“But I can’t face it…Rae, I can’t,” cried poor Pat desperately. “Talk about the future! There isn’t any future! If it had been anybody but May Binnie! I’m not the little fool I once was. I’ve known for long that Sid would marry sometime. Even when I couldn’t help hoping he wouldn’t I knew he would. But May Binnie!”

“I know. I know as well as you do that Sid has made a dreadful mistake and will realize it all too clearly someday. I know May is cheap and common and has no background…kitchen-bred, as Judy would say…but…”

“How could he do it? How could he like her…after Bets…even after poor Dorothy?”

“May is alluring in her own way, Pat. We can’t see it but the men do. And she has always meant to get Sid. We’ve just got to make the best of it and take things as they come.”

“I won’t,” said Pat rebelliously. “They may have to come but I haven’t got to take them without protest. I’ll never reconcile myself to this…never.”

“‘Today that seems so long, so strange, so bitter

Will soon be some forgotten yesterday,’”

quoted Rae softly.

“It won’t,” said Pat dismally.

“I’ve been doing some talking already this morning,” went on Rae. “For one thing I broke the news to dad.”

“And he…what did he…”

“Oh, there were fireworks. The Gardiner temper flared up. But I know how to manage dad. I told him he had to take a reasonable view of it for mother’s sake. When he calmed down he and I worked it out. Sid and May will have to live here for a year or two, until the mortgage is cleared. Then dad will build a house for them on the other place and they can live there.”

“And in the meantime,” said Pat passionately, “life will be unlivable at Silver Bush…you know it will.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort. Of course it won’t be as pleasant as it has been. But, Pat, you know as well as I do that we’ve got to make the best of it for mother’s sake.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes. Dad told her. I funked that.”

“And how…how did she take it?”

“How does mother take anything? Just like the gallant lady she is! We mustn’t fail her, Pat.”

Pat groped out a hand, found Rae’s and squeezed it. Somehow their ages seemed reversed. It was as if Rae were the older sister.