This history opens at a moment for Christian and her brethren when,
possibly for the last time in their several careers, they asked
nothing more of life. This was the beginning of the summer holidays;
the sky was unclouded by a governess, the sunny air untainted by the
whiff of a thought of a return to school. Anything might happen in
seven weeks. The end of the world, for instance, might mercifully
intervene, and, as this was Ireland, there was always a hope of a
"rising," in which case it would be the boys' pleasing duty to stay at
home and fight.

"Well, and Judith and I would fight, too," Christian would say,
thinking darkly of the Indian knife that she had stolen from the
smoking-room, for use in emergencies. She varied in her arrangements
as to the emergency. Sometimes the foe was to be the Land Leaguers,
who were much in the foreground at this time; sometimes she decided
upon the English oppressors of a down-trodden Ireland, to whose
slaughter, on the whole, her fancy most inclined. But whatever the
occasion, she was quite determined she was not going to be outdone by
the boys.

At nine years old, Christian was a little rag of a girl; a rag, but
imbued with the spirit of the rag that is nailed to the mast, and
flaunts, unconquered, until it is shot away. She had a small head,
round and brown as a hazel-nut, and a thick mop of fine, bright hair,
rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent
personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally
ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by
a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say
it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself
inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of