“Oh, oh, looking like innything but a happy bridegroom. And just a bit under her thumb already, as I cud be seeing. Her wid her ‘honey-boy’ and telling av the way his hair curled over his forrid! As if I hadn’t been knowing it all his life. But I was as smooth as crame, darlint, and that rispictful ye’d have died and niver did I be aven glancing at her stockings all in rolls round her ankles. Sure and it was a comfort to me to be knowing Long Alec wasn’t intinding to hand Silver Bush over to Sid, as the Binnies hoped. Long Alec’s not taking off his boots afore he goes to bed. ‘You and yer wife can stay here till I can afford to build a house for ye,’ sez he…and me fine May wasn’t liking it. She’s been telling round what she would do when she got to Silver Bush. ‘I can be getting Sid Gardiner back whin I crook me finger,’ sez she. Oh, oh, she’s got him, worse luck, but she hasn’t got Silver Bush and niver will. A year or two will soon pass, Patsy dear, and thin we’ll be free av her. Maybe aven sooner wid a bit av luck.”

“She has gone home for the day, Rae said.”

“To be getting her boxes and breaking the news to the Binnies. I’m thinking they’ll bear up well under it. She did be insisting on washing the dishes first and I did be letting her for pace’ sake. She did be making as much commotion as a cat in a fit, finding where iverything shud go, and smashed the ould blue plate be way av showing what she cud do. But I’ll not be denying she washed thim clane and didn’t be laving a grasey sink.”

Pat had always washed the dishes. She began to be sorry she hadn’t gone down for breakfast after all. It would have been more dignified…more Silver Bushish.

“Now, come ye down, Patsy darlint, and have a liddle bite,” said Judy wheedlingly. “I’ve been after frying a bit av the new ham and an egg in butter. A cup av tay will restore yer balance like. And we’ll be having our liddle laugh now and agin behind her back, Patsy.”

Pat pulled up the blind again. There was a little chill at her heart which had never been there before and which she felt would always be there henceforth. But afar the Hill of the Mist was lovely in the September sunshine. When she looked at it it gave her some of its own pride and calm and faint austerity.

She went up to see mother after she had had her breakfast and found her, as always, serene and clear and pale, like a star seen through the rifts of storm-cloud.