Gordon
had awakened to the fact that her eldest niece needed watching.

Miss Annie had remarked a moment before, that she thought she might as
well run up to the gate and see if Jerry Patterson, the mailman, was at
the post-office yet; and besides, it was time Malcolm and Jean were
home from the store, and she might help to carry their parcels; and,
anyway, she had nothing to do, because it wasn't time to get the tea
ready yet.

Miss Gordon would not have stooped to quote Shakespeare, considering
him very irreligious and sometimes quite indelicate, and having
forbidden the reading of him in the Gordon family. Nevertheless the
unspoken thought of her mind was his--that the lady did protest too
much.

Of the eight, Annie was her aunt's favorite. She was pretty and gentle
and had caused Miss Gordon less trouble during the four years she had
been head of her brother's house, than John or Elizabeth had frequently
contributed in one day. But lately it seemed as though her greatest
comfort bade fair to become her greatest anxiety. For Annie had
suddenly grown up. The fact had been startlingly revealed by the
strange actions of young Mr. Coulson, the school-teacher, who was
probably at this moment walking across the fields towards the big gate
between the willows.

At the thought, Miss Gordon closed her lips tightly and looked severe.
To be sure, Annie must marry, and young Coulson seemed a rather
genteel, well-made young man. He was studying law in the evenings,
too, and might make his way in the world some day. But Auntie Jinit
Johnstone, who lived on the next farm, and knew the minute family
history of everyone in the county of Simcoe, had informed the last
quilting-bee that a certain Coulson--and no distant relative of the
young schoolmaster either--had kept a tavern in the early days down by
the lake shore. Miss Gordon had made no remark. She never took part
in gossip. But she had mentally resolved that she would inquire
carefully just how distant this relative was, and then she would take
means to place their Annie at a distance from the young man in an
inverse ratio to the space between him and the tavern-keeper.

She peered through the tangle of alder and sumach that bordered the
lane and saw her suspicions confirmed. Annie was at the gate, her blue
dress set against the white background of some blossom-laden
cherry-boughs, while down the road, the long limbs of this probable
descendant of the tavern-k