“Don’t get so excited, child,” said May provokingly…and how provoking May could be! “I was only making a suggestion. Surely you needn’t throw a fit over that.”

“She would do nothing but patch and change and tear up if she could have her way here,” Pat told Rae viciously.

“Oh, oh, just like her ould grandad,” said Judy. “He did be having a mania for tearing down and rebuilding. Innything for a change was his motto.”

“Judy, last night as I passed the Little Parlor I heard May say to Sid, ‘Anyway you’ll have Silver Bush when your father dies.’ Judy, she did! When your father dies.”

Judy chuckled.

“It do be ill waiting for dead men’s shoes. Yer dad is good for twinty years yet at the laste. But it’s like a Binnie to be saying that same.”

CHAPTER 39

Sometimes Pat would escape from it all to her fields and woods, at peace in their white loveliness. It carried her through many hard hours to remember that in ten minutes she could, if she must, be in that meadow solitude of her Secret Field, far from babble and confusion. There were yet wonderful ethereal dawns which she and Rae shared together…there were yet full moons rising behind snowy hills…rose tints over sunset dells…slender birches and shadowy nooks…winds calling to each other at night…apple-green “dims”…starry quietudes that soothed your pain…April buds in happiness…“Thank God, April still comes to the world”…and Silver Bush to be loved and protected and cherished.

And with the spring Joe came home, to be married at last; after every one had concluded, so Mrs. Binnie said, that poor Enid Sutton was never going to get him.

“Many’s the time I’ve said to her, ‘Don’t be too sure of him. A sailor has a sweetheart in every port. It isn’t as if you was still a girl. You never can depend on them sailors. Take Mrs. Rory MacPherson at the Bridge…a disappointed woman if ever there was one. Her husband was a sailor and she thought he was dead and was going to get married again when he turned up alive and well.’”

There was a big gay wedding at the Suttons and everyone thought bronzed Joe remarkably handsome. Pat thought so, too, and was proud of him; but he seemed a stranger now…Joe, whose going had once been such a tragedy. She was even a little glad when all the fuss was over and Joe and his bride were gone on a wonderful bridal trip around the world in Joe’s new vessel. She could settle down to housecleaning and gardening now…at least, after Mrs. Binnie had had her say about the event.