ir home this name because
of its association with their clan's history, but Nature had encouraged
them, for behind the house, set back against the dark pine woods, rose
a hill crowned by a towering rock. The cosy old white-washed house was
set in the centre of a saucer-like valley. It was the original log
house in which their parents had lived and had been added to here and
there till it was beautifully picturesque just as the home of the Grant
Girls should be.

But visitors to Craig-Ellachie never saw anything else after their
first glimpse of the garden.

Every one wondered how it was that the Grant Girls' garden should
outbloom all others, and that nobody else ever had any hope of first
prize at the Fall fairs. One said it was the sheltered location of the
place, others the low elevation, still others that it was the southern
slope that made the Craig-Ellachie garden unfold the earliest crocus in
Spring and hold safely the latest aster in Autumn. But wise folk, like
Christina's mother, always held that it was the tender care of the
three gardeners and the sunlight of their presence that made their
flowers the wonder of the countryside.

Christina drew a breath of delight as it came into view. Dahlias and
asters, rows and rows of them, clumps of feathery cosmos, hedges of
flaming gladioli, dazzling golden glow and a dozen others she did not
recognise made a glorious array. And the blooms were not confined to
the garden proper that was spread out on the south side of the house.
They overflowed into the vegetable garden at the back, and spread
around the lawn at the front. They strayed away along the fences and
completely hedged the orchard. They even encroached upon the barnyard;
the manure heap was screened from view by a wall of sunflowers and
golden glow and a rainbow avenue of late phlox led down to the pig-pens.

Christina entered by the barnyard and came up through the kitchen
garden where rows of cauliflower and cabbage and tomatoes alternated
with pansies and mignonette and scarlet salvia. Every bed of onions
was fringed with sweet alyssum, and rows of beets were flanked with
rosemary and lavender. She opened the little wire gate that led into
the garden proper and walked up under a long arched canopy of climbing
roses and sweet peas that seemed, like the Grant Girls, to take no heed
of the passing of time but bloomed on as though it were June. As she
disappeared into its green shade her eye caug