“Darling, I’m so glad you’re back. It seems like a hundred years since you went to Summerside. I’ve just been lying here, letting my thoughts ripen and grow mellow. I think there’s a caterpillar on my neck, but it doesn’t matter. Even caterpillars have rights.”

Pat slipped down beside Rae with a sigh of enjoyment. How blue the sky was, with those great banks of golden cloud in the south! Pat didn’t like a cloudless sky…it always seemed to her hard and remote. A few clouds made it friendly…humanized it. How cool and delicious was the gulf breeze blowing round them, bringing with it all kinds of elusive whiffs from all the little dells and slopes of the old farm. The Buttercup Field was a pasture this year. Pat remembered how she and Sid used to play in that field when the buttercup glory came up to their heads.

“Isn’t it heavenly just to lie quiet like this and soak yourself in the beauty of the world?” she said dreamily.

Rae did not answer. Pat turned her head and looked at her sister lying in her lithe young slimness on the hay. How very soft and radiant Rae’s eyes were! There was something about her…

“Pat darling,” said Rae, “I’m engaged.”

Pat felt as if a thunderbolt had hit her.

“Rae…let me see your tongue.”

“No, I’m not feverish, beloved…really, I’m not.”

“Are you serious, Rae?”

“Absolutely. Oh, Pat, I’m just weak and trembly with happiness. I never knew anyone could be so happy. It’s only three weeks since you went away but everything has changed. Pat, life has just seemed like a story-book these three weeks, and every day an exciting chapter.”

Pat had got her second wind but she, too, felt weak and trembly with something that was not exactly happiness.

“Which is it…Bruce or Peter?” she asked a bit drily.

Rae gave a young, delightful laugh.

“Oh, Pat, it’s neither of them. It’s Brook Hamilton.”

Pat felt stunned.

“Who is Brook Hamilton?”

Rae laughed again.

“Fancy any one not knowing who Brook Hamilton is. I can’t believe I didn’t know him myself three weeks ago. I met him the first night you went away at Dot’s dance…”

“Rae Gardiner, you don’t mean to tell me you’re engaged to a man you’ve known only three weeks!”

“Don’t go off the deep end, darling. We’re not to be married till he’s through college so we’ll have lots of time to get acquainted. And he’s my man…there’s no mistake about that. At nine o’clock that evening I had never seen him. At ten I loved him. Judy says it happens like that once in a thousand years. I never believed in love at first sight before…but now I know it’s the only kind.”