A telegraphic message flashed across the table between Auntie Flora and Auntie Janet which Gavin did not see.
"We jist have no life with him at all," said Auntie Flora, "he's that thrawn."
"I think I'll jist have to take him in hand, myself," said the lively Auntie Janet.
"I can manage them all but Auntie Janet," Gavin said brazenly. "I didn't start early enough with her. I brought up the other two better. But I'll get her broken in, in time."
The three Aunties went off into loud gay laughter that echoed far out over the bright garden. They declared he was quite beyond them, and how did Christina suppose they ever put up with such a rascal?
They lingered long at the table and after the gay supper was over Christina was loath to go; she was having such a good time. So she did not need much coaxing to prevail upon her to stay till the cows were milked. They could surely do without her for once. It was Friday night and Jimmie would help Uncle Neil and the girls, she admitted. So she ran out to the barn with a pail, though Gavin was determined she should not milk, and she helped with the separator, doing everything with her usual swiftness, and the Aunties looked on in amazement and admiration.
The short Autumn evening had descended in a soft purple haze and a great round golden moon was riding up over Craig-Ellachie when Christina put on her hat and declared reluctantly that she must leave. She was ladened with gifts: a jar of tomato relish, a huge cake of maple sugar, a bottle of a new kind of liniment for Grandpa, and such an armful of dahlias and phlox and asters and gladioli as Christina had never seen in her life.
The Aunties and Gavin all came with her as far as the pasture bars where the tall ghosts of the corn stood whispering in the twilight. The two younger sisters were for going all the way with her over the hills, but Auntie Elspie, with her deeper insight, interfered.
"Gavie'll go and carry the flowers for you, Christina," she said. "We'll have to be gettin' away back, girls." And the girls, being young themselves, understood, and bade Christina good-night, with many admonitions to come back again and warnings to Gavie to take good care of her. Gavin put the bottle of liniment in one pocket and the catsup in another, the relish and the maple sugar in a third and bundling the bouquet under his arm in a fashion that made Auntie Flora scream with dismay, walked by Christina's side across the dim pasture field, with the golden and purple sunset ahead of them and the silver moonlight behind coming down over Craig-Ellachie. The night was warm and still and the endless song of the grass, the swan song of all that was left of Summer, filled the air.
Christina felt perfectly happy and care-free. A career seemed a far-off, nebulous thing that one need not fret over. It was very pleasant to be walking up over the hills in the moonlight and sunset with Gavin at her side carrying flowers for her. She felt it would be beautiful to be able to always stroll around this way with the scent of rosemary heavy in the air, and never to bother to look forward to a college course. They chatted away happily and she told him about their search for the Harebell, telling him that Uncle Neil said he would know, and he quoted long stanzas from "The Lady of the Lake," and "Marmion." And they discussed the new song-book he had bought and quarrelled over their favourite Scotch song. And he did not confess that his was the one she had heard him singing that afternoon as he ploughed the back field.