“Two unchaperoned females spending the night in a house with a drunken man,” gasped Suzanne. “Let’s pray the writer of ‘North Glen Notes’ never finds it out.”

Nobody but Judy ever knew the whole story. Judy, of course, knew all about Nathaniel Butterbloom.

“A bit av a divil in his day,” she said, “but he’s too old now to cut up much. Innyhow, ye can be thankful he didn’t ask ye to rub his back for him.”

CHAPTER 20

Pat had gone to her Secret Field, seeking the refreshment of soul she always found there. It was as beautiful and remote and mystic as ever, full of the sunshine of uncounted summers. The trees about it welcomed her and Pat flung herself down among the feathery bent grasses and listened to the silence until she felt at one with it and certain problems that had rather worried her of late dropped into proper focus as they always did in that sweet place, where the fairies still surely lingered if they lingered in the world at all. Under the ancient spell of the Secret Field Pat became a child again and could believe anything.

She went from it to Happiness by a narrow wood lane where ferns grew waist-high on either side. Pat knew all the little lanes in the woods and was known of them. They had their moods and their whims. One always seemed full of hidden laughter and furtive feet. One never seemed to know just where it wanted to go. In this one it always seemed as if you were in a temple. Overhead in the young, resinous fir boughs a wind was crooning a processional. The aroma drifting under the arches from old sunny hollows and lurking nooks was as the incense of worship, the exquisite shadows that filled the woods were acolytes, and the thoughts that came to her were like prayers.

“If one could only feel always like this,” Pat had said once to Judy. “All the little worries swallowed up…all the petty spites and fears and disappointments forgotten…just love and peace and beauty.”

“Oh, oh, but what wud there be lift for heaven, girl dear?” asked Judy.