other
to Christina at the same time.

"Well, well! and you'll both be leaving me soon!" he cried heartily.
"I'm getting used to sending off my boys to the University, but it's a
great event when I send one of my girls! Sandy, I want to hear of you
in Knox yet. That's your destination, don't forget. You'll make as
good a preacher as Neil any day. Well, well, and how are you to-day,
Miss Flora--and you Janet--?" He had passed on and was shaking hands
with the Grant Girls, giving Christina no chance to reply. She glanced
at Sandy; his eyes were on the floor, but she could read his face, and
she knew he was struggling with the bitterness of disappointment.

She was even more silent on the road home from church. Bell Brown and
Tilly Holmes chattered away on either side of her, asking questions
about where she would board in Algonquin, and what new dresses she
would get, and how long she would be at school before she would be
ready for the University, and wasn't she scared stiff at the thought of
studying hard for years and years the way folks had to do at college?

Christina answered absently and when she parted with them she surprised
herself by suddenly exclaiming:

"Oh, don't talk about my going any more, girls. Maybe I won't go after
all!" and fled from them before they could demand explanations.

That Sunday marked the opening of a period of misery for Christina.
She worked furiously in house and barnyard, striving to smother the
insistent voice that kept reiterating, "Whosoever will save his life
shall lose it."

She had caught Opportunity as he came to meet her, determined not to
fall into her old error, and now that she held him, her full hands were
unable to grasp a greater prize that was slipping away. Christina did
not realise all this; she only knew with a feeling of sick dismay that
Sandy was not going to college and that it lay within her power to let
him go.

She was still fighting her battle when Friday evening came, the night
of the greatest function of all Orchard Glen's weekly events. It was
the night when the Temperance Society met, and though it was still
early, Christina had finished her work and was ready as usual long
before the other two girls. She went down the orchard path and seated
herself beside Sandy on the old pump platform. Sport stretched himself
out at Sandy's feet, panting with the exertion of putting the cows in
their place and Christina's pet kitten curled up at her s