"De ye be calling THAT a beau?" she demanded after his first visit in a tone that implied she would rather call it something the cats had brought in. Pat said she thought he snored and Cuddles remarked that he looked like spinach. After that, there was no more to be said and Long Alec, who rather favoured Dwight because he had prospects from a bachelor uncle, concluded that modern girls were hard to please. Aunt Hazel was quite cool to Pat for a time.
Bold-and-Bad had pneumonia in March but got over it, thanks, it was believed, to Tillytuck's ministrations. Tillytuck sat up with him two whole nights in the granary chamber, keeping him covered with a blanket in a box by the open window. Twice during each night Judy ploughed out to him through the snow to carry him a hot cup of tea and "a liddle bite." Gentleman Tom did not have pneumonia but he had a narrow escape of his own, which Judy related with gusto.
"Girls dear, niver did I be hearing av such a thing. Ye'll be remimbering that whin we had the rolled roast for dinner Sunday I did be taking out the string afore I tuk it to the table and throwing it into the wood-box? Oh, oh, and this afternoon whin I come in didn't Gentleman Tom be sitting there be the stove, wid something hanging from his mouth like a rat's tail. Whin I looked closer I saw it was a bit av string and I tuk hould av it and pulled it. I did be pulling out over a yard av it. The baste had swallied it till he was full av it and cudn't quite manage the last two inches and it did be that saved his life for niver cud he have digested it. But, girls dear, if ye cud have seen the look on his face whin I was pulling at the string! And from this out it's burning ivery roast string at once I'll be doing for we don't want inny more av our cats committing suicide in that fashion."
"Another joke for you to write to Hilary, Pat," said Cuddles slyly.
But at last they were throwing open the windows to let in the spring and Pat learned all over again how lovely young cherry trees were, waving whitely in green twilights, and the scent of apple blossoms in moonlight, and the colonies of blue grape-hyacinths under the dining-room windows. But there were some clouds on her horizon, no bigger than a man's hand yet fraught with worrisome possibilities. She could not settle down in perfect peace, even after housecleaning was, as Tillytuck said, "all done though not quite finished." There was a lick of paint to be administered here and there, some curtains to be mended, the early carrots to be thinned out and dozens of delightful little things like that to be attended to. But ever and anon what Hawthorne calls "a dreary presentiment of impending change" crept across her happiness like a hint of September coolness stealing athwart the languor of an August afternoon. For one thing, trees were dying everywhere as a result of the bitter winter or because of some disease. The cross little spruce tree at the garden gate, which had grown up into a cross big tree, died, and although Pat had liked it the least of all the trees she grieved over its death. It was heartrending to walk through the woods at the back and see a friend here and there turning brown or failing to leaf out. Even the huge spruce in Happiness was dying and one of Hilary's "twin spires."
For another thing, Judy was by now quite keen on going to Ireland for a visit in the fall. Pat hated the very thought but she knew she must not be selfish and horrid. Judy had served Silver Bush long and faithfully and deserved a holiday if any one ever did. Pat choked down her dismay and talked encouragingly. Of course Judy must go. There was nothing in the world to prevent her. Cuddles was going to try the Entrance in July and if she passed would likely be away at Queen's next year, but somebody could be got in to help Pat during Judy's absence. Judy would stay all winter of course. It would not be worth going for less and a winter crossing of the Atlantic was not advisable. The Atlantic! When Pat thought of the Atlantic rolling between her and Judy she felt absolutely sick. But Cuddles was "thrilled" about it all.
"Thrilled, is it?" said Judy rather sourly. "Ye'll be having thrills wid a vengeance if ould Mrs. Bob Robinson comes here in me place. She's the only one we can be getting, it sames. Oh, oh, what'll me poor kitchen be in her rajame?"
"But think of all the fun you'll have when you come back, putting it to rights, Judy."
