about?" she demanded.

It was some time before the young men could be persuaded to tell her, insisting upon taking her att.i.tude as a joke. But finally the truth came out. Every one in Orchard Glen had received an insulting valentine from El Monte last Winter, and everybody, of course, blamed her and was as mad as mad could be.

By the time they reached home and had sat down to the supper that Marmaduke had prepared in the morning, The Woman was angry enough to go out and challenge every one in Orchard Glen to dare to say she had done the fell deed. She began to question as to who had received the missives. Mrs. Sutherland? Yes, hers was a fright, the Doctor had said, and the Doctor's was worse. Not Mrs. Wylie, surely? Why, Mrs.

Wylie couldn't sleep the night after she got hers, and it didn't seem fair, her not really belonging to Orchard Glen. The Ministers? Oh, yes; theirs were awful sights, neither of them preached the same for a month after.

Surely Mary Lindsay didn't get one? No, but all the family did, and the Grant Girls, too. The Grant Girls got terrors, folks said, and there was some talk about Gavin saying he'd have the law about it.

Gavin was awful sensitive about the Aunties and he was firing mad.

Poor Mrs. Johnnie Dunn, her home-coming was completely spoiled! She got up early the next morning, and not even waiting to look over the premises to see what damage Marthy and Trooper had done in her absence, she hitched up her mare and drove over through all the mud and water to Craig-Ellachie, and took in the Lindsays on her way back. There was nothing lacking in the Grant Girls' welcome, and she was a little comforted but also much disturbed. The Aunties showed her their valentines, and Gavin's, but they laughed heartily over them, and Mrs.

Lindsay allowed the girls to display theirs, a.s.suring her that she had never believed her the sender. But it was beyond doubt that they had all come from El Monte, and that the addresses had all been printed by the same hand.

The Woman spread them out on the table before her and meditated.

"There's that young villain of a boy my sister has. He's another Trooper all over again, and worse, 'cause he ain't got me to trim him down. He'd be capable of doing it. But he couldn't. He doesn't know even the names of folks here, unless Trooper--Trooper--" She stopped and sat bolt upright.

"I'll bet," she said deliberately, while Christina fled from the room that she might laugh aloud, "I'll bet every cent I make out o' milk this Summer that Trooper and that other emissary of Satan is at the bottom of this and you'll see I'll find out."

But the damage had been done. Poor Mrs. Johnnie Dunn had a very harmless but very great desire to shine before her neighbours. She had expected to return to Orchard Glen with a blare of trumpets and astonish every one with her tales of California with geraniums in the garden at Christmas, and bathing in the ocean in January, and oranges everywhere for the picking, and a host of kindred wonders in which her untravelled neighbour friends were to be instructed. And instead she found the very name of California and El Monte were a byword and a hissing in the mouths of the inhabitants of Orchard Glen, and had to spend the first month after her return in voluble explanations and denials.

CHAPTER VII

OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE

It seemed to Christina as if there had never been a summer that opened so joyously. In the first place she was preparing to go West with Allister when he came home in July, and she would not be very far from the Mission Field where Neil had gone, and that was good fortune enough in itself. Added to that, Sandy came home in May, and life was all holiday when Sandy was near, but best of all, at the closing of college, who should come riding over the hills but her Dream Knight.

He was to stay the whole summer, Tilly explained on Sunday when he appeared with his mother and uncle at church, and Mrs. Sutherland was scared to let him go beyond the garden gate alone.

Though his coming to Orchard Glen brought such joy to Christina, young Mr. Sutherland had really come home under a cloud, though his mother took great care to turn it inside out for the public benefit and allow the silver lining of Wallace's many virtues to shine through. He was so handsome and so genuinely glad to see everybody in Orchard Glen, and so free and hearty in his manner, that it was very easy for people to believe the best of him. And indeed the worst was only that he had been a little less studious in college than he should have been.

He had barely pa.s.sed his examinations in his first year, and now in his second, when he should have retrieved himself, he had gone under altogether. And the worst of it all was that Uncle William, who was paying his college bills, and who was rich and childless and would never miss the money, was making a dreadful fuss. Wallace wrote him apologising deeply, and explaining just how it all happened, the inconvenient examinations having come on just when he was labouring under a heavy cold.

Mrs. Sutherland wrote her brother explaining still further, Wallace had been ill, he was not at all well now. He had been really quite indisposed all Spring, and it was cruel to blame the dear boy for not studying.

But Uncle William seemed to enjoy being cruel. He wrote that he had done his best to give her son an education, but it appeared that it couldn't be done, and he felt it was time to stop wasting money. So he was sending Wallace home to her to see what she could make of him.

Perhaps she could find something for him to do in Orchard Glen that would not tax his mentality as the University seemed to have done.

Poor Mrs. Sutherland was overcome with grief. Dr. McGarry was too, and he stormed and scolded Wallace and his sister by turns, and ended up by declaring that William was getting to be nothing but a skinflint and that he might give the boy another chance.

Wallace alone seemed undisturbed. He felt sure that Uncle William's bilious attack, as he termed his difference with his patron, would pa.s.s off, and that he would be ready to forgive him in October. So he settled himself in the old home with a tremendous display of books and a fine appearance of studiousness, and declared he would work so hard that when the Autumn term opened he would pa.s.s any examination they could possibly set before him.

