in their Uncle Daniel Sparhallow's big
orchard. It was an afternoon of mellow sunshine; about them, beyond
the orchard, were old harvest fields, mellowly bright and serene, and
beyond the fields the sapphire curve of the St. Lawrence Gulf was
visible through the groves of spruce and birch. There was a soft
whisper of wind in the trees, and the pale purple asters that
feathered the orchard grass swayed gently towards each other. Janet
Sparhallow, who loved the outdoor world and its beauty, was, for the
time being at least, very happy, as her little brown face, with its
fine, satiny skin, plainly showed. Avery Sparhallow did not seem so
happy. She worked rather abstractedly and frowned oftener than she
smiled.

Avery Sparhallow was conceded to be a beauty, and had no rival in
Burnley Beach. She was very pretty, with the obvious, indisputable
prettiness of rich black hair, vivid, certain colour, and laughing,
brilliant eyes. Nobody ever called Janet a beauty, or even thought her
pretty. She was only seventeen--five years younger than Avery--and was
rather lanky and weedy, with a rope of straight dark-brown hair, long,
narrow, shining brown eyes and very black lashes, and a crooked,
clever little mouth. She had visitations of beauty when excited,
because then she flushed deeply, and colour made all the difference in
the world to her; but she had never happened to look in the glass when
excited, so that she had never seen herself beautiful; and hardly
anybody else had ever seen her so, because she was always too shy and
awkward and tongue-tied in company to feel excited over anything. Yet
very little could bring that transforming flush to her face: a wind
off the gulf, a sudden glimpse of blue upland, a flame-red poppy, a
baby's laugh, a certain footstep. As for Avery Sparhallow, she never
got excited over anything--not even her wedding dress, which had come
from Charlottetown that day, and was incomparably beyond anything that
had ever been seen in Burnley Beach before. For it was made of an
apple-green silk, sprayed over with tiny rosebuds, which had been
specially sent for to England, where Aunt Matilda Sparhallow had a
brother in the silk trade. Avery Sparhallow's wedding dress was making
far more of a sensation in Burnley Beach than her wedding itself was
making. For Randall Burnley had been dangling after her for three
years, and everybody knew that there was nobody for a Sparhallow to
marry except a Burnley and nobo