew her hand back. What did it matter, if they were not hear to see it?

Her eyes clouded with tears, and she thought of all that had happened to her in this beautiful, hallowed place: her first night as a bride, as a mother, nights spent by the fire with Betty, in the garden with Una, laughing with Gertrude, each of them with a soft, fragrant bundle on their lap. She thought further back – saw the ghost of Captain Jim rocking by the hearth, saw Leslie Moore of the days of old and the red, red roses for love held in Owen Ford's hands. Saw wee white Joy – her sister – who had passed her first and only day within these walls. Saw her mother and father – young – her age, holding hands, the brown eyes looking deep into the gray-green ones.

She saw herself and Kenneth here, as they had been and she saw themselves as she had wanted them to be – old and in love and here.

"Goodbye," whispered Rilla to her ghosts.

In the driveway Ken beeped the horn, startling her out of her thoughts. "Rilla!" he cried. "Come on! Time and tide, and all that!"

How he could laugh at a time like this she did not know.

+She went out, closing and locking the door behind her. Kenneth was waiting for her with a smile. The lighthouse star was gleaming northward in the pearly morning light. The little garden, where only marigolds still bloomed, was already hooding itself in the violet shadows of dawn.

She knew it was foolish, but Rilla could not stop herself from kneeling down and kissing the worn old step which she had crossed as a bride.

"Good-bye, dear little house of dreams," she said.

xxxxxxxxxx

A/N: This isn't the end! And the last few lines, from the '+' to the end of the chapter, are borrowed or paraphrased from LMM's Anne's House of Dreams.