The color of home on an autumn dusk was an exquisite thing. The trees all around it seemed to love it. The house belonged to them and to the garden and the green hill and the orchard and they to it. You couldn’t separate them, Pat felt. She always wondered how anyone could live in a house where there were no trees. It seemed an indecency, like a too naked body. Trees…to veil and caress and beshadow…trees to warn you back and beckon you on. Lombardies for stateliness…birches for maiden grace…maples for friendliness…spruce and fir for mystery…poplars to whisper secrets. Only they never really did. You thought you understood as long as you listened…but when you left them you realized they had just been laughing at you…thin, rustling, silky laughter. All the trees kept some secret. Who knew but that all those white birches, which stood so primly all day, when night and moonlight came, might step daintily out of the earth and pirouette over the meadows, while the young spruces around the Mince Pie Field danced a saraband? Laughing at her fancy, Pat ran into the light and good cheer of Judy’s white-washed kitchen with life singing in her heart.

CHAPTER 3

“Tillytuck! Did ye iver be hearing the like av that for a name?” said Judy, quite flabbergasted for once. “Niver have I heard such a name on the Island before.”

“He’s been working on the south shore for years but he really belongs to Nova Scotia, dad says,” said Cuddles.

“Oh, oh, that ixplains it. Minny a quare name I’ve known coming out av Novy Scoshy. And what will we be after calling him? If he’s a young chap we can be calling him be his given name if he do be having one but if he’s a bit oldish it’ll have to be Mr. Tillytuck, since hired hilp is getting so uppish these days, and it’ll be the death av me if I do have to be saying ‘Mr. Tillytuck’ ivery time I open me mouth. Mister Tillytuck!”

Judy savored the absurdity of it.

“He’s quite old, dad says. Over fifty,” remarked Cuddles. “And dad says, too, that he’s a bit peculiar.”

“Peculiar, is it, thin? Oh, oh, people do be saying that I’m a bit that way mesilf, so there’ll be a pair av us. Is he peculiar in being worth his salt in the way av work? That do be the question.”

“He comes well recommended and dad was almost in despair of getting any one half suitable.”

“And is Mister Tillytuck married, I’m asking. Mistress Tillytuck! Oh, oh.”

“Dad didn’t say. But he’s to be here tomorrow so we’ll find out all about him. Judy, what have you got in that pot?”