In Orchard Glen Part 2

"And it's nineteen you are to-day, hinny," she cried, looking at Christina fondly.

Christina made a wry face. "Yes, isn't it awful? I don't want to be so old."

"Hut, tut, old," laughed Uncle Neil. "Your mother and father were on their way from the Old Country when she was nineteen, and Allister was a baby."

Christina mentally decided that even crossing the ocean to a strange country was not at all as bad as staying for nineteen years in the same place, but she did not say so.

"Well, it's pretty nice to be nineteen, isn't it?" said Neil. "If it wasn't seeding time John and I would take a day off and go on a picnic."

"I wish something would happen," said Christina recklessly, "something awfully surprising."

"You might go out and hoe up that back field of corn," suggested Sandy.

"That would surprise John and me more than anything."

"But it wouldn't surprise me a bit and I'm the person concerned.

Nothing in the shape of work could possibly surprise me any more. It would have to be a spree of some sort."

"Well," said Ellen, who was always sensible and practical, "be thankful that nothing unpleasant is happening. Anybody would think you would like the barn to burn down."

It was rather a noisy breakfast, for the Lindsays were a bright crowd in spite of much hard work, and Christina and Sandy were always making merry over something. They were just finis.h.i.+ng when Grandpa came in with his toddling step and his usual exclamation of pleased surprised, "Eh, well, well, and you're all here!"

Christina ran for the ancient Bible that lay on the shelf in the corner, with Grandpa's spectacles upon it. Ellen fetched his old red cus.h.i.+on from the sofa in the corner, and Grandpa sat down slowly and heavily. He had never been heard to complain in all his hard-worked life, nor in his years of approaching age, but at the morning wors.h.i.+p he always chose a portion of scripture that accorded with his feelings.

So when he read the 103rd psalm, his sister smiled, evidently he felt in accord with the radiant May morning. Grandpa was very deaf and laboured under the idea that every one else was similarly afflicted, so he read and prayed in a very loud voice. But the Lindsays were all used to it. This early morning wors.h.i.+p set the standard for the day's work. And led by Grandpa who had travelled far up on the road of saints.h.i.+p, it fortified young and old for the day's toil and temptations.

When it was over the family hurried away to their tasks. John and the preacher-farmer went off to the brown fields, Ellen went to her baking and was.h.i.+ng. Jimmie shouldered his books and set off on his Monday morning tramp to the High School in Algonquin, from which he would not return until Friday night. Sandy put off his farm overalls, and drove up from the barn with the single buggy; and Mary, with a trim dust-coat over her pretty blue dress, came tripping down the orchard path and climbed into the buggy at his side. Mary taught school at a little corner called Greenwood, a couple of miles down the concession, and Sandy taught just two miles farther on. So every morning the two drove away to their schools and returned in the evening. Christina ran down the lane to open the gate for them.

"Now, be good, and don't go and do anything very wild just because it's your birthday," called Sandy.

"Oh, Christine," cried Mary, "don't let Ellen forget to wash my pink dress; I got some mud on it yesterday. And if you could iron it like a dear, I'd be ever so much obliged."

Christina promised willingly, and waved them a gay good-bye. She stood at the gate watching them as they turned down the broad white road.

That road could be seen for miles from where she stood, winding away down over hill and through wooded hollow. It disappeared in a belt of forest but came into view again running along the margin of Lake Simcoe far off on the horizon, and away beyond her view it ended in a great city where Christina had never been. But that road always set her heart beating faster. It was the great highway that led out into the world, the road she longed to take. And always in the morning when she stood at the gate thus, just before turning back to the tasks that held her, it seemed to beckon her to come away.

And then she ran back to the barnyard to feed her chickens, and made the second Great Discovery about herself.

Uncle Neil came out of the noisy enclosure where the pigs were fighting with their morning meal, and helped her throw the feed to her quarrelsome brood. Uncle Neil had for years been a semi-invalid and spent his time doing the lighter work of the farm and garden. Though he had attended school only a few years in his childhood, he had a mind stored with the wealth of years of reading, held by an unfailing memory. And now that his physical ailments gave him more leisure, he was reading everything that was worth while that came to his hand. And he gave out his wealth generously to Christina as they did their work every morning in the barnyard.

They laughed together at one old hen whom Christina had named Mrs.

Johnnie Dunn, after the one woman in Orchard Glen who managed everything and everybody on her farm. Her namesake of the barnyard ruled all the other hens and saw to it that she was well provided herself.

"She never waits for Opportunity's bald spot, now does she?" said Uncle Neil, admiringly, as the busy, fussy lady made a leap and caught a grain of corn, in mid-air, while another hen was watching for it to fall upon the ground.

"What's Opportunity's bald spot?" enquired Christina. "How dare you have some information you haven't given me?"

"Don't you know the old story about Opportunity and his bald spot?"

enquired Uncle Neil delighted.

