ean boy, Charles Stuart MacAllister!"
she cried indignantly to the thickest clump of alders. She dropped her
dress and stepped to the grassy side of the road, filled with rage. Of
course it was Charles Stuart. He was always in the direction whence
stones and abuse came. It had ever seemed to Elizabeth the strangest
injustice that a dear, lovely lady like Mother MacAllister should have
been so shabbily treated both in the quantity and quality of the family
Providence had given her. For while there were eight Gordons, and
every one of them fairly nice at times, there was but one single
solitary MacAllister, and a boy at that; yes, and sometimes the very
nastiest boy that went to Forest Glen School!

She walked along with a haughtiness her Aunt Margaret might have envied
and took not the smallest notice when a little turbulent fox-terrier,
with many squeaks and squirms, wriggled through a hole in the fence and
came bounding towards her. And she turned her head and gazed
absorbedly across the fields when it was followed by a boy who pitched
himself over the fence and crossed to her side.

"Hello, Lizzie!" he cried, his brown eyes dancing in his brown face in
the friendliest manner. "Mother says I've got to see you home."

Elizabeth's head went higher. She fixed her eyes on the line of
white-stemmed birches that guarded the stream. Neither did she deign
to notice "Trip," who frisked and barked about her.

Charles Stuart came a step nearer and took hold of the long, heavy
braid. "Mud-turtle, Lizzie!" he hissed. "Mud-turtle! Look out there!
Your neck's gettin' that long you'll hit the telegraph wires in another
minute."

Elizabeth's shoulders came up towards her ears with a quick, convulsive
movement. Her dignity vanished. Her long neck, her long hair, her
long fingers, and her gray eyes were features over which much teasing
had made her acutely sensitive.

She whirled round, made a slap at her tormentor, which he dodged,
stumbled over Trip, who was always in the way, and fell full length
upon the wet grass, scattering her treasures far and wide. Trip
snatched up a boot and began worrying it; Charles Stuart shouted with
laughter; and Elizabeth picked herself up, sank upon a stone, and began
to cry.

The boy was all repentance immediately. He gathered up the apples, the
stockings, the maple sugar, and even the faded bunch of marigolds,
rescued the boot from Trip, and handed them all to their owner,
reme