“You can suppose what you like. You’ve dragged his name up again. He was simply too sloppy for anything. I never dreamed that you…Rae Gardiner of Silver Bush…could take him seriously. And he’d been eating onions before he proposed to me.”

“Oh, so he proposed to you. I didn’t know you had lured him on that far. I thought even you had enough self-respect to stop short of that.”

“We have had enough of this,” said Pat, her voice trembling.

“I think so, too. But let me tell you this, Pat Gardiner. Since you are so bent on ‘saving’ people you’d better look after Sid a bit. He’s dangling around May Binnie again. I’ve known it for weeks but I didn’t say anything about it because I knew it would worry you. I had a little consideration for you. But you’ve been so intent on running my life that it has ceased to matter to you what Sid does, I suppose.”

“Rae dearest…we’re both upset…we’re both saying things we shouldn’t…let’s forget this. We mustn’t let anyone know we’ve quarreled.”

“I don’t care if all the world knows it.” Rae marched out of the room. She did not come back. That night she slept in the Poet’s room…if she slept at all. Pat didn’t. It was the first time since the night before mother’s operation that she had lain awake all night. Surely she and Rae couldn’t have quarreled…after all their years of comradeship and love…all their secrets kept and shared together. It must be a horrid dream. The Binnie girls were always quarrelling…one expected nothing better of them. But such things simply couldn’t happen at Silver Bush. Was there any truth in what Rae had said about Sid and May? There couldn’t be. It was nothing but idle gossip. She knew Sid better than that. Of course May Binnie was pretty, with the obvious, indisputable prettiness of rich black hair, vivid color, laughing, brilliant, bold eyes. But Sid could never care for her after Bets…or even after sweet foolish mistaken Dorothy. Pat brushed the teasing thought away. It was so easy to start gossip in the Glens. Nothing mattered just now but the quarrel with Rae.