"Oh, oh, ye've got the right philosophy av it," agreed Judy brightening up. "Did I be telling ye I had a letter from me cousin in Ireland to-day?"
They had been very curious about that letter. A letter for Judy was a phenomenon at Silver Bush. And Judy had been curiously affected by it. If it had been possible for her to turn pale she would have done so. She had taken the letter and stalked off to the graveyard to read it. All the rest of the day she had been strangely quiet.
"I sint her a scratch av me pin back a bit. I hadn't been hearing from her for over twinty years and thinks I to mesilf, 'Maybe she's dead but at innyrate I'll find out.' And to-day along comes her answer. Living and flourishing and that glad to think av me visiting her. And me ould Uncle Michael Plum do be living yet at ninety-five and calling his son av sivinty a saucy young felly whiniver he conterdicts him! It did be giving me a quare faling, Patsy. I'm thinking I know what it's going to be like on the resurrection day, no less."
"Hilary is going across this month," said Pat. "He has won the Bannister scholarship and is going to spend the summer in France, sketching French country houses."
Pat did not tell them everything about the matter. She did not tell them that Hilary had asked her a certain question again. If she could answer it as he wished he would spend the summer in P.E. Island instead of in France. But Pat was sure she couldn't answer it as he wished. She loved him so dearly as a friend but that was all.
"I'm putting into this letter," she concluded, "a little corner of the orchard, a young fir all overgrown with green tassel tips, that moonlit curve you remember in Jordan ... a bit of wild plum spray ... a wind that has blown over spice ferns ... the purr of a little cat and the bark of a little dog who desires to be remembered to you ... and always my best FRIENDLY love. Isn't that enough, Hilary, darling? Come home and enjoy these things and let us have one more summer of our old jolly companionship."
Her heart glowed with the thought of it. There never was such a chum and playfellow in the whole world as Hilary. But Hilary couldn't see it that way: and so he was going to France. Perhaps Hilary knew more about some things than Pat ever told him. Cuddles wrote to him occasionally and told him more of Pat's goings-on than Pat ever dreamed of. Hilary knew of all the would-be's who came to Silver Bush and it may be that Cuddles coloured her accounts a trifle highly. Certainly Hilary somehow got the impression that Pat had developed into a notable flirt, with no end of desperate lovers at her feet. Even when Cuddles wrote about Dwight Madison she did not mention his goggling eyes or the fact that he was an agent on commission for farm implements. Instead she said he was President of the Young Men's Bible Class and that dad thought him a very sensible young man who would have oodles of money when his bachelor uncle died. If it had not been for that dramatic epistle of Cuddles ... who honestly thought she was doing Pat a good turn by trying to make Hilary jealous ... Hilary might have come to the Island that summer after all. He was too used to being turned down by Pat as a lover to be discouraged by that alone.
Then there was the rumour that Sid was engaged to Dorothy Milton. Jealousy went through Pat like a needle whenever she heard it. Vainly she tried to comfort herself by thinking that, at any rate, Sid could not marry until the other place was paid for and a new house built on it. The old house had been torn down and the lumber in it used to build a new stable. Pat had felt sad over that, too. It had been Hilary's home and they had signalled back and forth on cool blue summer nights. As for Dorothy Milton, she was a nice girl undoubtedly and would be a very suitable wife for Sid if he had to marry some day. Pat told herself this a hundred times without making much impression on something that would not be reconciled. She was hurt, too, that, if it were true, Sid had not told her. They were such chums in everything else. He consulted her in everything else. Sid was taking over the running of the farm more and more, as Long Alec devoted himself to stock-raising on the other place. Every Sunday evening Pat and Sid would walk over the entire farm and note the crops and fences and plan for the future. It was Sid's ambition to make Silver Bush the best farm in North Glen and Pat was with him heart and soul. If only things could go on forever like this! When Pat read her Bible chapter one night she found the verse, "Meddle not with them that are given to change," and underscored it three times. Solomon, she felt, had gone to the root of things.