"Old Matilda Binnie has a new set of teeth and a new fur coat," said Tillytuck. "Now, if she could get a new set of brains she might do very well for a while." He took a few whiffs at his pipe and then added gravely, "Symbolically speaking."
4
Aunt Edith died very suddenly in August. They all felt the shock of it. None of them had ever loved Aunt Edith very much ... she was not a lovable person. But she was part of the established order of things and her passing meant another change. Oddly enough, Judy, who had had a life-long vendetta with her, seemed to mourn and miss her most. Judy thought life would be almost stodgy when there was no Aunt Edith to horrify and exchange polite, barbed jabs with.
"Whin I think I'll niver see her in me kitchen agin, insulting me, I do be having a very quare faling, Patsy dear."
It was of course May who told Pat, with much relish, that Hilary Gordon was engaged. Some Binnie had had a letter from another Binnie who lived in Vancouver and knew the girl. She and Hilary were to be married when he returned from his year abroad and he was to be taken into the noted firm of architects in which her father was the senior partner.
"He was a beau of yours long ago, wasn't he, when you were a young girl?" asked May in a malicious drawl.
"I think it's true," Rae told Pat that night. "I heard it some time ago. Dot has friends in Vancouver and they wrote it to her. I ... I didn't know whether to tell you or not."
"Why on earth shouldn't you tell me?" said Pat very coldly.
"Well ..." Rae hesitated ... "you and Hilary were always such friends ..."
"Exactly!" Pat bit the word off and her brook-brown eyes were full of a rather dangerous fire. "We have always been good friends and so I would naturally be interested in hearing any good news about him. All that ... that hurts me is that he should have left me to hear it from others. Rae Gardiner, what are you looking at me like that for?"
"I've always thought," said Rae, taking her life in her hands, "that you ... that you cared much more for Hilary than you ever suspected yourself, Pat."
Pat laughed a little unsteadily.
"Rae, don't be a goose. You and Judy have always been a little delirious on the subject of Hilary. I've always loved Hilary and always will. He's just like a dear brother to me. Do you realise how many years it is since I've seen him? Of course we've drifted apart even as friends. It was inevitable. Even our correspondence is dying a natural death. I haven't had a letter from him since he went abroad."
"I was only a child when he went away but I remember how I liked him," said Rae. "I used to think he was the nicest boy in the world."
"So he was," said Pat. "And I hope he's going to marry some one who is nice enough for him."
"He really was in love with you, wasn't he, Pat?"
"He thought he was. I knew he would get over that."
"Well ..." Rae had been irradiated all day with some secret happiness and now it came out ... "Brook is coming over for a week before college opens. I do hope Miss Macauly will have my blue georgette done by that time. And I think I'll have a little jacket of that lovely transparent blue velvet we saw in town to go with it. I feel sure Brook will love me in that dress."
"I thought he loved you in any dress," teased Pat.
"Oh, he does. But there are degrees, Pat."
"And no one," thought Pat a little drearily, "cares how I'm dressed."
She looked out of the window and saw a rising moon ... and remembered old moonrises she had watched with Hilary ... "when she was a girl." That phrase of May's rankled. And Mrs. Binnie had been rather odious the other day, assuring her again there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it ... apropos of the announcement of the engagement of a South Glen girl to Donald Holmes.
"You're young enough yet," said Mrs. Binnie soothingly. "And when people say you're beginning to look a bit old-maidish I always tell them, 'Is it any wonder? Think of the responsibility Pat has had for years, with her mother ill and so much on her shoulders. No wonder she's getting old-looking afore her time.'"
Pat had got pretty well into the habit of ignoring Mrs. Binnie but that phrase "young yet" haunted her. She went to the mirror and looked dispassionately at herself. She really did not think she looked old. Her dark brown hair was as glossy as ever ... her amber eyes as bright ... her cheeks as smooth and rounded. Perhaps there were a few tiny lines in the corners of her eyes and ... WHAT WAS THAT? Pat leaned nearer, her eyes dilating a little. Was it ... could it be ... yes, it was! A grey hair!
5
Pat went up to the Long House that night. She walked blithely and springily. She was not going to worry over that grey hair. She would not even pull it out. The Selbys all turned grey young. What did it matter? She would not grow old in heart, no matter what she did in head. She would always keep her banner of youth flying gallantly. Wrinkles might come on her face but there should never be any on her soul. And yet there had been a moment that day when Pat had felt as if she didn't want to be young any longer. Things hurt you too much when you were young. Surely they wouldn't hurt so much when you got old. You wouldn't care so much then ... things would be settled ... there wouldn't be so many changes. People you knew wouldn't always be running off to far lands ... or getting married. Your hair would be ALL grey and it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't be eating your heart out longing for a lost paradise.
Altogether it had not been a pleasant day. May had had a fit of the sulks and had taken it out slamming doors ... Rover had eaten a plateful of fudge Pat had set outside to cool ... Judy had seemed down-hearted about something ... perhaps the news about Hilary though she never referred to it but only muttered occasionally to herself about "strange going-ons." Pat decided that she felt a trifle stodgy and needed something to pep her up a bit. She would find it at the Long House ... she always did. Whenever life seemed a bit grey ... whenever she felt a passing pang of loneliness over the changes that had been and ... worse still ... would be, she went up the hill to David and Suzanne. Whenever the door of the Long House clanged behind her it seemed to shut out the world, with its corroding discontents and vexations. Once, Pat thought with a stab of pain, she had felt that way when she went into Silver Bush. That she couldn't feel so any longer was a very bitter thing ... a thing she couldn't get used to. But to-night as she and David and Suzanne sat around the fire--it was a cool September night and any excuse served when they wanted to light that fire ... and cracked nuts and talked ... or didn't talk ... the bitterness faded out of Pat's heart as it always did in their company. Suzanne was rather quiet, sitting with Alphonso curled up in her lap: but Pat and David never found themselves lacking for something to say. Pat looked at the motto that ran in quaint, irregular letters around the fireplace.
"There be three gentle and goodlie things, To be here, To be together, And to think well of one another."
That was true: and while it remained true one could bear anything else, no matter what sort of a hole it left in your life. What a dear Suzanne was! And what nice eyes David had ... very whimsical when they were not tender and very tender when they were not whimsical. And his voice ... what did his voice always remind her of? She could never tell but she knew it was something that always tugged at her heart. And she knew he liked her very much. It was nice to be liked ... nice to have such friends to come to whenever you wanted to.
David walked home with her as he always did. Pat had never until to-night stopped to think how very pleasant those walks home were. To-night the hills were dreamy under a harvest moon. They went through the close-set spruce grove that always seemed to be guarding so many secrets ... down the field path under the Watching Pine that still watched ... for what? ... over the brook and along the Whispering Lane. At the gate where they always parted they stood in silence for a little while, lost in the beauty of the night. Faint music came to them. It was only Tillytuck playing in his lair but, muted by the distance, it sounded like some fairy melody under a haunted moon. Beyond the trees were great quietudes of sky where burned the stars that never changed ... the only things that never changed.