“I was bad friends with it when I came up here,” said Pat frankly, letting herself thaw a little more. “You see, I really did resent you…anybody…coming in here. It seemed to belong to a dear friend of mine who used to live here…and died six years ago.”

“But you don’t resent us any longer, do you? Because now you know we love this place, too. We’ll be good to your ghosts and your memories, Miss Gardiner.”

“I’m just Pat,”…letting herself go completely.

“Just as I’m Suzanne.”

Suddenly they all felt comfortable and congenial. Ichabod lay down…Alphonso really went to sleep. The applewood fire crackled and sputtered companionably. About them was the velvet and shadow of the oncoming night with dreaming moonlit trees beyond. In the spruces little winds were gossiping and far below the river gleamed like a blue ribbon tied around its green hill.

“I’m so glad the view goes with the house,” said Suzanne. “You don’t know how rich it makes me feel just to look at it. And that old garden is one I’ve always dreamed. I knew I had to have wisteria and larkspur and fox-gloves and Canterbury-bells and hollyhocks and here they all are. It’s uncanny. We’re going to build a stone fireplace here in this crescent of trees. It just wants it.”

“Bets…my friend…planted those trees. They’re hers…really…but she won’t mind lending them to you.”

Suzanne reached across Alphonso and squeezed Pat’s hand.

“It’s nice of you to say that. No, she won’t mind, because we love them. You never mind letting people have things when you know they love them. And she won’t mind our making an iris glade in the spruce bush. That is another thing I’ve always dreamed of…hundreds of iris with spruce trees around them…all around them, so the glade will never be seen save by those you want to see it. And we can go there when we want to be alone. One needs a little solitude in life.”

They sat and talked for what might have been an hour or a century. The talk had color…Pat recognized that fact instantly. Everything they talked of was interesting the moment they touched it. Occasionally there was a flavor of mockery in David Kirk’s laughter and a somewhat mordant edge to his wit. Pat thought he was a little bitter but there was something stimulating and pungent about his bitterness and she found herself liking that lean, dark face of his, with its quick smiles. He had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy and Pat loved the fashion in which he and Suzanne could toss a ball of conversation back and forth, always keeping it in the air.

“The moon is going behind a cloud…a silvery white cloud,” said Suzanne. “I love a cloud like that.”