It was such a mellow and dreamy afternoon and Silver Bush seemed mellow and dreamy, too. Pat thought the old farm had a mood for every day in the year and every hour in the day. Now it would be gay…now melancholy…now friendly…now austere…now gray…now golden. Today it was golden. The Hill of the Mist had wrapped a scarf of blue haze about its brown shoulders and was mysteriously lovely still, in spite of the missing Lombardy. Behind it a great castle of white cloud, with mauve shadows, towered up. There had been a delicate, ghostly rain the night before and the scent of the little hollow in the graveyard, full of frosted ferns, was distilled on the air. How green the pastures were for autumn! The kitchen yard was full of the pale gold of aspens and the turkey house was almost lost in a blaze of crimson sumacs. The white birches which some forgotten bride had planted along the Whispering Lane, that led from Silver Bush to Swallowfield, were amber, and the huge maple over the well was a flame. When Pat paused every few minutes just to look at it she whispered,

“‘The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry

Of bugles going by!’”

“What might ye be whispering to yersilf, Patsy? Sure and ye might be telling us if it’s inny joke. It seems to be delighting ye.”

Pat lifted eyebrows like little slender wings.

“It was just a bit of poetry, Judy, and you don’t care much for poetry.”

“Oh, oh, po’try do be all right in its place but it won’t be kaping the apples if there’s a hard frost some av these nights. We’re a bit behind wid the picking as it is. And more work than iver to look forward to, now that yer dad has bought the ould Adams place for pasture and going into the livestock business.”

“But he’s going to have a hired man to help him, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, and who will be looking after the hired man I’m asking ye. He’ll be nading a bite to ate, I’m thinking, and mebbe a bit av washing and minding done. Not that I’m complaining av the work, mind ye. But ye can niver tell about an outsider. It’s been minny a long day since we had inny av the brade at Silver Bush and it’ll be a bit av a change, as ye say yersilf.”

“I don’t mind changes that mean things coming as much as changes that mean things going,” said Pat, pausing to aim a wormy apple at two kittens who were chasing each other up the tree trunks. “And I’m so glad dad has bought the old Adams place. The little stone bridge Hilary and I built over Jordan and the Haunted Spring will belong to us now…and Happiness.”