"My! If you let him study that hard he ought to be a doctor about next Christmas! Maybe he's hurrying up so's he can get married a year or two sooner!"
Ellen's face grew pale, but Mary was there. Mary Lindsay had always been a match for Joanna in a quiet elusive way, and now from the vantage ground of a rather brilliant marriage Mary McGillivray was still more to be feared.
"Oh, Joanna," she said suavely, "a long piece of your hair is hanging down at the back. There's a looking-glass on the wall over there where Trooper's standing. Would you like to go and fix it?"
Joanna flounced away into the bed-room completely routed. There was something subtle about Mary that one could not combat.
Bruce dropped in late at the next practice that was held in the church. He sat in the back seat and talked with the other boys during intermission, but his very presence seemed to make Ellen happy. She became radiant, and chatted and laughed gaily with the other girls, looking handsomer than she had for many a day.
When they started home, Christina, with an eye for Gavin, kept carefully in the crowd. But Gavin had turned and gone away at once with the other boys who were unattached. And with the perversity of a woman's mind Christina felt a little hurt. She wondered why he seemed to have stopped trying for her favour. Was it because he was discouraged, or because he did not care? She was so far from understanding Gavin that she did not guess that his pride was keeping him aloof.
Annie McKenzie and Ellen were ahead, and Christina found herself walking beside Bruce. This was not unusual, for Bruce had always been so much one of the family that he just as often walked with her or one of the boys as with Ellen. She was so happy that she was impelled to express her joy.
"It's so nice to see you at practice, Bruce," she said. "It's lonesome here when all the boys are away."
"Yes, it's good to be home again," said Bruce without enthusiasm. "But I think I've got the city fever rather badly. I just couldn't settle down in Orchard Glen, now that I've been away."
Christina sympathised. "I fancy I'll feel like that when I go away," she ventured.