"'Zat a fact? Then I've been fooled. Bought him on the grounds that he was a tartar. I keep him here for tramps. My name is Nathaniel Butterbloom and I'm just sorter camping here while I take off the harvest. I live down at Three Corners."
"Won't you sit down and share our breakfast?" said Pat lamely.
"Don't care if I do," said Mr. Butterbloom and sat down without more ado. "Sorry there ain't no table-cloth. I had one but the rats et it."
Pat, exchanging a grin with Suzanne, poured him a cup of tea and helped him liberally to bacon and toast.
"This IS a pleasant surprise and that's a fact. I've been scraping up my own meals. When I run out of provisions I fry a kitten," he added mournfully. "That barn out there is overrun with cats. I started out with three cats two years ago but there must be hundreds now."
"It's a wonder they don't keep the rats down," said Suzanne mischievously. "And your roof leaks very badly, Mr. Butterbloom."
"Well," said Mr. Butterbloom placidly, "when it rains I can't get up on the roof to work, can I? And when it's fine it doesn't leak."
"I'm sorry there is no milk for your tea," said Pat.
"There's some in the pantry if the spiders haven't got into it."
"They have," said Pat briefly.
Mr. Butterbloom drank his cup of tea and champed his bacon in silence. Suzanne had just whispered solemnly to Pat, "A strong silent man," when he wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and spoke again. "What mought your names be?"
"This is Miss Kirk ... and I'm one of the Gardiner girls from North Glen."
"Pleased to meet you both. And so you ain't married women?"
"No ... no." Suzanne shook her head in demure sadness.
"Neither am I. I've a widder woman keeping house for me at Three Corners. She isn't much of a cook but she rubs my back for me. I have to have my back rubbed for half an hour every night before I can sleep ... unless I'm lit up. I've heard of the Gardiners. Very genteel. I've never been in North Glen but I courted an old maid in South Glen for a while. I was younger then. She kept me dangling for a year and then up and married a widower. Since then I've sorter lost my enthusiasm for marriage."
He relapsed into silence while he polished off another helping. When the platter was empty he sighed deeply.
"Miss, that WAS a breakfast. After all, I may have made a mistake in not getting married." He fixed a fishy, speculative eye on Suzanne. "I haven't much book-larning but I've a couple of farms, nearly paid for."
Suzanne did not rise to this but she and Pat offered to wash the dishes before leaving.
"Never mind," said Mr. Butterbloom gloomily. "I don't wash dishes. The dog licks 'em clean. If you must be going I'll get out the hosses and haul your buzz-wagon out of the ditch."
He refused an offer of payment sadly.
"Didn't you cook my breakfast? But could you do with a kitten? There's several around just the right age."
Pat explained politely that they had all the cats needful at Silver Bush.
"It's of no consequence. I s'pose" ... with a sigh ... "it'll come in handy sometime when the cupboard is bare."
When they got out of sight of the house Pat stopped the car so that they might have a laugh. When two people have laughed ... really laughed ... together they are friends for life.
"Two unchaperoned females spending the night in a house with a drunken man," gasped Suzanne. "Let's pray the writer of 'North Glen Notes' never finds it out."
Nobody but Judy ever knew the whole story. Judy, of course, knew all about Nathaniel Butterbloom.
"A bit av a divil in his day," she said, "but he's too old now to cut up much. Innyhow, ye can be thankful he didn't ask ye to rub his back for him."
8
Pat had gone to her Secret Field, seeking the refreshment of soul she always found there. It was as beautiful and remote and mystic as ever, full of the sunshine of uncounted summers. The trees about it welcomed her and Pat flung herself down among the feathery bent grasses and listened to the silence until she felt at one with it and certain problems that had rather worried her of late dropped into proper focus as they always did in that sweet place, where the fairies still surely lingered if they lingered in the world at all. Under the ancient spell of the Secret Field Pat became a child again and could believe anything.
She went from it to Happiness by a narrow wood lane where ferns grew waist-high on either side. Pat knew all the little lanes in the woods and was known of them. They had their moods and their whims. One always seemed full of hidden laughter and furtive feet. One never seemed to know just where it wanted to go. In this one it always seemed as if you were in a temple. Overhead in the young, resinous fir boughs a wind was crooning a processional. The aroma drifting under the arches from old sunny hollows and lurking nooks was as the incense of worship, the exquisite shadows that filled the woods were acolytes, and the thoughts that came to her were like prayers.
"If one could only feel always like this," Pat had said once to Judy. "All the little worries swallowed up ... all the petty spites and fears and disappointments forgotten ... just love and peace and beauty."
"Oh, oh, but what wud there be lift for heaven, girl dear?" asked Judy.
The lane finally led out to the back fields of the other place and Pat found her way to Happiness and sat down near the Haunted Spring in a little hollow among the ferny cradle-hills. Far down before her, beyond the still, golden pastures, was the sapphire of the gulf. Over the westering hill of spruce a sunset of crimson and warm gold was fading out into apple green. And all this beauty was hers just for the looking. In these silent and remembered places she could think of old, beloved things ... of sunsets she and Hilary had watched there together ... Hilary, who at this very moment would be somewhere on the ocean on his way back from his summer in Europe. He had written her most delightful letters but she was glad he would soon be back in Canada. It would be pleasant to think that the Atlantic no longer rolled between them. She wondered a little wistfully why he couldn't have planned to stop off for a few days on the Island on his way to Toronto. She had asked him to. And he had never even referred to the invitation, although he had wound up his letter by saying "my love to Silver Bush." She could see from where she sat her name and his cut on a maple tree and overgrown with lichen. Pat sighed sentimentally. She wished she could be a child again with no worries. To be sure she had thought she had worries then ... father going west and thinking you were ugly and Joe running away to sea and things like that. But there had been no men then ... no question of beaus and people who persisted in turning into lovers when all you wanted of them was to be friends. Jim Mallory was in love with her now. She had met him at a dance in Silverbridge and, as Rae told Hilary in her next letter to him, he fell for her with a crash that could be heard for miles. He was a really fine fellow ... "oh, oh, that's something like now," Judy said, the first evening he came to Silver Bush. Pat liked him terribly ... almost as much as she liked Hilary and David. Rae told Judy she believed Pat was really in love but Judy had grown pessimistic under repeated disappointments.
"I've no great faith in it lasting," she said.
Pat, when she left home that night, hardly knew herself whether she wasn't a little bit in love or not. Certainly ... the look in his eyes ... the touch of his fingers when he lingered to say good-night under enchanted moons ... she hadn't felt like that since the days of Lester Conway. But her hour in the Secret Field and Happiness cleared the matter up for her. No, liking wasn't enough ... little thrills and raptures weren't enough. There must be something more before she could dream of leaving Silver Bush. Poor Jim Mallory never had a chance after that and in a week or two Long Alec was to ask his wife in a mildly exasperated tone what the dickens the girl wanted anyways. Was nobody good enough for her?