“It costs too much. And besides…my ambition seems to have petered out…no, that isn’t a pun, really it isn’t. We’re like that at Silver Bush, it seems, Pat. We’ve just domestic girls after all and want a home to potter over, with a nice husband and a few nice babies.”

“Oh, oh, that’s the only sinsible word ye’ve said tonight, Cuddles darlint,” grinned Judy. She knew her Cuddles and did not take her dilemma very seriously. It was all the darlint’s fun and added to the gaiety of life at Silver Bush. Some fine day Cuddles would find out which of those nice lads she liked best and there would be a fine wedding and Cuddles would settle down not far from home, as Winnie had done. So Judy hoped in her inveterate match-making old heart. It was only Pat who worried over it. Somehow she could not picture Rae either as Mrs. Bruce Madison or Mrs. Peter Alward. But she asked herself honestly was it because she thought Rae did not care enough for either of them or was it because she hated the change another marriage would bring to Silver Bush?

“Just be letting it alone, Patsy dear,” advised Judy. “The Good Man Above do be having things in hand, I’m belaving.”

CHAPTER 34

It was spring…it was summer…it was September…it was almost another autumn. Pat had come home from a three weeks’ visit in Summerside, where Aunt Jessie had been ill and Pat had been keeping house for Uncle Brian. Now she was home again and oh, it was good! Was the sunshine amber or was it gold? How gallant the late hollyhocks looked along the dyke! How alive the air was! What a delightful smell the apple orchard had in September! How adorable were two fat pussy cats rolling in the sun! And the garden welcomed her…wanted her.

“Any news, Judy? Tell me everything that’s happened while I’ve been away. Letters never tell half enough…and Rae’s have really been sketchy.”

“Oh, oh, Rae!” Judy looked rather as if the world were on its last legs, but Pat was too absorbed in Silver Bush generally to notice it. Tillytuck coughed significantly behind his hand and remarked that Cupid had as usual been busy at Silver Bush.

“Oh, Peter and Bruce, I suppose,” laughed Pat. “Is Rae going to keep those poor wretches dangling forever? It’s really getting past a joke. Where is she by the way?”

“She did be climbing the haystack in the Mince Pie Field half an hour ago, just after she did be getting home from school,” said Judy, frowning at Tillytuck.

Pat betook herself to the Mince Pie Field where a splotch of color on a half-used haystack betrayed Rae’s whereabouts. Pat scrambled up the ladder and Rae grabbed her.