His mother and uncle caught his optimism and were both soon ready to agree that all would be well. So Wallace spent the Summer very happily in Orchard Glen, lying in the hammock under the trees, always with his books, or driving about the country in the Doctor's car.

But poor Mrs. Sutherland had little enjoyment in his home-coming. She was really a very neighbourly soul, in spite of a few strange ideas about social usages, and she was now condemned to the difficult task of keeping Wallace at his studies, and away from the young life about him, and that in a village where the girls were as thick as the thistles along the roadside.

First there was that pretty young simpleton at the corner store, who giggled all the time, and made it dangerous for Wallace even to go for the mail. Then there was that family at Browns up on the hill with girls of all ages. And there were those Lindsays, for though the most dangerous one was married and out of the way, and another one said to be engaged, there was still another, very attractive and quite too smart. And there was that bold, black-eyed daughter of the blacksmith, who lived next door. She was too old for Wallace, but those mature girls were the most to be feared. And indeed, there was no safety whatever way you turned.

His mother had hoped for some relaxation when Wallace decided to spend an hour or so each morning under Mr. Sinclair's tutoring, but no sooner had this haven been provided, than the minister's daughter, a fine looking, high-spirited girl, came home for her holidays, from her school teaching.

So Mrs. Sutherland remained a prisoner in her own home, on guard over her son. And the girls of the village did all in their power to make her task most difficult.

And though Christina would have disdained to take any part in their schemes to meet Wallace, she managed to see her True Knight quite often and the Summer was a very happy one.

She always received a nod and a bright smile from him on Sundays, and sometimes on week days when she went down into the village. And he was always as gay and as debonair and handsome as anybody could wish a Dream Knight to be.

Sandy came home full of joyous relief that at last Christina was to get away out into the world. The trip to the West was not as good as college, of course, but Allister would give her a chance for an education yet, when this pinched time that he was pa.s.sing through was over.

"I hate the thought of your going away," Sandy grumbled. "Girls ought to get married," he added, struggling confusedly with this first experience with femininism. Mary's career and Ellen's prospects were the only right and proper sphere for a girl.

Privately Christina thought so, too.

"But I can't get anybody to marry me," she said gaily. "So what am I to do? There's n.o.body in Orchard Glen wants me except"--she paused, perhaps she was wrong after all about Gavin's caring for her--"except Marmaduke," she added on second thought.

"And I'll bet if any fellow in Orchard Glen asked you to marry him you'd turn up your nose at him," complained Sandy. "My, but girls are queer. Now, if that Wallace Sutherland was to come along I suppose you'd be like the rest and be as sweet as honey to him, and you wouldn't look at a fellow like Gavin Grant. And I wouldn't give Gavin for a wagon load of Wallace Sutherlands."

Christina's cheeks grew crimson. Sandy had drawn a bow at a venture, but had hit right in the centre of the mark. But she responded gallantly.

"Neither would I. I wouldn't know what to do with a wagon load of him.

But one would be very nice--loaded on an auto," she added slyly.

Sandy sniffed; but he could not dispute long with Christina over anything. They had grand times together, as June came in and they fell into their old habit of sitting in the evenings on the pump platform.

There were long confidential talks there, under the apple boughs, too.

Sandy's mind, under Neil's careful guardianship, was turning more and more towards the ministry as his life-work. And every day Christina grew more thankful that she had not been the means of holding him back.

She had not yet confessed to Grandpa that his electric light was to be switched off before the end of the summer. Christina had not found an occasion when she could summon sufficient courage to break the news to him. It would be time enough when she had to tell him. So he sang his evening hymn and read his morning psalms of thanksgiving undisturbed.

And to make things even better for Christina Mary came home in June.

Hugh McGillivray had gone to Toronto on business and Mary came back to the old farm for a visit during his absence. Mary looked more beautiful than ever, in her new town-made clothes, and Christina was very proud of her as they went about the village together.

The practice for the Presbyterian Church's first of July picnic was in full swing, and as there were no Methodists helping this year, the Presbyterians had to do double duty. Mary went to practise with her sisters and had a grand reunion with all the girls.

"Christine, where's Bruce to-night?" she asked, as they came up the hill on the way home together, with Ellen walking ahead beside Annie McKenzie.

"Bruce? I don't know," confessed Christina. "Oh, he hasn't come to practise much since he came back from Toronto."

"No, and it's my opinion he hasn't been going to anything else,"

declared Mary. "Do you know that he has been here only once since I came home?"

Christina listened in dismay. She had been so absorbed in her joyous preparations for going West that she had actually not noticed what was quite apparent to Mary.

"Maybe he and Ellen have had a lover's quarrel," she whispered hopefully.

"Nothing of the sort," scoffed Mary. "Can you imagine any one quarrelling with Ellen or Bruce either--and as for their quarrelling between themselves!"

Christina was forced to admit that was extremely unlikely. And as she watched Ellen she could not but be convinced that there was something woefully wrong between her and Bruce.

"You couldn't think that he doesn't care for Ellen any more, could you?" faltered Christina as she and Mary held a second conference.