As a matter of fact, all Tillytuck said was, “Engaged, by gosh!” Such a whirlwind courtship was entirely too much for Tillytuck. He relieved his feeling by playing on his fiddle in the graveyard, seated on Wild Dick’s tombstone, much to Judy’s horror.

“How do you know Wild Dick doesn’t still like to hear the fiddle, Judy?” asked Sid audaciously.

“If Wild Dick do be in heaven he has the angels to be listening to…and if he isn’t he do be having other things to think av,” was Judy’s indignant reply. Tillytuck had to give her his old red flannel shirt for the rose-buds in her new hooked rug before he could make his peace with her. And then nearly wrecked it again by solemnly telling Little Mary, to whom Judy had just been relating a story of some naughty children who had been turned into brooms by a witch…“I was one of them brooms!”

THE SIXTH YEAR

CHAPTER 35

For a year things went beautifully at Silver Bush. Everybody was happy. Mother was better than she had been for a long time. Sid seemed to have recovered his good spirits and was taking a keen interest in everything again. Gossip no longer coupled his name with any girl’s and Pat saw her old dream of living always at Silver Bush with Sid taking vague shape again. It was just like it used to be. They planned and joked and walked in faint blue twilights and Sid told her everything, and together they bullied Long Alec and Tillytuck when any difference of opinion came up. Between them they managed to get Silver Bush repainted, although Long Alec hated any extra expense as long as there was a mortgage on it. But Silver Bush looked beautiful…so white and trig and prosperous with its green shutters and trim. It warmed the cockles of Pat’s heart just to look at it. And to hear Sid say once, gruffly, on their return one winter evening from a long prowl back to their Secret Field,

“You’re a good old scout, Pat. I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past two years.”