to beat time and
Gavin Grant's splendid voice to hold them all to the right tune.

So the programme opened auspiciously with the chorus. The only trouble
was the organist. Sam Henderson, a brother of Tremendous K., was the
only young man in Orchard Glen who could play anything more complex
than a mouth organ, and Sam always seemed to have too many fingers.
And he pumped the air into the bellows so hard that the organ's gasps
could be heard far above its strains.

Then three of the boys played a rousing trio on mouth organs, and young
Willie Brown played a long piece on the violin. Tommy Holmes, Tilly's
brother, who worked in Algonquin and came home week-ends, then gave a
recitation, a comic selection which cheered everybody up after the
wails of Willie's fiddle.

Tremendous K. sang a solo, a splendid roaring sea song that fairly made
the roof rock, and then John delivered his speech and Christina sat and
twisted her handkerchief and fidgeted every minute of it, in silent
fear lest John make a mistake or anybody laugh at him. But John's
speech was loudly applauded, though Tremendous K. said afterwards there
was to be no politics brought into the Temperance Society, for
Tremendous K. was not of the same political party as the President and
was not going to run any risks of the liberals getting ahead.

When John had sat down there arose from the back of the hall among the
young men a great deal of shoving and pushing and exhorting to "go to
it," and Gavin Grant came forward very reluctant, very red in the face,
and looking very scared, to sing his first formal solo in public.

Gavin was a tall fellow and well built, but his clothes, the majority
of which his Aunties still fashioned, were always too small and very
ill-fitting. They seemed to have a tendency to work up to his neck and
they were all crowding to the top when he lurched forward and took his
place beside the organ.

"Gavin always looks as if some one had just carried him in by the back
of the neck and set him down with a thud," said Joanna, loud enough for
all the girls to hear. Every one laughed except Christina. She had
not been able to laugh at Gavin since she had been so unkind to his
birthday gift. Her heart always smote her for the waste of that
wonderful basket of blooms. Now that she knew she was going away she
felt she might at least have acknowledged them.

Meanwhile Gavin had brought out his Auntie Flora's oldest song book,
"The Caske