Allister looked down at her in admiration that was impossible to mistake.

"By ginger, you're right," he shouted heartily; "you're the sort of a girl for me. Say, what would you say to coming out West and keeping house for me?"

Here was Opportunity come back to her! Christina seized him tightly.

"Oh, my! Wouldn't that be grand. It would be the very best--well, the _second_ best thing in the world!"

"And what would be the very best?"

"To go to the University with Sandy next Fall!" she answered promptly.

"Well, I declare!" Allister laughed, "you've all been bitten by the education bug. Mr. Sinclair used to say that if father was to change the catechism, he'd have it read: 'Man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d and get a good education.'"

"Just what I believe exactly!" declared Christina, who was trembling with excitement.

"But girls go and get married, or ought to," said Allister practically.

"Well, I hope I will some day," confessed Christina. "I don't want to be an old maid like the Auntie Grants. But I want to go away from Orchard Glen first, and see what the world's like--and get a grand education and know heaps and do something great--oh, I don't know what, but just something like you read about in the papers!"

The cows were in the pasture by this time, and as Allister put up the bars he said,

"Let's set down here for a few minutes and settle this matter."

Christina perched herself at his side on the top of the low rail fence.

The soft May mists were gathering in the valleys, the orchards shone pink in the sunset. Away down in the beaver meadow the frogs were tuning up for their first overture of evening, and a whippoorwill far up in the Slash had begun to sing his lonely song to the dark hillside.

Allister looked about him and uttered a great sigh of contentment.

"Oh, it's great to be home again," he breathed. "Now that I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone I'm going to come home oftener.

Things change so. We may never all be home again together."

"Well, I'd be sorry for that," said Christina, who was fairly dancing with impatience. "But I'd be sorrier if I thought things wouldn't change. We don't want to live here for ever and ever just as we are."

"No, of course not. But I hope some of us will always be in Orchard Glen. John always will."

"I suppose so. John's spent all his life working hard for the rest of us," cried Christina, "and I suppose he'll go on doing it to the end."

"There's n.o.body better than John," declared Allister. "But let me tell you this, that the man or woman, either, who gives up all his chance in life to somebody else is bound to come out with the small end of the stick. It sounds fine, but it don't pay." Allister spoke with the a.s.surance of the successful man of business. "There's a certain amount of looking out for Number One that's necessary in this pleasant world."

Christina was silent. Her heart told her he must be wrong, but she could not have argued the matter if she would. It did not seem possible that John's life of self-sacrifice and devotion had been a mistake. Something that Neil was always quoting was running through her head, "There is no gain except by loss." She could not recall it fully, but she remembered distinctly another quotation, "Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it."

"Well, we're all getting on in the world all right," cried Allister heartily. "I tell you, our family's doing fine. And if I make my pile as I hope to, we'll all do better. I'd like to be able to give Neil and Sandy a lift, but Sandy's ready to go next Fall to the University anyway. And it'll be a good while before Jimmie's ready."

"Ellen and Bruce will be married some time next Fall, I expect," said Christina, going over the members of the family in her mind.

"I hate to think of her as a farmer's wife," said Allister. "If I had her out West I'd do better than that for her, but I suppose I might as well tell her I wanted to cut her head off."

"I should think so!" laughed Christina; "it's a dreadful thing to be in love."

"Look as if Mary wouldn't be teaching school long either, eh?

Mother'll soon be without a girl if they all keep going off like that.

What about the one they call Christina?"

"Goody! We've come to Christina at last! Let's settle her case.

Christina will stay at home and milk the cows and feed the pigs and bake and scrub and take the eggs and b.u.t.ter to Algonquin on Sat.u.r.days.

She will be the old maid sister with the h.o.r.n.y hands, who always bakes the pies and cakes for Christmas when the family come home!"

Allister threw back his head and laughed into the coloured heavens till the echoes came back sharply from the whippoorwill's sanctuary on the hillside.

"Never!" he cried heroically, waving the long stick with which he had driven the cows up the lane. "Never! Let me die before I see the day!

No, _siree_! Christina will go to the University and take all the gold medals, or whatever truck it is they get there, and she'll be a high-brow and go travelling over the country lecturing on Women's Rights!"

"I do believe I'd do it, even the lecturing part, for the sake of the college course," she declared. "Oh, Allister, I'm simply _aching_ to get away and have a good education and be--be _somebody_--even if it's only a Woman's Righter!"

"Hooroo! I'm with you. I guess your education won't break me. You've got the kind of spirit that's bound to win, so off you go. You get your sunbonnet and all the fal-lals girls have to get, and be ready next Fall to finish your High School and then it's you for college!"

"Allister!" She turned to look at him. It just could not be that he meant what he said. Her eyes were like stars in the twilight, her voice sank to a whisper.

"Allister! What are you saying?"

He laughed joyfully. "I'm saying that you can start out on the road to glory next September and I'll foot the bills!" he shouted. "You're deaf as Grandpa!"

Christina suddenly realised that he really meant it; that the glorious unbelievable thing upon which she had set her heart was hers. She gave a sudden spring from her seat to throw herself in an abandon of grat.i.tude upon her brother. But the leap had an entirely different result. The unsteady fence rail upon which she sat gave a lurch, turned over and Christina and it together went crashing into the raspberry and gooseberry bushes and thistles and stones of the fence corner.

Allister jumped from his perch to her a.s.sistance.

"Gosh hang it, girl," he cried, "you might have killed yourself!"

Christina staggered to her feet, scratched and dishevelled. "Oh, my goodness!" she cried, "to think of killing myself at this supreme moment! If I had I'd never, never speak to myself again for missing that University course!"

When they got back to the house Christina went about in a happy daze.

There was no opportunity to do more than whisper the wonderful news to Sandy, and then she had to fly about to help put everything in order before the guests arrived.

The Lindsay home was at all times a popular gathering-place of an evening, for there was always plenty of company and music there, and a jolly time. Indeed Uncle Neil was in the habit of saying that, when the milk pails were hung out along the shed they were like the Standard on the Braes o' Mar, for when the young fellows of the countryside saw them, they came flocking over the hills. And indeed the last pail had scarcely been washed and put in its place to-night when the first visitor appeared in the lane.

Uncle Neil, coming up from the pump in the orchard, with two pails of fresh water, announced that the whole MacKenzie family were coming across the field, and burst into the song that always set Ellen's cheeks flaming.

"MacDonald's men, Clan Donald's men, MacKenzie's men, MacGillivray's men, Strath Allan's men, the Lowland men Are coming late and early!"

"MacGillivray's man's coming early to-night, Mary!" called Sandy.

"There's his buggy comin' up the line! Man, it's easy to see he hasn't any ch.o.r.es in the evening!"

"I'm all behind the times!" cried the new brother. "Tell me all about this MacGillivray man. He's a new one!"

He caught hold of Mary as she came in from the spring house, but she dodged him. This MacGillivray man was a new and quite special cavalier. He was no country boy from a neighbouring farm, but a prosperous young merchant from Port Stewart, a town some dozen miles away on the lake sh.o.r.e. Driving through the country one bright day in early spring, he had met Mary on her way to school, and had never got over the sight. Since then he had driven out all the way to Orchard Glen many a night for a repet.i.tion of the vision.

"Will you finish for me, Christine?" Mary whispered in a panic. "I'm not fixed up yet, and he's coming up the lane."

Christina promised and hurried her away. It didn't matter, she reflected, whether she was dressed in her best or her milking ap.r.o.n.