Then it was dawn. Very early dawn is a dreary thing. Nothing is quite human. The world is “fey.” And there was no Rae in the little bed beside hers. Pat had always loved to watch Rae waking up…she had such a pretty way of doing it. And the morning sunshine always poured in on her head, making it like a warm pool of gold on the pillow. But there was no Rae this morning…no sunshine. Pat sat up and looked out of the window. The different farmsteads were beginning to take form in the pale gray light on the thin snow. The little row of sheep tracks leading from the church barn across the Mince Pie field might have been made by Pan. A chilly foolish little wind of dawn was sighing around the eaves. A flock of tiny snowbirds settled on the roof of the granary. The haystacks in the Field of Farewell Summers looked gnome-like in the pale grayness. Pat gazed drearily at the blown clouds and the wide white fields and the lonely star of morning. Everything seemed so much the same…and everything was so horribly changed.

Pat looked like the ghost of herself at breakfast but Rae came down, cool, gay, smiling, her face apparently as blithe as the day. She tossed an airy word to Pat, bantered Sid, complimented Judy on her muffins and went off to school with a parting pat for Bold-and-Bad.

Pat tried to feel relieved. It had blown over. Rae was ashamed of her outburst and wanted to ignore it. She was just going to act as if nothing had happened.

“I won’t remember it either,” vowed Pat. But there was a sore spot in her heart, even after she had talked it all over with Judy…Judy who had suspected all along that Rae was nursing some secret sorrow that loomed large in the eyes of seventeen.

“Judy, it was dreadful. We both lost our tempers and said blistering things…things that can never be forgotten.”

“Oh, oh, it do be amazing how much we can be forgetting in life,” said Judy.

“But it was so…so ugly, Judy. There has never been a quarrel at Silver Bush before.”