They celebrated Rae’s homecoming by another party to which all Rae’s college friends came. Rae loved dancing. Her very slippers, if left to themselves, would have danced the whole night through. But Pat’s feet were not as light as they had been at the last party. Sid was not there. Sid was a very remote and unhappy boy. There had been a social sensation in North Glen early in the winter. Dorothy Milton, who had been engaged to Sid for two years, ran away with and married her cousin from Halifax, a dissipated, fascinating youth who “traveled” for a Halifax firm. Sid would have nothing of sympathy from his family. He would not talk of the matter at all. But he had been hard and bitter and defiant ever since and Pat felt hopelessly cut off from him. He worked feverishly but he came and went among his own like a stranger.

“Patience,” said mother. “It will wear away in time. Poor Dorothy! I’m sorrier for her than for Sid.”

“I’m not,” sobbed Pat fiercely. “I hate her…for breaking Sid’s heart.”

“Oh, oh, iverybody’s heart gets a bit av a crack at one time or another,” said Judy. “Siddy isn’t the first b’y to be jilted and he won’t be the last, as long as the poor girls haven’t got the sinse God gave geese.”

But Judy didn’t like to look at Sid’s eyes herself.

When the party was over Pat and Rae went by a mossy, velvety path to their tent in the bush, amid a growth of young white, wild cherry trees. They had achieved their long-cherished dream of sleeping out in the silver bush and the reality was more beautiful than the dream, even when the wind blew the tent down on them one night and Little Mary was half smothered before they could find her. There was another new baby at the Bay Shore and Little Mary had been committed to the care of Aunt Pat until her mother should be about. They all loved Little Mary but Aunt Pat adored and spoiled her. To see Little Mary running about the garden on her dear chubby legs, pausing now and then to lift a flower to her small nose, or following Judy out to feed the chickens, or chasing kittens in the old barns, where generations of furry things had frisked their little lives and ceased to be, gave Pat never-ending thrills. And the questions she would ask…“Aunt Pat, why weren’t ears made plain?”…“Aunt Pat, have f’owers little souls?”…“Where do the days go, Aunt Pat. Dey mus’ go somewhere”…“Does God live in Judy’s blue chest, Aunt Pat?” Once or twice the thought came to Pat that to marry and have a dimpled question mark like this of your very own might even make up for the loss of Silver Bush.