She darted out to the garden to share the joke with Uncle Neil, and then she slipped into the house, unnoticed, and up to her own room. She felt as excited as if she were planning to run away. She dressed very carefully in her afternoon gingham of blue that looked pale beside the colour of her eyes. She made a coronal of her heavy golden brown braids, winding them round her shapely head, making a face at herself in the glass because the hair was so straight and her nose was so freckled. And then she slipped down the stairs like a thief and ran down the path behind the spring house. She would not have confessed it, even for a college course, but she was wondering if, in this wild expedition to meet Mr. Opportunity, one might not meet one's Dream Knight riding out there on the highway. For though Christina had never had a lover, she had her true Knight, who rode just beyond the horizon. And why shouldn't she meet him to-day? Anything wonderful was liable to happen on a May morning when you were just nineteen and were running away from the beaten track in search of adventure. The path that ran down behind the spring house and across the corner of the clover field was the Short Cut to the village. It ran into a little grove, and there Sandy had made a very primitive stile to enable Mary to get over the fence without spoiling her Sunday clothes. All the fields were bordered with a fringe of feathery green bushes, from which rose the sweet roundelays of the song sparrows. The meadow larks soared and called to each other over the green-brown carpet of the earth, and away up against the dazzling blue of the sky the bob-o'-links danced and trilled. Christina gave a joyous skip as she entered the little grove. There the sunlight lay on the underbrush in great golden splashes, and the White Throat called "Canada, Canada, Canada," as if he could never leave off. She ran joyously down the pathway that led to the road, and there, just at the edge of the stile, under the low bushes, her sharp eye caught something white. Her heart gave a leap; here, surely, was the Great Adventure waiting for her. She ran forward and found a basket hidden away under the stile. It was covered carefully with a newspaper, and, wonder of wonders, bore a card with her name, "Miss Christina Lindsay." She pulled it out breathlessly and tore off the cover. Beneath was a perfect glory of garden flowers, great crimson and golden tulips, narcissi, waxy white with golden hearts, purple hyacinths, filling the woods with their perfume, and such a wealth of daffodils as would take away the breath. Christina stood with her arms full, and looked at them with a feeling that was very much like dismay. There was only one garden in the township that could produce a basket like that, and it belonged to her mother's friends, the Grant Girls, but Christina well knew they had not sent her the birthday gift. In a corner of the card was written in very small letters, "From G. G."