Christina had been to town. She had gone alone, on an errand for John, because Sandy and Jimmie were both very busy in the harvest fields. It was a very warm, dusty day and she let Dolly walk leisurely on the homeward road. When she came to the village she stopped at the post office for the mail.
She would not have confessed for the sake of a college course that she was wondering if there was any possibility of meeting Wallace Sutherland there. Christina could not have stooped to the little subterfuges the other girls practiced to waylay him at the corner, but none the less she could not help wishing that she might encounter him in some way that would attract his attention. He was always so pleasant when she met him, but he raised his hat to her and said, "Good afternoon, Miss Christine," in exactly the way he spoke to Tilly or Bell Brown or Maggie Blair.
Marmaduke was sitting on the store veranda as she came up, and Trooper was leaning against the door-post, very smart and handsome in his uniform with his buttons and his spurs all aglitter. Bell Brown and Maggie Blair were there as usual, and as Mrs. Holmes was not in the store there was a great deal of hilarity.
Marmaduke, in his role of the village Lover, had been courting each of the girls in turn and immediately transferred his affections the moment Christina appeared.
"Hello, Christine!" he cried, "you don't get down here as often as these other girls do; and here I've been spendin' days jist waitin' for a sight of you. I've been jist that lonesome for you,—will you think just the same of me if I go to the war?"
"I'm sure even the war couldn't make me change my opinion of you, Duke," she answered with twinkling eyes. "Oh, Trooper!" she drew a long breath of admiration, "and you're really and truly going to the war!"
"You bet! Goin' in cavalry too, so I can make a swift get-away when the Germans take after me!"
"I'm thinkin' of goin' to the war myself," said Marmaduke, who was trying to cover up his real grief under an unusually frivolous exterior. "I might as well go and get killed if none o' yous girls 'll look at me. Honest now, Christine, what would you take and go west with me next Spring? Now that Trooper is leavin' I'm not goin' to hang round here any longer," he added with a touch of real seriousness.
"Well, I suppose I'd have to take my trunk, first of all," said Christina, "and Grandpa and Mother—I couldn't leave them."
"Pshaw," giggled Tilly, "he was askin' me that very same thing before yous girls came in, and I told him I'd take a gun so's I could shoot myself when we got there. No letters for your folks to-day, Christine, but your fellow's letter don't come till to-morrow anyhow," she added with a giggle at her joke.