Added to that, Sandy came home in May, and life was all
holiday when Sandy was near, but best of all, at the closing of
college, who should come riding over the hills but her Dream Knight.
He was to stay the whole summer, Tilly explained on Sunday when he
appeared with his mother and uncle at church, and Mrs. Sutherland was
scared to let him go beyond the garden gate alone.

Though his coming to Orchard Glen brought such joy to Christina, young
Mr. Sutherland had really come home under a cloud, though his mother
took great care to turn it inside out for the public benefit and allow
the silver lining of Wallace's many virtues to shine through. He was
so handsome and so genuinely glad to see everybody in Orchard Glen, and
so free and hearty in his manner, that it was very easy for people to
believe the best of him. And indeed the worst was only that he had
been a little less studious in college than he should have been.

He had barely passed his examinations in his first year, and now in his
second, when he should have retrieved himself, he had gone under
altogether. And the worst of it all was that Uncle William, who was
paying his college bills, and who was rich and childless and would
never miss the money, was making a dreadful fuss. Wallace wrote him
apologising deeply, and explaining just how it all happened, the
inconvenient examinations having come on just when he was labouring
under a heavy cold.

Mrs. Sutherland wrote her brother explaining still further, Wallace had
been ill, he was not at all well now. He had been really quite
indisposed all Spring, and it was cruel to blame the dear boy for not
studying.

But Uncle William seemed to enjoy being cruel. He wrote that he had
done his best to give her son an education, but it appeared that it
couldn't be done, and he felt it was time to stop wasting money. So he
was sending Wallace home to her to see what she could make of him.
Perhaps she could find something for him to do in Orchard Glen that
would not tax his mentality as the University seemed to have done.

Poor Mrs. Sutherland was overcome with grief. Dr. McGarry was too, and
he stormed and scolded Wallace and his sister by turns, and ended up by
declaring that William was getting to be nothing but a skinflint and
that he might give the boy another chance.

Wallace alone seemed undisturbed. He felt sure that Uncle William's
bilious attack, as he termed his difference with his patron, would pas