CHAPTER III.  THE INGLESIDE CHILDREN

In daytime the Blythe children liked very well to play in the rich, soft greens and glooms of the big maple grove between Ingleside and the Glen St. Mary pond; but for evening revels there was no place like the little valley behind the maple grove.  It was a fairy realm of romance to them.  Once, looking from the attic windows of Ingleside, through the mist and aftermath of a summer thunderstorm, they had seen the beloved spot arched by a glorious rainbow, one end of which seemed to dip straight down to where a corner of the pond ran up into the lower end of the valley.

“Let us call it Rainbow Valley,” said Walter delightedly, and Rainbow Valley thenceforth it was.

Outside of Rainbow Valley the wind might be rollicking and boisterous.  Here it always went gently.  Little, winding, fairy paths ran here and there over spruce roots cushioned with moss.  Wild cherry trees, that in blossom time would be misty white, were scattered all over the valley, mingling with the dark spruces.  A little brook with amber waters ran through it from the Glen village.  The houses of the village were comfortably far away; only at the upper end of the valley was a little tumble-down, deserted cottage, referred to as “the old Bailey house.”  It had not been occupied for many years, but a grass-grown dyke surrounded it and inside was an ancient garden where the Ingleside children could find violets and daisies and June lilies still blooming in season.  For the rest, the garden was overgrown with caraway that swayed and foamed in the moonshine of summer eves like seas of silver.

To the sought lay the pond and beyond it the ripened distance lost itself in purple woods, save where, on a high hill, a solitary old gray homestead looked down on glen and harbour.  There was a certain wild woodsiness and solitude about Rainbow Valley, in spite of its nearness to the village, which endeared it to the children of Ingleside.

The valley was full of dear, friendly hollows and the largest of these was their favourite stamping ground.  Here they were assembled on this particular evening.  There was a grove of young spruces in this hollow, with a tiny, grassy glade in its heart, opening on the bank of the brook.  By the brook grew a silver birch-tree, a young, incredibly straight thing which Walter had named the “White Lady.”  In this glade, too, were the “Tree Lovers,” as Walter called a spruce and maple which grew so closely together that their boughs were inextricably intertwined.  Jem had hung an old string of sleigh-bells, given him by the Glen blacksmith, on the Tree Lovers, and every visitant breeze called out sudden fairy tinkles from it.

“How nice it is to be back!” said Nan.  “After all, none of the Avonlea places are quite as nice as Rainbow Valley.”