They stepped in at the Manse gate, and Christina and Gavin moved on alone. She had almost forgotten his presence, but she turned to him now, because she must have some one to confide in.

"Oh, Gavin, did you hear what he was saying, that Sandy might be a minister some day!"

"But that would be a great thing, wouldn't it?" asked Gavin, surprised out of his shyness at the grief in Christina's voice.

"But, I'm afraid--Sandy thinks we can't afford it this Fall. I mean for him to go to college," whispered Christina in distress. "And if he doesn't go now he may not go at all. He has had to wait so long."

Gavin forgot his shyness entirely in his efforts to comfort her.

"But you must not be feeling so bad," he said gently. "Is there no way to help it?"

Christina suddenly remembered that Mr. Sinclair had often told her mother that Gavin Grant had both the ability and the longing to be a minister, but he would never confess his desires, lest they trouble the Aunties. Perhaps he could understand her case and advise her, and in an impulsive moment, born of her great need, she told him all about the cloud that had been hanging over her during the past week.

"I want just dreadfully to go to college and get a good education," she finished up. "You know all about it, I'm sure you do, don't you, Gavin? And now I've got my first real chance, and if I take it I'll be keeping Sandy back. Perhaps I'll be keeping him from being a minister, and wouldn't that be dreadful? And I don't know what to do."

It did not seem queer, somehow, for her to be asking Gavin's advice about this momentous question, but his position was especially difficult. He could not answer her for a few minutes. For he knew that he was not at all an unbiased judge. Next to his own going, he wanted more than anything else in the world that Christina should be left at home. He could hardly bear to think of what life in Orchard Glen would be like without the chance of looking at her in church or at meeting, and occasionally speaking to her. Indeed he would not have dared to take this bold plunge of asking to see her home to-night had he not known that it would likely be his last chance, and that she would soon be gone out of his life.

"I am afraid I would want to go if I was in your place," he confessed at last. "But," he hesitated shyly, "Auntie Elspie always knows what is best, and she has always told me that we never lose a thing by giving it up for some one else. She gave up all her chances for Grandmother Grant and stayed home and cared for her. And she let their only brother go to college, while she managed the farm at home. And she says now she is always glad she did it."

He stopped suddenly, embarra.s.sed. It looked as if he had actually had the presumption to preach Christina a sermon.

But she did not seem to think so. "And you, yourself," she said, "Mr.

Sinclair always wants you to go to college, Gavin, and you know you would like to, wouldn't you?"

"I am in a very different position from any one like you or Sandy,"

said Gavin with a new note of sternness in his voice. "It is not for me to choose whether I will go to college or not. But," he added hastily, "my Aunts would let me go if they could, you may be sure of that."

Christina's heart felt a sudden rush of sympathy. She guessed what Gavin must suffer, seeing this boy and that pa.s.s on, leaving him behind.

There was another long silence, which he broke. "You will always do the kind thing," he whispered. "You could not do anything else."

They had come to the big gate between the sentinel poplars, and Christina stopped. Mary and young MacGillivray were leaning on the little garden gate that led in from the lane, and Bruce and Ellen, who had long pa.s.sed the hanging-over-the-gate stage of courtship, had gone indoors for something to eat.

"Oh, I'm afraid you're all wrong," she declared; "I--I don't want to a bit, but, you think I ought to let Sandy go, don't you?"

Gavin looked down at her in the dim starlight for a moment before he found courage to reply. "You know so much better than I do," he said at last. "And I am not the one to advise you, because,--because,----"

"Because what?" she asked wonderingly.

"Because I can't bear to think of you going away," burst out Gavin with desperate boldness.

Christina felt her cheeks grow hot under the sheltering darkness. She was speechless in her turn, and then afraid of what might follow this sudden outburst, she said confusedly, "I must go in now and think about it," and with a hurried good-night, she was gone.

She ran noiselessly up the lane, avoiding the lovers at the garden gate, and entered the back gate that opened from the barn-yard. She found Bruce and Ellen with John and her mother in the kitchen eating scones and drinking b.u.t.termilk. No one remarked her entrance except that her mother, looking over her shoulder asked, "Where's your brother, Christine?"

"He's gone off with some one else's sister," answered Christina trying to speak carelessly.

"Sometimes sisters go off with some one else's brother," remarked John, his eyes twinkling. "No, I don't believe he is a brother to any one, is he?" Christina gave him an imploring look, that begged him to keep her secret, and he generously changed the subject. They were all full of Bruce's new prospects, and Christina slipped away unnoticed to bed.

But for the first time in her healthy young life worry drove sleep far from her. She heard Sandy come in, heard Jimmie enter the next room and his boots drop heavily on the floor, and when Ellen and Mary came up she pretended to be asleep. She occupied a small room opening off the one shared by her sisters, and could hear their whispers and hushed laughter. Ellen was so proud of Bruce and all he was going to be, and Mary was justly proud of her lover, and Christina had n.o.body to see her home but Gavin Grant, and no hope of anything better was before her.

For how could she go to school and leave Sandy behind?

How could she? She was facing the question at last. And her heart answered that no matter what wise folks might say about grasping Opportunity, she simply could not let it stand in Sandy's way. There was only one answer to her question.

