What an exquisite profile Rae had as she lifted her face to her partner ... a tall Silverbridge boy. Rae had no lack of partners either. And the way she had of looking at them! Really, the child was getting to be quite a handful. Was there actually anybody standing back in the shadows behind Tillytuck? Pat had fancied several times there was but could never be quite sure. Probably Uncle Tom's hired man.
David hunted her out and insisted on her dancing ... and sitting out in the silver bush with him afterwards ... just far enough away from the dancers to make Tillytuck's fiddling sound like fairy music. Pat liked both. David was a capital dancer and she loved to talk with him. He had such a charming voice. Sometimes he was a little bitter but there was such a stimulating pungency about his bitterness. Like choke cherries. They puckered your mouth horribly but still you hankered after them. She would far rather sit here and talk to David than dance with boys who held you closer than you liked and paid you silly compliments, most of which they had picked up from the talkies.
Then a run into the house to see the baby. It was so heavenly to watch a baby asleep, with Judy crooning over it like an old weather-beaten Madonna. Judy was a bit upset on several counts.
"Patsy darlint, there do be some couples spooning on the flat monnymints in the graveyard. Do ye be thinking that dacent now?"
"It's not in the best of taste but we can hardly turn them out of it, Judy. It's only on Wild Dick's and Weeping Willy's. Wild Dick would sympathise with them and as for Weeping Willy ... who cares for his feelings? We don't count HIM among our glorious dead ... sitting down and crying instead of going bravely to work. Is that all that's worrying you, Judy?"
"It's not worrying I am but there's been a mysterious disappearance. The roll-jelly cake has gone out av the pantry and the bowl av whipped crame in the ice-house is gone. Siddy forgot to lock it. Bold-and-Bad do be licking his chops very suspicious- like but he'd have been laving the bowl at laste. Of coorse I can be whipping up more crame in a brace av shakes. But who cud have took the cake, Patsy? Niver did the like happen before."
"I suppose some of the boys have been playing tricks. Never mind, Judy, there's plenty of cake ... you said so yourself."
"But the impidence av thim ... coming into me pantry like that. Likely enough it was Sam Binnie. Patsy darlint, Rex Miller isn't here. Ye haven't been quarrelling wid him, have ye now?"
"No, Judy darling. But he won't be coming around any more. I couldn't help it. He was nice ... I liked him but ... Judy, don't be looking like that. When I asked him a question ... any question ... I always knew exactly what he'd answer. And he never ... really never, Judy ... laughs in the right place."
"Mebbe ye cud have taught him to laugh in the right place," said Judy sarcastically.
"I don't think I could. One has to be born knowing that. So I had to wave him gently away ... 'symbolically speaking.'"
"Oh, oh, ye'll be doing that once too often, me jewel," predicted Judy darkly.
"Judy, this love business is no end of a bother. 'In life's morning march when my bosom was young' I thought it must be tremendously romantic. But it's just a nuisance. Life would be much simpler if there were nothing of the sort."
"Oh, oh, simple, is it? A bit dull, I'm thinking. I've niver had inny love affairs mesilf to spake av but oh, the fun I've had watching other people's!"
Pat had been able to sidetrack Rex Miller "diplomatically" but she was not so fortunate with Samuel MacLeod ... probably because it had never occurred to her that he had any "intentions" regarding her. Samuel ... nobody ever called him Sam ... it simply couldn't be done ... came now and again to Silver Bush to confer with Pat and Rae on the programs of the Young People's Society, of which he was president, but no one, not even Judy, ever looked upon him as a possible beau. And now after supper, having asked Pat to dance ... Rae said that dancing with Samuel was almost as solemn a performance as leading the Young People's ... he followed it up by asking her to go for a walk in the garden. Pat steered him past the graveyard, which he seemed to mistake for the garden, and got him into the delphinium walk. And, standing there, even more dreadfully conscious of hands and feet than usual, he told her that his heart had chosen her for the supreme object of its love and that if she would like to be Mrs. Samuel MacLeod she had only to say the word.
Pat was so dumbfounded that she couldn't speak at all at first and it was not till Samuel, taking her silence for maidenly consent began gingerly to put a long arm around her, that she came to the surface and managed to gasp out,
"Oh, no ... no ... I don't think I can ... I mean, I'm sure I can't. Oh, it's utterly impossible."
As she spoke there was a smothered giggle on the other side of the delphiniums and Emmy Madison and Dot Robinson scuttled away across the lawn.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," cried Pat. "I never thought anybody was there."
"It doesn't matter," said Samuel, with a dignity that somehow did not misbecome him. "I am not ashamed to have people know that I aspired to you."
In spite of his absurd Victorian phrases Pat found herself for the first time rather liking him. He couldn't help being a South Glen MacLeod. They were all like that. And she made up her mind that she would never entertain Judy or Suzanne by an account of this proposal ... though to be sure that wretched Emmy and Dot would spread it all over the clan.
All in all, Pat drew a breath of relief when the last guest had gone and the last lantern candle expired, leaving the silver bush to its dreams and its moonlight. The party had been a tremendous success ... "the nicest party I've ever been to," Suzanne whispered before she took the hill road. "And that supper! Come up to-morrow night and we'll have a good pi-jaw about everything."
But when you were hostess there was, as Judy said, "a bit av a strain," especially with the proposal of Samuel thrown in. She turned from the gate and ran up the back walk, crushing the damp mint as she ran. The late August night had grown a bit chilly and Judy's kitchen, where a fire had been lit to brew the coffee, seemed attractive.
Pat halted in the doorway in amazement. There were Uncle Tom and the aunts ... mother ... Rae ... Judy ... Tillytuck ... dad ... and Uncle Horace! For of course the stranger could be nobody else.
Pat felt a little bit dazed as he rose to shake hands with her. This was not the Uncle Horace she had pictured ... neither the genial old rascal of Judy's yarns nor the typical tar of dad's reminiscences. He was tall and thin and saturnine, with hair of pepper and salt. With his long lean face and shell-rimmed spectacles he looked more like a somewhat dyspeptic minister than a retired sea-captain. To be sure, there was something about his mouth ... and his keen blue eyes ... Pat felt that she wouldn't have liked to head that mutiny against him.
"This is Pat," said Long Alec.
"Humph! I've been hearing things about you," grunted Uncle Horace as he shook hands.
Pat hadn't a glimmer whether the things were complimentary or the reverse and retreated into herself. Uncle Horace, it seemed, had arrived unexpectedly, walking up from Silverbridge. Finding a party in full swing he had decided not to show himself until it was over.
"Had some fun watching the dance from the bush," he said. "Some pretty girls clothed in smiles ... and not much else. I never expected to see P.E. Island girls at a dance with no clothes on."
"No clothes," said Aunt Edith, rather staggered. She had not graced the party but had come over to find out what was keeping Tom so late.