Rilla of Ingleside Part II

Rilla is not a baby loving kind of girl, and the baby is small, sickly and ugly, but she feels she cannot leave him to an orphanage or a drunken old aunt. She takes him with her to her home, but her father, Gilbert tells her that if she takes on the child, she is going to have to assume full responsibility for him, and not expect help from her mother... Susan, the family maid, is astonished at Rilla's being willing to try to care for the baby, and she offers to help advise, but the doctor says she is not to do more than advise Rilla. Rilla finds the work of taking care of a small baby exhausting, and she also has her Junior Red Cross work, but she perseveres. The baby begins to grow and look better, and she enjoys organising the charity. She matures, gradually, learning that she cannot trust one of the prettier girls in the Red Cross. Walter finally makes up his mind to join the army - he had kept out because he felt he could not kill people, or face the horrors of war. He overcomes his fear and becomes a good soldier. Kenneth Ford, the son of Anne's friend Leslie, is a regular visitor to the Island, and he joins up and pays a visit to Rilla and when he has to go away, he kisses her. She regards herself as engaged to him. At one stage she buys a fancy hat, which Anne regards as too fancy and expensive, and then says that she will wear the hat until the war is over. The book is very much anti German. Montgomery's passionate support of the war made her very hostile to the Germans and since it is a young person's book, it is rather simplistic in its attitude to the enemy. The one character who is something of a pacifist is ridiculed and RIlla helps his daughter to make a wartime marriage to a soldier.