e garden. From its topmost
spray a robin was pouring forth an ecstatic song--a song so out of
proportion to his tiny body that he was fairly shaken by his own
tumult--trills and whistles, calls and chuckles, all incoherently
mingled and shouted forth in glorious hysteria. Miss Gordon looked up
at the mad little musician and her face grew sad. She had recognized
the cause of her renewed longing for home. At the little gate of her
Edinburgh garden there grew just such a hawthorn, and the perfume of
this one was telling her not of the joy and beauty before her, but of
all she had left behind.

Miss Gordon had never seen the loveliness nor felt the lure of this new
land--a garden-land though it was, of winding flower-fringed roads, of
cool, fairy-dells, and hilltops with heart-thrilling glimpses of lake
and forest and stream. Her harp was always hanging on the willows of
this Canadian Babylon in mourning for the streets of Edinburgh. She
could never quite rise above a feeling of resentment against the land
that held her in bondage, and never once dreamed that, should she go
back to the prim little house in McGlashan Street, with Cousin Griselda
and their cats and their embroidery and their cup of tea at exactly
half-past four in the afternoon, she would long for the old stone house
in the far-off Canadian valley, and the love and companionship of the
merry rioters who now made her days a burden.

Her grievance against Canada was due to the fact that she had crossed
the ocean merely to make one short summer's visit to brother William
and had been held a prisoner ever since.

It had all come about through Cousin Griselda's mistaken idea that to
be truly genteel one must travel. The cousins had ever set before
themselves perfect refinement and gentility as the one condition to be
devoutly striven for, and the only one in keeping with the Gordon
traditions. They lived in a quiet old house on a silent old street,
with a sleepy old servant and two somnolent old cats. They were always
excessively polite to each other and to everyone with whom they came in
contact, even to the cats. Every afternoon of their lives, except
Sunday, and once a month when the Ladies' Guild met at the manse, they
wore their second-best black dresses, their earrings and bracelets, and
sat in the parlor with the two cats and dozed and embroidered until
half-past four when the tea was brought in. They always spoke slowly
and carefully, and con