She lay very still till she knew that her sisters were asleep. Then she rose and softly closed the door between their rooms. She lit her lamp, feeling quite like a thief, and took out her box of writing paper. The pen and ink were downstairs, but she had a lead pencil, and Allister would not mind.

She took the little stubby pencil and poured out her heart on to the paper. She just could not go, that was all about it. And would he send Sandy instead? Sandy might be a minister some day like Neil, Mr.

Sinclair said, and she would never, never be happy again if she thought she had made him stay home and be a farmer, or perhaps just a school-teacher because she had taken his chance away from him. And would he mind if she stayed home? Perhaps she could go some other time. Or she could teach for a while and put herself through. Sandy was nearly two years older than she was and he would soon be thinking he was too old to go to college. Of course Sandy did not know she was doing this. He would not let her, she knew, so she had told no one.

She was up late at night when every one else was asleep, and she could not rest until she told him what she wanted. And she was going to get up early and give the letter to Mrs. Johnnie Dunn to post in Algonquin so it would get to him sooner. And oh, would he please, please, write right away, the very day he got it, and tell Sandy he could go in her place. For she could never, never be happy----"

The letter went on and on reiterating incoherently all she feared and suffered. It was very late indeed when she crept to bed. She thought the right thing for a girl to do who had lost all her chances in life was to lie down and cry all night. But she was surprised to find that she felt strangely light hearted. All the dreadful weight of the past week had been removed. She could not think about her own loss, so joyous was she over the thought that Sandy was going after all.

So she slept soundly, and dreamed that she was going to college and that Gavin Grant was a professor there and was teaching her wonderful truths.

CHAPTER IV

CRAIG-ELLACHIE

In spite of the high rapture of her sacrifice Christina found life distinctly dull when Sandy and Neil went off to Toronto leaving her behind. She felt as if she had been away on a long romantic journey since Allister's return; a journey that gave glimpses of wonderful countries still to be travelled, and then she had suddenly been dropped back into Orchard Glen and forbidden to travel any more.

And here she was milking and churning and feeding the hens and companying with Uncle in the barn yard. Of course Uncle Neil was the excellent company he had always been, full of song and story, and Christina could not find an opportunity to mourn over her lot even if she had been so minded. She was not the sort to wear a martyr's robe.

She would play the part, but she refused to make up for it. So she went about her daily tasks, singing as blithely as that Spring morning when Allister opened the gate into a larger life for her, the gate which she had voluntarily shut, with herself inside. She bore her disappointment jauntily, walking erect as Eastern girls carry their burdens on their heads, growing straight and graceful in the effort.

And then she was too busy to fret. There was Grandpa who needed more help every morning with his dressing, and every evening with the Hindmost Hymn. There was her mother, whose tasks must now grow lighter each year, there was Jimmie to be helped with his lessons on Sat.u.r.days, there was a Sunday school cla.s.s with two of the bad Martin children in it, and there was Mary's trousseau to help prepare against the wedding at Christmastime. For the courtship of MacGillivray's man had proceeded at a furious pace and through Ellen had been engaged for five years, Mary was to be the first to marry. And so, Christina's hands were very full, and John would often say to her, after an unusually busy day, or when a letter came from Sandy bewailing her lot:

"Just wait, Christine. In another year who knows what will happen?"

And Christina's heart was content.

As Mary had to keep up her teaching until the Christmas holidays, and her evenings were mostly spent with the young man who drove over from Port Stewart quite a remarkable number of times a week, there was much to do in the preparation of her clothes. Ellen had stopped her own embroidering, to wait until Bruce was through college, and she took to doing towels and table-napkins and doilies for Mary.

"I can't help thinking that it's a dreadful waste for you to get married," declared Christina, one Sat.u.r.day afternoon as they all sewed furiously in the big roomy kitchen. "You're just throwing away a teacher's certificate. My! If I had Greenwood school I'd never get married!" And Mary and Ellen laughed and looked at each other knowingly from their respective heights far above Christina's head.

She tried to keep up her studies by following Jimmie's course, and stayed home on Friday nights from the Temperance meeting to help him with his lessons.

One evening they had a long hunt through "The Lady of the Lake" for a line about the Harebell which Jimmie must quote in an essay. They were sitting around the long kitchen table, all except Mary who was out driving in the moonlight. Ellen was at one end writing to Bruce as usual, John at the other, reading the daily paper, Mrs. Lindsay was knitting, and Uncle Neil was strumming out fragments of old songs on his violin, his stockinged feet comfortable on the damper of the stove.

Even Uncle Neil's memory could not produce the Harebell, and Jimmie went rummaging through the book impatiently.

"Gavin Grant would tell me if he was here," Jimmie said. "He knows all this stuff off by heart."

"And plenty more," put in Uncle Neil to the tune of "Oh wert thou in the cauld blast?" "Gavin's mind is well stored. Mr. Sinclair says he reads Carlyle in the evenings with the Grant girls. I wonder if you could match that anywhere in this country?"

Christina felt self-accusing, remembering her superior feeling in Gavin's awkward presence. He had been very busy with the harvest and she had not seen him except at church for a long time. He had never attempted to walk home with her again, and she could not help wondering whether it was because he was shy, or because he did not care.

Womanlike she would have given a good deal to know.

"I wish you would run over to Craig-Ellachie with that jar of black currants I promised the Grant Girls, Christina," said her mother.