ed. She and Sandy had been
racing all morning to see who would be the first to fill a four-quart
pail. For Uncle Neil had promised the winner unheard-of wealth, a
whole quarter of a dollar to spend as one wished, and Christina was
determined that the money should be hers.

She had found a wonderful patch and was fairly pouring the berries into
her pail in a red and black shower. She was keeping well down behind a
clump of alder, too, out of range of Sandy's roving eye. For Sandy had
a habit of allowing you to find the best place, and then swooping down
upon it like a plague of grasshoppers. She was working so hard that
she did not notice a group of berry pickers who had taken up their
station right opposite her on the Grant side of the low fence, and was
suddenly attracted by the discovery that they were discussing her own
family.

"Them Lindsay lassies are that bonnie, I jist like to sit and look at
them, even in church when I ought to be looking at my Bible."

It was Miss Flora Grant's soft voice that came through the screen of
sumach and alder.

"They've all taken after their mother's folks." It was Miss Elspie's
still softer voice. "The MacDonald women of that family was all good
lookin'."

"Well, my grief! You don't call that long-legged youngest thing
good-lookin', do you?" sang out the loud voice of Mrs. Johnnie Dunn.
"She's as homely as a day-old colt!"

The long-legged youngest thing nearly jumped out of her hiding place on
the other side of the bushes. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the
last speaker, her long, thin neck and green sunbonnet sticking up out
of a tangle of bushes, like a stinging nettle in a garden.

"Oh, you mean little Christina," said Flora Grant gently, "I jist
didn't mind about her. No, she's a nice bit lassock, but she's not
bonnie. Eh, Sarah, jist look at yon patch over there; the bushes is
jist as rid as roses!"

They all moved away with a sound of tearing briars, and the Lindsay
lass that was not bonnie crawled deeper into her leafy hiding-place,
making a brave effort to choke back something that was causing her
throat to swell and her eyes to smart. Crying was a luxury never
indulged in, in the Lindsay family, except in the case of a real
calamity like falling out of the hay mow, or tearing your Sunday dress,
and Christina dared not run the risk of having Sandy find her in tears
over mere hurt feelings.

Nevertheless it was a very dreadful thing, quite worth cr