their youth. An
untimely frost had smitten down the one flower of their hearts. They
were not girls any more; three stricken old women sat in the wide
bright kitchen among the flowers in a bewilderment of grief too deep
for tears.

Hughie Reid and his wife were there, and Mr. Sinclair and Joanna, and
several other friends from the village. And out in the summer kitchen
Mrs. Johnnie Dunn had blackened and polished the stove that did not
need polishing, and was now madly scrubbing the floor that did not need
scrubbing in the least, the tears all the while streaming down her
face. Everything that loving hands could do in the house and barn was
done, and the Aunties sat about in unaccustomed idleness, like lost
children who had suddenly found themselves in strange surroundings, and
were even afraid to speak.

And Christina sat beside them, dumb with her grief and theirs, and not
even daring to whisper to them that her heart was lying with theirs,
"Somewhere in France."

It seemed a very little thing, in the face of their stupendous loss,
when the news came that Gavin had died a very glorious death, that he
would have been given the Victoria Cross had he lived, and that they
were sending it to Auntie Elspie. He had held back a rush of the
enemy, alone and single-handed, until his comrades got to a place of
safety. He had stayed on in a desperate position, working his machine
gun, while the world rocked beneath him and the mad heavens raged with
shot and shell above him, had held on though he was wounded again and
again, saying between his teeth, "Stand Fast, Craig-Ellachie!" And
then a shell had come and the gallant stand was over. But he had saved
the Blue Bonnets from destruction, and spared many lives in losing his
own.

The Aunties held up their poor bowed heads, as Mr. Sinclair read them
the splendid story. They knew Gavie would do something great, and it
was just the way he would have wished to go, Auntie Elspie said
tremulously. But the light had gone out of their lives, and it was
small comfort that it had blazed so gloriously in the going.

CHAPTER XV

THE GARDEN BLOOMS AGAIN

The day that Gavin's picture appeared in the Algonquin paper with an
account of the gallant deed in which he had given his life, Christina
received a letter in an unknown handwriting.

Mitty brought it up to her room on a sunny April afternoon, where she
was sitting, trying to interest herself in some sewing for bab