Rilla Blythe, once the frivolous youngest daughter of Anne and Gilbert, stood on the veranda, clutching a crumpled letter. The air, usually sweet with the scent of her mother’s garden, felt heavy, as if the very sky over Glen St. Mary were mourning. Her brothers were gone—Walter with his poet’s heart and Jem with his steady courage—leaving a silence in the hallways that no amount of laughter could fill.
She remembered her mother’s stories of the "Green Gables" days, of a girl who imagined a world of white ways of delight. But Rilla’s world was now painted in the drab khaki of uniforms and the stark white of bandages. She had found her own "calling" in the most unexpected way: a soup tureen. Inside it lay a war-baby, a tiny, helpless bundle left behind by a soldier’s broken family.
"Rilla, dear," Susan said, not looking up. "You’ve grown. Not just in height, but in the way you carry the world."