gloom and despair, the new conditions of the
rough country--even the irony of a fate that had set her at hard,
uncongenial toil in the very place where she had sought culture. But
she succeeded, and had not only held her own poise in the struggle, but
had managed to permeate the family life with something of her old-world
refinement.

It was four long years since she had seen the hawthorn blooming in her
home garden. And now the infant of that dark springtime was the sturdy
boy, rolling over the grass with Collie, and the sixteen-year-old girl,
with the big frightened eyes, was the tall young woman up there at the
gate beside the figure in gray tweed.

Miss Gordon had stood the trial, partly because she had never accepted
the situation as final. She would go back to Edinburgh and Cousin
Griselda soon, she kept assuring herself, and though the date of her
departure always moved forward, rainbow-like at her approach, she found
much comfort in following it.

First she decided she must stay until the baby could walk, but when wee
Jamie went toddling about the big bare rooms, Annie had just left
school, and was not yet prepared to shoulder all the cares of
housekeeping. She would wait until she saw Annie capable of managing
the home. Then when Annie's skirts came down below her boot-tops, and
her hair went up in a golden pile upon her head, and she could bake
bread and sweep a room to perfection, the care of the next two children
presented itself. Malcolm and Jean had from the first shown marked
ability at school, and Miss Gordon's long-injured pride found the
greatest solace in them. She determined that Malcolm must be sent to
college, and William could never be trusted to do it. By strict
economy she had managed to send both the clever ones to the High School
in the neighboring town for the past year; how could she leave them now
at the very beginning of their career?

And so the date of her return home moved steadily forward. Sometimes
it went out of sight altogether and left her in despair. For even if
the two brilliant ones should graduate and William should cease to be
so shockingly absent-minded, and the younger boys so shockingly
boisterous, and Mary so delicate, there was always Elizabeth. Whenever
Miss Gordon contemplated the case of her third niece her castles in
Edinburgh toppled over. What would become of Elizabeth if she were
left unguided? What was to become of Elizabeth in any case, was an
e