She was in the birch grove when Donald came to her the next evening. Donald Holmes was really a fine chap and deeply in love with Pat. To him she looked like love incarnate. She had a kitten on her shoulder and her dress was a young leaf green with a scarlet girdle. There was something about her face that made him think of pine woods and upland meadows and gulf breezes. He had come to ask her a certain question and he asked it, simply and confidently, as he had a right to ask it…for if any girl had ever encouraged a man Pat had encouraged Donald Holmes that summer.

Pat turned a little away from his flushed, eager face. Through a gap in the trees she saw the dark purple of the woods on Robinson’s hill…the blue sheen of the gulf…the green of the clover aftermath in the Field of the Pool…the misty opal sky…and Silver Bush!

She turned to Donald and opened her lips to say, “yes.” She found herself trembling.

“I’m…I’m terribly sorry,” was what she said. “I can’t marry you. I thought I could but I can’t.”

CHAPTER 31

“I rather think I hope there’ll be an earthquake before to-morrow morning,” thought Pat when she went to bed that night. The whole world had gone very stale and life seemed grayer than ashes. In a way she was actually disappointed. She would miss Donald horribly. But leave Silver Bush for him? Impossible!

She knew she was in for a terrible time with her clan and she was not mistaken. By the time they got through with her she felt, as she confided to the not overly sympathetic Rae, “like a bargain counter of soiled rayon.” Even mother was a little disappointed.

“Couldn’t you have cared for him, darling?”

“I thought I could…I thought I did…mother, I just can’t explain. I’m dreadfully sorry…I’m so ashamed of myself…I deserve everything that is being said of me…but I couldn’t.”

Everybody was saying plenty. All her relatives took turns heckling her about it. Long Alec gave her a piece of his mind.

“But I didn’t love him, father…I really didn’t,” said poor Pat miserably.

“It’s a pity you didn’t find that out a little sooner,” said Long Alec sourly. “I don’t like hearing my daughter called a jilt. No, don’t smile at me like that, miss. Let me tell you you trade too much on that smile. This is past being a joke.”

“You’ll go through the woods and pick up a crooked stick yet,” warned Aunt Edith darkly.

“There’s really been too much of this, Aunt Edith,” protested Pat, feeling that any self-respecting worm had to turn some time. “I’m not going to marry anybody just to please the clan.”