In Orchard Glen

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

Trooper came tearing back to Orchard Glen, the finest sight the place had ever seen, in a smart uniform the colour of the dun fields he had forsaken so gaily. The day he burst upon the village there was such a crowd around him at the post office that it looked like election times and Dr. McGarry neglected his practice and followed him about.

"Eh, if I was only ten years younger I'd be going with you, Trooper," he cried enthusiastically. "Perhaps, I'll get there yet. There'll be plenty more going over before this business is done. None of us has any idea what this war is going to be like, let me tell you."

"It'll not last long," declared Mr. Holmes, not so much from conviction as because that was the opinion he had given forth at first and he must adhere to it. Besides he and the Doctor were opposed in politics and religion, and they would naturally hardly agree about the war.

Trooper continued to be the centre of attraction for the few days he spent at home before he was called to Valcartier. Though he was in the village for such a short time he found an opportunity to assist Marmaduke in a farewell piece of mischief, and though neither of them had any notion of involving Christina in their prank, she, quite accidentally, became one of the most interested parties.

The two village mischief-makers had long been hatching a plot to get Wallace Sutherland away from his mother and off with the girls. Trooper had promised the first one who would capture him and take him home with her to supper before he left, the biggest box of chocolates he could buy in Algonquin.

Though Wallace Sutherland had been living quietly in Orchard Glen all summer, his prospects were much better than they had been on his return home.

When Uncle William was in his most adverse mood, he had written a caustic letter hinting that he had grave doubts concerning Wallace's ill health interfering with his examinations. And just that very week, a kindly fate intervened, and Wallace became really ill. Dr. McGarry waited on him hand and foot, giving him every care possible, and at the same time declaring that it was nothing but too much to eat and too little to do that ailed the boy.

When Uncle William heard, however, he really repented of his hard heart; not very humbly, for that was not Uncle William's way, but quite substantially, nevertheless. He did not believe in agreeing with his adversary too quickly, so he wrote to his brother instead of to his nephew. He admitted that he might possibly have been too hasty with the young rascal, and he would give him one more chance, and only one. He might come back to the University at Christmas, and if he could take the supplemental examination that would be set for him, then, he could go on to the end of his course. Uncle William did not think it would be wise to let him return this coming Autumn, he ought to be kept in exile for a little while longer. And they would have to see that he studied; make him sweat a bit over his failures and a few months up in that backwoods concession where Peter lived would be beneficial, it might induce meditation; there must be lots of quiet lying around loose in that forsaken region. And above all things they must try to knock it into his head that this was absolutely his last chance.

Uncle William McGarry was one of those Canadians who, having made money in the great United States, was convinced that there was nothing good in Canada, since he had always been rather poor there. His attitude always nettled the Doctor who was a warm Britisher, and when he answered the letter there was more about the young men who were responding to the call of the Empire from this same back concession, than there was about the subject in hand.

Nevertheless Wallace's prophecy had come true. Uncle Will had recovered from his bilious attack. His convalescence took rather longer than the young optimist had expected, but as his recovery seemed sure, there was nothing more to worry about except the intervening studies. He went at his lessons with a right good will, and then something happened that disturbed the even course of his life. And that was the prank that Trooper and Marmaduke played before the former went to the war.