says she's got
chilblains on her temper."

His stormy attack upon the enemy proved very bracing to the one who had
been so recently overthrown by her.

"But the Grant girls said so too," she added, searching for more
comfort.

"Just as if they knew," scoffed Sandy. "They're a lot of old rainbows,
Duke says they are. Looks don't matter anyhow. It don't get you on
any faster in school."

Christina, much encouraged, reflected upon this aspect of the case.

"I don't care," she decided courageously, making a new resolve, that
had nothing to do with hair or complexion. "I'm going to study awful
hard at school and beat everybody in the class, and then I'm going to
college some day and be a lady. You'll just see if I don't. And it'll
be far better to be clever than to be good-lookin', won't it, Sandy?"

That was just eight years ago, and now on her nineteenth birthday
Christina was calling to mind with some amusement the humiliation of
that day, and with some discouragement, that the high resolve of that
occasion was far from being realised.

She came up the path from the barn, where the rays of the early sun
made rosy lanes between the pink and white boughs of the orchard. For
Christina had been born in the joyous May-time, and the whole farm was
bedecked for the occasion. She was tall and straight and carried her
two pails of milk with easy grace. The light through the orchard
boughs touched her fair hair and made it shining gold. Her eyes were
as blue as the strip of sky above her, and her cheeks were as pink as
the apple blossoms. Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's judgment had not been reversed
by the years, Christina was still a long way from being one of the
Lindsay beauties. But she possessed an abundance of that loveliness
that always accompanies youth and health and a merry heart.

She was not quite so gay as usual this morning. She felt that she
ought to be grave and dignified, as befitted a person who was so old.
It was no joke, this being nineteen, just next-door to twenty, when you
wanted still to play with the dog or chase Sandy round the stack. Age
makes one retrospective, too, and she was reflecting how far short she
had come of attaining the great ambition born eight years ago in the
raspberry patch. For here she was, on her nineteenth birthday, still
milking cows and feeding calves, with not even a school teacher's
certificate to her credit.

She had not failed to put forth every effort to attain