"Oh, Gavin, did you hear what he was saying, that Sandy might be a minister some day!" 

 "But that would be a great thing, wouldn't it?" asked Gavin, surprised out of his shyness at the grief in Christina's voice. 

 "But, I'm afraid—Sandy thinks we can't afford it this Fall. I mean for him to go to college," whispered Christina in distress.  "And if he doesn't go now he may not go at all. He has had to wait so long." 

 Gavin forgot his shyness entirely in his efforts to comfort her. 

 "But you must not be feeling so bad," he said gently.  "Is there no way to help it?" 

 Christina suddenly remembered that Mr. Sinclair had often told her mother that Gavin Grant had both the ability and the longing to be a minister, but he would never confess his desires, lest they trouble the Aunties. Perhaps he could understand her case and advise her, and in an impulsive moment, born of her great need, she told him all about the cloud that had been hanging over her during the past week. 

 "I want just dreadfully to go to college and get a good education," she finished up.  "You know all about it, I'm sure you do, don't you, Gavin? And now I've got my first real chance, and if I take it I'll be keeping Sandy back. Perhaps I'll be keeping him from being a minister, and wouldn't that be dreadful? And I don't know what to do." 

 It did not seem queer, somehow, for her to be asking Gavin's advice about this momentous question, but his position was especially difficult. He could not answer her for a few minutes. For he knew that he was not at all an unbiased judge. Next to his own going, he wanted more than anything else in the world that Christina should be left at home. He could hardly bear to think of what life in Orchard Glen would be like without the chance of looking at her in church or at meeting, and occasionally speaking to her. Indeed he would not have dared to take this bold plunge of asking to see her home to-night had he not known that it would likely be his last chance, and that she would soon be gone out of his life. 

 "I am afraid I would want to go if I was in your place," he confessed at last.  "But," he hesitated shyly, "Auntie Elspie always knows what is best, and she has always told me that we never lose a thing by giving it up for some one else. She gave up all her chances for Grandmother Grant and stayed home and cared for her. And she let their only brother 

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