Pat sat up on the creaking couch.

“You…you asked in the Silverbridge store who lived in that queer old-fashioned place. Sid heard you.”

“Pat! Let me think. Why, I remember…I didn’t say ‘queer.’ I said, ‘Who lives in that dear, quaint, old-fashioned house at the foot of the hill?’ Sid forgot one of the adjectives and was mistaken in one of the others. Pat, I couldn’t call Silver Bush ‘queer.’ You don’t know how much I admire it. And I admire it all the more because it is old-fashioned. That is why I loved the Long House at first sight.”

Pat felt the ice round her heart thawing rapidly. “Quaint” was complimentary rather than not and she didn’t mind the “old-fashioned.” And she did want to be friends with Suzanne. Perhaps Suzanne was prose where Bets had been poetry. But such prose!

“I’m sorry I froze up,” she said frankly. “But I’m such a thin-skinned creature where Silver Bush is concerned. I couldn’t bear to hear it called queer.”

“I don’t blame you. And now everything is going to be all right. We just belong, somehow. Don’t you feel it? You’re all so nice. I love Judy…the wit and sympathy and blarney of her. And that wonderful old, wise, humorous face of hers. She’s really a museum piece…there’s nothing like her anywhere else in the world. You’ll like us, too. I’m decent in spots and David is nice…sometimes he’s very nice. One day he is a philosopher…the next day he is a child.”

“Aren’t all men?” said Pat, tremendously wise.

“David more than most, I think. He’s had a rotten life, Pat. He was years getting over his shell-shock. It simply blotted out his career. He was so ambitious once. When he got better it was too late. He has been sub-editor of a Halifax paper for years…and hating it. His bit of a wife died, too, just a few months after their marriage. And I taught school…and hated it. Then old Uncle Murray died out west and left us some money…not a fortune but enough to live on. And so we became free. Free! Oh, Pat, you’ve never known what slavery meant so you don’t know what freedom is. I love keeping house…it’s really a lovely phrase, isn’t it? Keeping it…holding it fast against the world…against all the forces trying to tear it open. And David has time to write his war book at last…he’s always longed to. We are so happy…and we’ll be happier still to have you as a friend. I don’t believe you’ve any idea how nice you are, Pat. And now let’s just talk all night.”