he village street when the young men came
down to the corner, as some of the girls did, she, Ellen, would look
after her right thoroughly. "Who's he?"

Christina laughed uproariously. "Oh, I must tell Uncle Neil!" she
cried. "Don't worry, he's awfully old and bald, so there's no danger."

She darted out to the garden to share the joke with Uncle Neil, and
then she slipped into the house, unnoticed, and up to her own room.
She felt as excited as if she were planning to run away. She dressed
very carefully in her afternoon gingham of blue that looked pale beside
the colour of her eyes. She made a coronal of her heavy golden brown
braids, winding them round her shapely head, making a face at herself
in the glass because the hair was so straight and her nose was so
freckled. And then she slipped down the stairs like a thief and ran
down the path behind the spring house. She would not have confessed
it, even for a college course, but she was wondering if, in this wild
expedition to meet Mr. Opportunity, one might not meet one's Dream
Knight riding out there on the highway. For though Christina had never
had a lover, she had her true Knight, who rode just beyond the horizon.
And why shouldn't she meet him to-day? Anything wonderful was liable
to happen on a May morning when you were just nineteen and were running
away from the beaten track in search of adventure.

The path that ran down behind the spring house and across the corner of
the clover field was the Short Cut to the village. It ran into a
little grove, and there Sandy had made a very primitive stile to enable
Mary to get over the fence without spoiling her Sunday clothes. All
the fields were bordered with a fringe of feathery green bushes, from
which rose the sweet roundelays of the song sparrows. The meadow larks
soared and called to each other over the green-brown carpet of the
earth, and away up against the dazzling blue of the sky the
bob-o'-links danced and trilled. Christina gave a joyous skip as she
entered the little grove. There the sunlight lay on the underbrush in
great golden splashes, and the White Throat called "Canada, Canada,
Canada," as if he could never leave off.

She ran joyously down the pathway that led to the road, and there, just
at the edge of the stile, under the low bushes, her sharp eye caught
something white. Her heart gave a leap; here, surely, was the Great
Adventure waiting for her. She ran forward and found a baske