Occasionally he smiled but he had never laughed, in spite of all efforts to make him.

This worried Rilla also, because Morgan said that babies usually laughed aloud from the third to the fifth month.

Jims was five months and had no notion of laughing.

Why hadn't he?
Wasn't he normal?
One night Rilla came home late from a recruiting meeting at the Glen where she had been giving patriotic recitations.

Rilla had never been willing to recite in public before.