some untidy wisps of straight fair hair, and a great many freckles scattered over a shapely nose. Christina carefully replaced the mirror and moved on feeling like a thief. 

 Yes, she understood now why she was homely. It was her straight hair and those dreadful freckles. Mary had beautiful long black curls, and Ellen had brown wavy hair, and both of them tanned a lovely even brown with never a spot or blemish. Well, she would cure both maladies, see if she wouldn't! Mary said Joanna Falls washed her face and hands every night of her life in tansy and buttermilk. Christina would do the same, and she would buy some of that pink complexion cure that was in the corner store window, and which Tilly Holmes, the store-keeper's daughter, said would wash anything off your face, even a scar. And she would put her hair up in curl-papers every night, and best of all, she would take the twenty-five cents that Uncle Neil would give her, and after she had paid for the complexion cure, she would buy a yard of pink satin ribbon and tie up her hair and she would look as fine and handsome as Joanna Falls herself, and even Mrs. Johnnie Dunn would have to admit that she was as good-looking as any of the Lindsays! 

 And as if to put emphasis upon her vow, she tossed the last cupful of berries into her pail, and found it heaping full! She had won the money! She caught up her pail and hurried joyfully to the spot where she had last seen Sandy, her spirits rising at every step. She was already on the way to beauty and success, by way of tansy and buttermilk and twenty-five; cents worth of complexion cure and pink ribbon! 

 Unmindful of many scratches, she tore through a clump of briars, and almost tumbled over a small figure crouched in the pathway. It was a boy in a ragged shirt and a pair of trousers many sizes too large for him. He was kneeling beside an overturned pail, and was striving desperately to gather up a mashed heap of berries and sand. 

 "Oh," cried Christina, stopping short in sympathetic dismay, "oh, Gavin. What did you do?" 

 The boy looked up. He was holding his mouth in a tight line, manfully keeping back the misery his eyes could not hide.  "I—I jist fell over them," he said with a desperate effort at nonchalance. 

 Christina put down her pail and tried to help. She had never liked Gavin Hume. He was a Scotch boy, whom old Skinflint Jenkins' folks had adopted from an Orphan Asylum. He was dirty and shy, and at school the girls laughed at him and the boys 

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