went far indeed to make her dramatic.  Lorne Murchison, when he was quite a little boy was affected by this and by the unfairness of the way it singled her out.  Moved partly by the oppression of the feeling and partly by a desire for information he asked her sociably one day, in the act of purchase, why the gilt was generally off her gingerbread.  He had been looking long, as a matter of fact, for gingerbread with the gilt on it, being accustomed to the phrase on the lips of his father in connection with small profits.  Mother Beggarlegs, so unaccustomed to politeness that she could not instantly recognize it, answered him with an imprecation at which he, no doubt, retreated, suddenly thrown on the defensive hurling the usual taunt.  One prefers to hope he didn’t, with the invincible optimism one has for the behaviour of lovable people; but whether or not his kind attempt at colloquy is the first indication I can find of that active sympathy with the disabilities of his fellow-beings which stamped him later so intelligent a meliorist.  Even in his boy’s beginning he had a heart for the work; and Mother Beggarlegs, but for a hasty conclusion, might have made him a friend.

It is hard to invest Mother Beggarlegs with importance, but the date helps me—­the date I mean, of this chapter about Elgin; she was a person to be reckoned with on the twenty-fourth of May.  I will say at once, for the reminder to persons living in England that the twenty-fourth of May was the Queen’s Birthday.  Nobody in Elgin can possibly have forgotten it.  The Elgin children had a rhyme about it—­

   The twenty-fourth of May
      Is the Queen’s Birthday;
   If you don’t give us a holiday,
      We’ll all run away.

But Elgin was in Canada.  In Canada the twenty-fourth of May was the Queen’s Birthday; and these were times and regions far removed from the prescription that the anniversary “should be observed” on any of those various outlying dates which by now, must have produced in her immediate people such indecision as to the date upon which Her Majesty really did come into the world.  That day, and that only, was the observed, the celebrated, a day with an essence in it, dawning more gloriously than other days and ending more regretfully, unless, indeed, it fell on a Sunday when it was “kept” on the Monday, with a slightly clouded feeling that it wasn’t exactly the same thing.  Travelled persons, who had spent the anniversary there, were apt to come back with a poor opinion of its celebration in “the old country”—­a pleasant relish to the more-than-ever appreciated advantages of the new, the advantages that came out so by contrast.  More space such persons indicated, more enterprise they boasted, and even more loyalty they would flourish, all with an affectionate reminiscent smile at the little ways of a grandmother.  A “Bank” holiday, indeed!  Here it was a real holiday, that woke you with bells and cannon—­who has forgotten the time the ancient piece of ordnance