his farm overalls, and drove up from the barn with the single buggy; and Mary, with a trim dust-coat over her pretty blue dress, came tripping down the orchard path and climbed into the buggy at his side. Mary taught school at a little corner called Greenwood, a couple of miles down the concession, and Sandy taught just two miles farther on. So every morning the two drove away to their schools and returned in the evening. Christina ran down the lane to open the gate for them. 

 "Now, be good, and don't go and do anything very wild just because it's your birthday," called Sandy. 

 "Oh, Christine," cried Mary, "don't let Ellen forget to wash my pink dress; I got some mud on it yesterday. And if you could iron it like a dear, I'd be ever so much obliged." 

 Christina promised willingly, and waved them a gay good-bye. She stood at the gate watching them as they turned down the broad white road. That road could be seen for miles from where she stood, winding away down over hill and through wooded hollow. It disappeared in a belt of forest but came into view again running along the margin of Lake Simcoe far off on the horizon, and away beyond her view it ended in a great city where Christina had never been. But that road always set her heart beating faster. It was the great highway that led out into the world, the road she longed to take. And always in the morning when she stood at the gate thus, just before turning back to the tasks that held her, it seemed to beckon her to come away. 

 And then she ran back to the barnyard to feed her chickens, and made the second Great Discovery about herself. 

 Uncle Neil came out of the noisy enclosure where the pigs were fighting with their morning meal, and helped her throw the feed to her quarrelsome brood. Uncle Neil had for years been a semi-invalid and spent his time doing the lighter work of the farm and garden. Though he had attended school only a few years in his childhood, he had a mind stored with the wealth of years of reading, held by an unfailing memory. And now that his physical ailments gave him more leisure, he was reading everything that was worth while that came to his hand. And he gave out his wealth generously to Christina as they did their work every morning in the barnyard. 

 They laughed together at one old hen whom Christina had named Mrs. Johnnie Dunn, after the one woman in Orchard Glen who managed everything and everybody on her farm. Her namesake of the barnyard ruled all the other hens 

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