"It wudn't be inny great odds if she didn't, Cuddles dear," said Judy, who was enjoying Rae's "nonsense" immensely. "The woman has no great gumption. I used to be hearing she was one to give her fam'ly b'iling hot soup on a dog-day. Peter do be getting his sinse from his father's side."
"Last night I ALMOST told him I'd marry him. But I had sense enough to know it was just the moon. I could be in love with anybody when the moon is just right. Pat, don't look so disapproving. You've no right to. YOU'VE been known to change your mind. I wish I could make up my mind ... I really do. It's so wearing. I never thought I could be in such a predicament."
"I don't believe you care a pin for either of them," said Pat impatiently.
"Pat, I do ... I really do. That is the exasperating part of it ... the part that doesn't square with books."
"Why not send them both packing and go on with your college course? You used to want to be a doctor."
Rae sighed.
"It costs too much. And besides ... my ambition seems to have petered out ... no, that isn't a pun, really it isn't. We're like that at Silver Bush, it seems, Pat. We're just domestic girls after all and want a home to potter over, with a nice husband and a few nice babies."
"Oh, oh, that's the only sinsible word ye've said to-night, Cuddles darlint," grinned Judy. She knew her Cuddles and did not take her dilemma very seriously. It was all the darlint's fun and added to the gaiety of life at Silver Bush. Some fine day Cuddles would find out which of those nice lads she liked best and there would be a fine wedding and Cuddles would settle down not far from home, as Winnie had done. So Judy hoped in her inveterate match-making old heart. It was only Pat who worried over it. Somehow she could not picture Rae either as Mrs. Bruce Madison or Mrs. Peter Alward. But she asked herself honestly was it because she thought Rae did not care enough for either of them or was it because she hated the change another marriage would bring to Silver Bush?
"Just be letting it alone, Patsy dear," advised Judy. "The Good Man Above do be having things in hand, I'm belaving."
2
It was spring ... it was summer ... it was September ... it was almost another autumn. Pat had come home from a three weeks' visit in Summerside, where Aunt Jessie had been ill and Pat had been keeping house for Uncle Brian. Now she was home again and oh, it was good! Was the sunshine amber or was it gold? How gallant the late hollyhocks looked along the dyke! How alive the air was! What a delightful smell the apple orchard had in September! How adorable were two fat pussy cats rolling in the sun! And the garden welcomed her ... WANTED her.
"Any news, Judy? Tell me everything that's happened while I've been away. Letters never tell half enough ... and Rae's have really been sketchy."
"Oh, oh, Rae!" Judy looked rather as if the world were on its last legs, but Pat was too absorbed in Silver Bush generally to notice it. Tillytuck coughed significantly behind his hand and remarked that Cupid had as usual been busy at Silver Bush.
"Oh, Peter and Bruce, I suppose," laughed Pat. "Is Rae going to keep those poor wretches dangling forever? It's really getting past a joke. Where is she by the way?"
"She did be climbing the haystack in the Mince Pie Field half an hour ago, just after she did be getting home from school," said Judy, frowning at Tillytuck.
Pat betook herself to the Mince Pie Field where a splotch of colour on a half-used haystack betrayed Rae's whereabouts. Pat scrambled up the ladder and Rae grabbed her.
"Darling, I'm so glad you're back. It seems like a hundred years since you went to Summerside. I've just been lying here, letting my thoughts ripen and grow mellow. I think there's a caterpillar on my neck, but it doesn't matter. Even caterpillars have rights."
Pat slipped down beside Rae with a sigh of enjoyment. How blue the sky was, with those great banks of golden cloud in the south! Pat didn't like a cloudless sky ... it always seemed to her hard and remote. A few clouds made it friendly ... humanised it. How cool and delicious was the gulf breeze blowing round them, bringing with it all kinds of elusive whiffs from all the little dells and slopes of the old farm. The Buttercup Field was a pasture this year. Pat remembered how she and Sid used to play in that field when the buttercup glory came up to their heads.
"Isn't it heavenly just to lie quiet like this and soak yourself in the beauty of the world?" she said dreamily.
Rae did not answer. Pat turned her head and looked at her sister lying in her lithe young slimness on the hay. How very soft and radiant Rae's eyes were! There was something about her ...
"Pat darling," said Rae, "I'm engaged."
Pat felt as if a thunderbolt had hit her.
"Rae ... let me see your tongue."
"No, I'm not feverish, beloved ... really, I'm not."
"Are you serious, Rae?"
"Absolutely. Oh, Pat, I'm just weak and trembly with happiness. I never knew any one could be so happy. It's only three weeks since you went away but everything has changed. Pat, life has just seemed like a story-book these three weeks, and every day an exciting chapter."
Pat had got her second wind but she, too, felt weak and trembly with something that was not exactly happiness.
"Which is it ... Bruce or Peter?" she asked a bit drily.
Rae gave a young, delightful laugh.
"Oh, Pat, it's neither of them. It's Brook Hamilton."
Pat felt stunned.
"WHO is Brook Hamilton?"
Rae laughed again.
"Fancy any one not knowing who Brook Hamilton is. I can't believe I didn't know him myself three weeks ago. I met him the first night you went away at Dot's dance ..."
"Rae Gardiner, you don't mean to tell me you're engaged to a man you've known only three weeks!"
"Don't go off the deep end, darling. We're not to be married till he's through college so we'll have lots of time to get acquainted. And he's my man ... there's no mistake about that. At nine o'clock that evening I had never seen him. At ten I loved him. Judy says it happens like that once in a thousand years. I never believed in love at first sight before ... but now I know it's the only kind."
"Rae ... Rae ... I thought that once, too ... I was sure I was madly in love with Lester Conway ... and it was nothing but the moon ..."
"There wasn't any moon the night of Dot's party, so you can't blame this on the moon."
"I suppose," said Pat sarcastically, "he's extremely handsome and you've fallen for ..."
"But he isn't. I think he's ugly really, when I think of his face at all. But it's such a delightful ugliness. And he has such steady blue eyes and such dependable broad shoulders, and such thick black hair ... though it always looks as if he'd combed it with a rake. But I like that, too. He wouldn't be Brook if he had sleek hair. Dearest, it's all right ... it really is. Mother and Dad like him and even Judy approves of him. We're to be married when he's through college and go to China."
"China!"
"Yes. He's going to take charge of the Chinese branch of his father's business there ... I forgot to tell you he's one of the Halifax Hamiltons and Dot's cousin."
"But ... China!"
"It DOES sound like a long hop. But, really, darling, nothing matters ... Indian plains or Lapland snows ... so long as I'm with him. I don't talk like this to the others, Pat ... but with you I've just got to let myself go."
"And what about Bruce and Peter?" asked Pat, with a faint smile.