said Old Skinflint would thrash him, so I gave him mine."

"You did!" Sandy grunted. Christina was always doing things like that. "Well you're a silly. Why can't he keep his berries when he picks 'em? Never mind," he added, having reached the pie, and feeling generous, "I'll give you half the money, and we'll get some gum and a box o' paints."

Christina did not dare confess how she had planned to spend the money, and was not much comforted by his offer. Even paints would not permanently improve one's complexion.

"Sandy," she said at last, with much hesitation, "do you,—who do you think is the prettiest girl in our school?"

Sandy stared. He belonged to the Stone Age as yet, and knew nothing of the decorative, and less about girls. He had no notion that they were classified at all, except as little girls and big girls.

"How do I know?" he enquired, rather indignantly, as though his sister had suspected him of secret knowledge of a crime. "I don't know any that's good lookin'," he added conclusively.

"Our Mary's awful pretty," suggested Christina pensively.

"Is she?" Sandy lay back in gorged content, and gazed up into the swaying green sea of the Maples. "I bet she knows it mighty well, then, let me tell you."

"I heard the Grant Girls and Mrs. Johnnie Dunn talkin', when I was away back by Grants' fence. They were talkin' about our girls, and Flora Grant said they were all,—said that Ellen and Mary were so good-lookin' that she watched them in church."

Sandy was showing signs of interest. He sat up. "What did they say about you?"

"Flora said I was a 'nice bit lassock,' but Mrs. Johnnie said,"—Christina could not bring herself to tell the humiliating truth—"she said I wasn't like the rest," she finished falteringly.

Sandy was beginning to wake up to the fact that Christina was in distress. Why any human being should worry about her appearance was something far beyond Sandy's comprehension, but he could not endure to see Christina worried. He caught up a stone and shied it across the sunny tangle at an old Crow perched on a tall black stump.

"Sugar," he declared. "Who cares for what Mrs. Johnnie says? She looks like our old brindle cow herself. Duke Simms says she's got chilblains on her temper."

His stormy attack upon the enemy proved very bracing to the one who had been so recently overthrown by her.

"But the Grant girls said so too," she added, searching for more comfort.

"Just as if they knew," scoffed Sandy. "They're a lot of old rainbows, Duke says they are. Looks don't matter anyhow. It don't get you on any faster in school."

Christina, much encouraged, reflected upon this aspect of the case.

"I don't care," she decided courageously, making a new resolve, that had nothing to do with hair or complexion. "I'm going to study awful hard at school and beat everybody in the class, and then I'm going to college some day and be a lady. You'll just see if I don't. And it'll be far better to be clever than to be good-lookin', won't it, Sandy?"

That was just eight years ago, and now on her nineteenth birthday Christina was calling to mind with some amusement the humiliation of that day, and with some discouragement, that the high resolve of that occasion was far from being realised.

She came up the path from the barn, where the rays of the early sun made rosy lanes between the pink and white boughs of the orchard. For Christina had been born in the joyous May-time, and the whole farm was bedecked for the occasion. She was tall and straight and carried her two pails of milk with easy grace. The light through the orchard boughs touched her fair hair and made it shining gold. Her eyes were as blue as the strip of sky above her, and her cheeks were as pink as the apple blossoms. Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's judgment had not been reversed by the years, Christina was still a long way from being one of the Lindsay beauties. But she possessed an abundance of that loveliness that always accompanies youth and health and a merry heart.

She was not quite so gay as usual this morning. She felt that she ought to be grave and dignified, as befitted a person who was so old. It was no joke, this being nineteen, just next-door to twenty, when you wanted still to play with the dog or chase Sandy round the stack. Age makes one retrospective, too, and she was reflecting how far short she had come of attaining the great ambition born eight years ago in the raspberry patch. For here she was, on her nineteenth birthday, still milking cows and feeding calves, with not even a school teacher's certificate to her credit.

She had not failed to put forth every effort to attain, but somehow each high endeavour had turned out like the race for the quarter dollar in the berry patch; she was always just about to grasp the prize, when some unfortunate picker fell across her path with a spilled pail.

There was that day when she and Mary and Sandy were all ready to go to High School together. But Father died that summer, and it was decreed that the expense of three in the town could not be met. So Christina stayed, partly because the other two were older, but mostly because Mary cried bitterly at the suggestion that Christina go in her place.

Then there came a second chance when Sandy had graduated and started to teach school, but Grandpa took very ill and could not bear that she leave him. The third time proved the charm, for she did get away, and for a whole year spread her wings gloriously in Algonquin High School. She did wonders, too, taking two years' work in one, but the crops were poor the next year and Mary had to take her term at the Teachers' Training School, and the expense for two could not be met.

And so here she was at nineteen, burning to be up and away, and vowing to herself that not another year would pass over her head and find her still in Orchard Glen milking cows and feeding chickens.

The world about her did not seem to be in accord with her thoughts. It was full of joy and contentment with its beautiful lot. The robins in the gay orchard boughs were shouting that it was a glorious place to live in. Away up in the elm tree before the house an oriole was blowing his little golden trumpet, his flashing coat rivalling the row of scarlet and golden tulips that bordered the garden path. The little green lawn before the house sparkled under a diamond-spangled web.

From beyond the pink and white screen of the orchard came the happy sounds of the barnyard; the clatter of the bars as Sandy turned the cows into the back lane; Old Sport's bark; Jimmie's high voice scolding the calf that was trying to swallow the pail for breakfast; the squeal of hungry little pigs; the clatter of hens and many other voices making up the Barnyard Spring Song.

Christina's pet kitten, a tiny black blot on the pink and green, came daintily down the path to meet her, mindful of her two pails of warm milk. Sport, who had succeeded in putting the cows into their places, came bounding up in a fit of boisterous familiarity, and leaped at the little black ball with a gay,

"Woof! How are you this morning, you useless black mite?"

Two indignant green spots flamed up in the blackness and the mite itself turned into a fierce little bow, bent to shoot, and in a flash, bow quiver and all shot like lightning up the tree, spitting arrows in all directions.

Christina forgot all about her ambitions and laughed aloud, and Sport joined her, leaping around her and laughing silently in his own dog fashion with tongue and tail. It was very hard to remember that one was nineteen and had never been anywhere nor attained anything, impossible to remember when the orchard was aflame in the sunrise, and the oriole was shouting from the elm tree. Christina burst into song, just as spontaneously as the robins.

It was a very foolish song, too, one that Jimmie had brought home from Algonquin High School:

"Oh, Judy O'Toole,
It's you that's the fool,
For lavin' the