And then he told the ancient tale of Opportunity and his lock of hair that hung in front, and Christina listened with more than her usual absorption. She was making her second discovery.

"There!" she exclaimed, with an energy that sent the hens scurrying away, alarmed, from her feet. "That's just what's the matter with me.

I am always letting Mr. Opportunity walk past and then when I try to grab him I catch hold of his bald spot and he slips away."

"Well, well," said Uncle Neil, "I don't think he's walked past you very often. You're but nineteen to-day."

"I'm sure that's bad enough. That's nearly twenty, and then you're out of your teens. When I was eleven I made a solemn vow that I'd get a good education and go away off somewhere and attend college and be a lady. And here I am at nineteen, still feeding the pigs and milking the cows. I guess I haven't any of the Lindsay luck."

"The Lindsay luck was always spelled with a p in front, my la.s.s, and a capital P at that. You can have all of that ye want."

They went back up the blossoming orchard path, stopping at the pump, which was mid-way to the house, to take up a pail of water. They left it at the back door under the vines, and Uncle Neil went round to the garden at the other side of the old rambling house, to help his sister with her onions. Christina ran round to the side door where Grandpa was sitting in the sun on the old sloping porch. The old man saw her coming and drew back behind the vines. As she shot round the corner of the house he poked out his head suddenly with a loud and alarming "Boo!"

Christina jumped back with a scream that set the old man laughing heartily and kept him chuckling for an hour afterwards. Every morning of her life Grandpa played this little trick upon her from some corner, and Christina never forgot to scream in terror, and Grandpa's amus.e.m.e.nt was never abated.

She slapped him for frightening her, adding hugely to his enjoyment, and ran on into the kitchen. Ellen was almost ready to put the clothes on the line and Christina gave her a helping hand before going on with her own work, reminding her meanwhile of the pink dress that must be ready before the evening.

"We'll have to hire a woman to do the baking, and I guess Grandpa'll have to do the was.h.i.+ng when you leave," declared Christina. "I'd make a bargain with Bruce, if I were you, that he's to do the was.h.i.+ng himself, before I'd marry him."

Ellen laughed gaily. She and Bruce McKenzie had been sweethearts ever since their public school days, and the next Christmas they were going to start life together on Bruce's farm. Ellen was very radiant these days and Christina's warnings were a source of amus.e.m.e.nt.

When the snowy array was hung in the suns.h.i.+ne, Christina went down into the cool spring house to her churning. She stood at the door, whirling the dasher and looking up into the blossoming orchard, but seeing none of it. She was really very much concerned over this bald spot of Mr.

Opportunity. She had surely let him slip past her many a time, and here she was at nineteen and who knew if he would come again?

"I just _won't_ stay here working at you forever, now, mind that," she cried, slapping the b.u.t.ter viciously with her wooden paddle. "Just let Mr. Opportunity come along once more, and see if I let him go! Never again!"

And then she made a daring resolution. She would dress up, even if it was Monday morning, and go away down to the village, and see if some event wouldn't happen. Something told her that a great adventure was awaiting her just out there on the road if she would only go to meet it.

She packed away the b.u.t.ter in its firm golden bars, and went into the house. As she crossed the gra.s.sy open s.p.a.ce, an old-fas.h.i.+oned double buggy went rattling down the road. Some one in the back seat waved a gay parasol at her, and Christina responded with a flap of her ap.r.o.n.

It was two of the three Miss Grants going to town with their adopted nephew, Gavin Hume, who was now Gavin Grant. For the very summer that Christina had given her berries to the abused little orphan, the Grant sisters had rescued him from the dire possibility of being taken West by the Skinflint Jenkinses who were moving to the prairies. Gavin had grown very dear to the old ladies, and indeed it was the joke of the neighbourhood how much they petted him.

"There's Oor Gavie with two of his Aunties," called Christina to Ellen, who was looking through the door to see who was pa.s.sing. "I guess they are taking him to town to help him choose a new necktie."

Ellen laughed. The Grant Girls, as they were still called, were certainly foolish enough over Gavin to do it. They were still Mrs.

Lindsay's closest friends, and "Oor Gavie's" virtues were well known in the Lindsay family.

"I'm all done now," declared Christina, standing in the middle of the kitchen, and waving her ap.r.o.n vigorously. "And as it is my birthday, I think I'll go off and look for an adventure. I feel as if something's got to happen to-day, or I'll set fire to the house."

Her elder sister turned from her pie-baking to look at her. "Well, my goodness," she exclaimed, "sometimes I think you're not in your right mind." Ellen was staid and steady and well behaved and could never comprehend Christina's restlessness. "Whatever do you want now?"

"I want to go to the University; that's the exact truth. But as I can't go before dinner, I believe I'll walk down into the village instead, and see if I can meet Mr. Opportunity."

"Mr. What?" asked Ellen in alarm. If Christina had any smallest notion of dressing up and parading the 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 gla.s.s 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.