“There are so many things of that sort to give pleasure,” said Pat dreamily. “Such little things…and yet so much pleasure.”

“I know…like the heart of an unblown rose,” murmured Suzanne.

“Or the tang of a fir wood,” said David.

“Let’s each give a list of loveliest things,” said Suzanne. “The things that please us most, just as they come into our heads, no matter what they are. I love the strange deep shadows that come just before sunset…June bugs thudding against the windows…a bite of home-made bread…a hot water bottle on a cold winter night…wet mossy stones in a book…the song of wind in the top of an old pine. Now, Pat?”

“The way a cat folds its paws under its breast…blue smoke rising in the air on a frosty winter morning…the way my little niece Mary laughs, crinkling up her eyes…old fields dreaming in moonlight…the scrunch of dry leaves under your feet in the silver bush in November…a baby’s toes…the smell of clean clothes as you take them off the line.”

“David?”

“The cold of ice,” said David slowly. “Alphonso’s eyes…the smell of rain after burning drouth…water at night…a leaping flame…the strange dark whiteness of a winter night…brook-brown eyes in a girl.”

It never occurred to Pat that David Kirk was trying to pay her a compliment. She thought her eyes were yellow…“cat’s eyes,” May Binnie had said. She wondered if David Kirk’s dead young wife had had brook-brown eyes.

The Kirks walked down the hill with her and she made them go into the kitchen and have some of Judy’s orange biscuits with a glass of milk. There was no place else to take them for Rae had callers in the Big Parlor and mother had an old friend in the Little Parlor and Long Alec was colloguing with the minister in the dining-room. But the Kirks were people you’d just as soon take into the kitchen as not. Judy was excessively polite, in spite of Suzanne’s shirt and knickerbockers…too polite, really. Judy didn’t know what to make of this sudden intimacy.

“I want to see lots of you…I’m sure we are going to be good friends.”

Sid, coming in, spoke to them on the doorstep.

“Do you know them?” asked Pat in surprise.

“Met them in the Silverbridge store this afternoon. The girl asked me if I knew who lived in the queer old-fashioned place at the foot of the hill.”