“I fall in love but it doesn’t last,” she told Judy philosophically. “It never has lasted…you know that, Judy. I’m constitutionally fickle and that being the case I’m never going to trust my emotions again. It wouldn’t matter if it hurt only me…but it hurts other people. There’s only one real love in my life, Judy…Silver Bush. I’ll always be true to it. It satisfies me. Nothing else does. Even when I was craziest about Harris Hynes and Lester Conway and…and Donald Holmes, I always felt there was something wanting. I couldn’t tell what but I knew it. So don’t worry over me, Judy.”

Judy’s only comfort was that Hilary’s letters still came regularly.

Pat had had a book from him that day…a lovely book in a dull green leather binding with a golden spider-web over it…a book that belonged to Pat. Hilary’s gifts were like that…something that must have made him say, whenever his eyes lighted on it, “That is Pat’s. It couldn’t be anybody else’s.”

If life could just go on forever like this…at least for years, “safe from corroding change.” In childhood you thought it would but now you knew it couldn’t. Something was always coming up…something you never expected. Only that day she had overheard Judy saying to Tillytuck, “Oh, oh, things do be going too well. We do be going to have an awful wallop before long.” Tillytuck had told Judy she needed a liver pill but Pat was afraid there was something in it.

At Silver Bush Rae’s love affairs had usurped the place that Pat’s used to hold. Rae discussed her two suitors very frankly with Pat and Judy in the talks around the kitchen fire o’ nights, often to the unromantic accompaniment of butter-fried eggs or turkey bones. Rae was never of the same heart two nights in succession.

“Don’t change your mind so often,” Pat said once in exasperation.

“Oh, but it’s glorious,” laughed Rae. “Think how deadly monotonous it would be to be in love with the same man week in and week out. Of course I mean to make up my mind permanently someday. I feel sure I’ll marry one of those boys. They are both good matches.”

“Rae! That sounds hatefully mercenary.”

“Sister dear, I finished with romance when Larry Wheeler sent me a flower-wreathed announcement of his bridals. That cured me forever. And I’m not mercenary…I’m only through with being a sentimentalist. It’s just that I find it hard to decide between two equally nice boys.”

“It’s hardly fair to them,” protested Pat. “And people are talking. They say you’re more or less engaged to both of them.”