ole nature." And surely Mrs.
Jarvis would think she was genteel and know that the wild streak had
completely disappeared--"together with all actual transgressions which
proceed from it." Elizabeth then and there solemnly vowed that she
would neither run nor jump, nor climb a fence, not even the little low
one between their pasture-field and Tom Teeter's, until Mrs. Jarvis's
coming.

And so the morning passed slowly in a struggle between a restless body,
a restless mind, and a restless soul, all tending in different
directions, and at last they stood in a row before their aunt to recite
their morning's task. Even little Jamie had his verse of Scripture to
lisp, and was patted on the head when he stammered out:

"De people dat sat in dawkness saw a dwate night."

Everyone acquitted himself well except Elizabeth. The catechism
refused to disentangle itself from the jumble of bird-voices and
dream-voices with which it was mixed; and she went out to dinner with
hanging head and tear-dimmed eyes.

The light lunch of cold boiled beef and potatoes was soon disposed of,
and then the hour for starting to Sunday school had arrived, bringing
with it a great relief, and making Elizabeth completely forget her
troubles.

The Gordons had an old speckled gray horse and a queer basket phaeton,
left by the eccentric Englishman in The Dale stables years before. Mr.
Gordon used them to convey him to the town hall, some miles distant,
where the township council meetings were held, but Miss Gordon always
drove to church in this family carriage, accompanied by Malcolm, and
with little Jamie on her knee, while the remainder of the family walked.

The church, like the school, lay a couple of miles south of The Dale,
away at the other side of a great hill. There were two roads leading
thither. The one used by the school children on week-days was called
the Short Cut. It ran down The Dale lane, crossed the pond beside
MacAllister's mill, went up the opposite bank, over a wild half-cleared
stretch of land called The Slash, through old Sandy McLachlan's wood,
and by way of his rickety gate out on to the public highway a few yards
from the school. It was much shorter this way than going "down the
line," though strange to say it took far longer to traverse it on a
schoolday, for it was a very enjoyable road indeed, from which one was
ever making side excursions after berries or nuts or wild grapes, and
which admitted of endless ways of