She darted out to the garden to share the joke with Uncle Neil, and then she slipped into the house, unnoticed, and up to her own room. She felt as excited as if she were planning to run away. She dressed very carefully in her afternoon gingham of blue that looked pale beside the colour of her eyes. She made a coronal of her heavy golden brown braids, winding them round her shapely head, making a face at herself in the glass because the hair was so straight and her nose was so freckled. And then she slipped down the stairs like a thief and ran down the path behind the spring house. She would not have confessed it, even for a college course, but she was wondering if, in this wild expedition to meet Mr. Opportunity, one might not meet one's Dream Knight riding out there on the highway. For though Christina had never had a lover, she had her true Knight, who rode just beyond the horizon. And why shouldn't she meet him to-day? Anything wonderful was liable to happen on a May morning when you were just nineteen and were running away from the beaten track in search of adventure.
The path that ran down behind the spring house and across the corner of the clover field was the Short Cut to the village. It ran into a little grove, and there Sandy had made a very primitive stile to enable Mary to get over the fence without spoiling her Sunday clothes. All the fields were bordered with a fringe of feathery green bushes, from which rose the sweet roundelays of the song sparrows. The meadow larks soared and called to each other over the green-brown carpet of the earth, and away up against the dazzling blue of the sky the bob-o'-links danced and trilled. Christina gave a joyous skip as she entered the little grove. There the sunlight lay on the underbrush in great golden splashes, and the White Throat called "Canada, Canada, Canada," as if he could never leave off.
She ran joyously down the pathway that led to the road, and there, just at the edge of the stile, under the low bushes, her sharp eye caught something white. Her heart gave a leap; here, surely, was the Great Adventure waiting for her. She ran forward and found a basket hidden away under the stile. It was covered carefully with a newspaper, and, wonder of wonders, bore a card with her name, "Miss Christina Lindsay." She pulled it out breathlessly and tore off the cover. Beneath was a perfect glory of garden flowers, great crimson and golden tulips, narcissi, waxy white with golden hearts, purple hyacinths, filling the woods with their perfume, and such a wealth of daffodils as would take away the breath.
Christina stood with her arms full, and looked at them with a feeling that was very much like dismay. There was only one garden in the township that could produce a basket like that, and it belonged to her mother's friends, the Grant Girls, but Christina well knew they had not sent her the birthday gift. In a corner of the card was written in very small letters, "From G. G."
Though Christina was nineteen she had never had what was termed in Orchard Glen society, "a fellow." There was no girl having reached such an age without the pleasant experience of a special notice from some young man, but must stop and ask herself the reason. Christina had long ago put her poverty down to her lack of beauty. But she was not very much troubled over it, for her Dream Knight still rode gaily just beyond the horizon, and who knew when he might not ride up to her door? But though his outlines were very hazy, Christina knew in her heart that he was altogether and entirely unlike Gavin Grant.
Gavin was shy and awkward, and had lived so long away on the back concession with his Aunties, where the grass grew in the middle of the corduroy road, that he had grown as queer and old-fashioned as they were. But ever since the day Christina had saved him from Skinflint Jenkins' horse-whip, he had shown a tendency to follow her with adoringly humble eyes. He had made no further attempt to attract her attention until now. And here was his first gift! And worst of all he must have told his Aunts about it! Christina hastily pushed the basket back, and seating herself upon the stile, looked down at it.
The first offering from Love's treasure house could not but make the heart beat faster; but what a disappointment that it should come through Gavin Grant of all people! How Jimmie would tease her, and how Mary would laugh—Mary, who had so many beaux sending her presents that she did not know what to do with them all. And Sandy,—no, Sandy would not laugh. Sandy liked Gavin and said he was one of the best fellows he knew. But his virtues were not the sort that a Dream Knight possessed, especially when you were only nineteen and out on the road for adventure.
Christina sat on the stile and gazed down the road that crossed the little brown stream and then became the village street. She could see the church spire above the orchard trees, and hear the "cling clung" of Mark Falls' blacksmith shop, and the shouts of the school children out for their morning recess. But there was no smallest sign of an additional adventure. Evidently this was the announcement of her fate. And as she sat there, filled with restless longing, a car appeared in a cloud of dust away on the hilltop at the other end of the village, and even in the midst of her disappointment Opportunity was speeding towards her on rapid wheels.