ned, "don't go orderin' your betters
round."

Their work was brightened with a great deal of merry nonsense. For
Christina always made holiday of all toil, and even Jimmie, who was
passing through the weary period of boyhood, when any effort is
insupportable, found it amusing to work with her.

"I suppose, now that you're nineteen, you'll be gettin' a fellow," he
teased, as he watched her wash the separator and put it out in the sun.
"It's time you had one."

"Yes, I was thinking that too," said Christina agreeably. "I was
planning that I would get Mike Duffy to be my beau, now that you're so
sweet on Big Rosie. It would be so nice to be married into the same
family."

Jimmie gave a squall of rage and disgust. Rosie Duffy was a huge
freckled-faced girl, to whom, in a moment of generous weakness, he had
given a ride from town, and Christina had used the fact to his undoing
ever since.

He caught up the calves' pails of milk and fled up into the sunshine.
It was never safe to tease Christina, you always got back far worse
than you gave.

When he came back to the house the family was gathering for its
breakfast, and a fine big family it was. There were just two absent,
the father, who was taking his well-earned rest in the grassy church
yard on the hill, and Allister, the eldest son, who had gone west ten
years ago to make his fortune and had not been home since.

Uncle Neil MacDonald took his place at the head of the table, where he
had sat ever since the father left it. Uncle Neil was very much
beloved, but he was in no sense the head of the family. He was a gay,
easy-going body, given to singing songs and playing the fiddle, and not
at all calculated to keep a virile group of boys and girls in order.
So, John, the eldest son at home, was the real head of the family, and
his mother's support. For John was wise and strong and many, many
years older than Uncle Neil.

Ellen, the busy housewife, came next. She was just as handsome as when
Miss Flora Grant used to look at her in church, and since she had grown
up many other admiring eyes looked her way. Neil, who was going to be
a minister, but who was very much of a farmer this morning, sat by
John. Neil was already in College, and Mr. Sinclair, the minister of
Orchard Glen, who made it his boast that in twenty-five years of his
ministry the Orchard Glen church had not been without its
representative in Knox College, declared that not one of the train h