yarn, her cheeks
burning, her eyes unnaturally bright.

Gavin went to camp at Niagara but was allowed to come back to work his
farm for a month in the Summer. The Grant Girls were as happy to have
him again as if he had returned from the war, and with youth's happy
disregard of the future, they set themselves to have the gayest Summer
that had ever shone down upon Craig-Ellachie, and folks who went there
said there never was such fun as they had round the supper table with
Gavin giving his Aunts' military orders and they obeying them with
military precision.

Christina would have given much to be one of those guests. She wanted
to show Gavin before he went that she admired his spirit, and was glad
he wanted to go. But she felt diffident about going to Craig-Ellachie,
and she shrewdly guessed that Gavin would never ask her.

She saw him only at church, and how proudly the Aunties walked down the
aisle with Gavin in his Highland Uniform to show them to their seat and
sit at the end of the pew. And indeed they could scarcely keep their
eyes off him during the service, and a fine sight he was to be sure, in
his trim khaki coat and his gay kilt. And the worry had all gone from
his face and he was his old smiling kindly self. He was too busy to
come to any of the village festivities and Christina had no opportunity
to speak to him except as he came down the church aisle. And though
the other girls crowded around him she stood aloof, so strangely shy
she had become of Gavin.

Joanna and the other girls decided the young people must give Gavin a
send-off such as had been given to all the boys and so they planned for
a gathering on an evening when he came home for the last leave, and
Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists once more joined amicably in a
common cause. But Gavin was not to have the privilege of receiving a
public farewell, a circumstance that suited him well, for he had
dreaded anything that would drag him into public notice.

For one dark Autumn day, when the last blossom of the Grant Girls'
garden had drooped before the frost, the Blue Bonnets were suddenly
called to go overseas. Gavin had come home just the night before for a
week-end leave, and a telegram summoned him to rejoin his Battalion at
once. There was a great stir at Craig-Ellachie. Hughie Reid hurried
over as soon as the news reached him, and he sent one of his boys to
fetch Mrs. Johnnie Dunn to help the Aunties through their trial, an