"I should say it was bad for your stockings," said Miss Bertha with a kind smile; "but I love to hear of your fighting your fears, Childie, and I shan't say a word against it!"
"Do you think the day will ever come when I can point to my heart like Puggy and Dawn do and say, 'Fear dwells not here?'"
For answer Miss Bertha put her arms round her, and held her close.
"I believe one day you will astonish us all," she said cheerfully, but she turned aside her head that Christina could not see the quick tears that had started to her eyes.
And a few days afterwards Christina did astonish every one very much.
It was a bright sunny afternoon. Puggy had gone out hunting with his sister. Mr. Maclahan was away from home. Miss Loder was busy writing letters in the schoolroom, and Christina was amusing herself in the garden. She had been up to the turret room and waved the flag for Dawn to come over and see her, but he had not appeared. He had borrowed a rough pony from a farmer, and had ridden off to the meet, with the firm intention of proving to Puggy that he was as good a horseman as himself.
So Christina, feeling rather lonely, betook herself to a small plot of ground that was considered her own. It was a bit of field fenced in round an old summer house, and in the summer house, the boys and she kept their garden games. She was tidying it up, an undertaking that she loved, when she heard the baying of hounds and the shouts of the hunt. They were coming right across the paddock in front of her. She came outside the summer house, and there, toiling along, hardly able to drag one foot before the other, covered with mud and slime, was the fox.
He was worn out, and, ignoring Christina, made straight for the summer house.
In an instant the little girl's tender heart was throbbing with sympathy for him, and as the whole pack of hounds came up in full cry, she shut the door upon the fox, and stood outside it in a fever of excited protest.
"You shan't have him!" she cried with scarlet cheeks and flashing eyes. "You shan't have him! I won't have him killed!"