t
seem possible that any girl would choose Gavin Grant, even with a
Victoria Cross, in preference to Wallace Sutherland with the Ford
place, and the only true explanation of the affair was that Wallace had
changed. On the other hand, Bell Brown declared that Christina Lindsay
was not like other girls and no one could tell what she would do.

So Christina well knew that they were talking about her, and at first
she declared she would stay home with her mother and Uncle Neil. But
the Aunties made it clear that they expected her to go, and she could
not bear that they be disappointed on this the greatest day of their
lives. And then Gavin would be disappointed too, and that would be
still worse, and she had to confess to her honest heart that Christina
would be more disappointed than any one, for she was impatient to see
her hero, and quite as eager to go as the Aunties themselves.

So she put away all her fears, and spent a most unreasonable length of
time getting herself ready. She wound her shining braids around her
head and put on her best white dress and her white hat, and reverently
fastened the purple band on her arm, for the dear ones who would never
come home, but who were somewhere near in the free outer ring of being
just beyond the painful confines of her life. And when she was all
ready, with her golden hair and her eyes so blue, as Gavin had so often
sung, she looked very young and fair, and far more beautiful than any
Lindsay girl had ever yet looked.

The weather was perfect, such a glorious day of blank blue skies, with
the smooth shaven fields lying golden-brown in the sunshine. Here and
there a field showed sheaves of wheat standing in khaki-coloured groups
like soldiers on guard. Nobody cared that the Air Service of the
clouds might bomb them with silver bullets before night, for how could
any one stay home and haul in his crop when one of their own boys was
coming home bearing the Victoria Cross?

The crowd gathered at the corner, where the order of the procession was
to be arranged. Piper Lauchie was there early this time and was
marching up and down the store veranda, so that nobody could come in or
out, and playing gloriously. Mrs. Johnnie Dunn brought her new car to
carry the three Aunties, with a space reserved for Gavin. Mr. Holmes
had recently bought a Ford and he came next with the piper, a piece of
real Christian sacrifice on the store-keeper's part. He was followed
by the minis