May simply could not or would not get it into her head that Pat was not having trees cut down. In regard to this particular tree, May was not perhaps so far wrong as in some of her suggestions. It really was too close to the house…a young apple tree that had started up of itself and grew so slyly that it was a tree before any one took much notice of it. Now it was pushing its boughs into the very window of the Big Parlor. When May spoke it was a thing of beauty, all starred with tiny red buds just on the point of bursting.

“I think it’s lovely having the orchard coming right into the house like this,” said Pat.

“You would,” said May. It was a favorite retort with her and she always contrived to put a vast amount of contempt into it.

None of her suggestions were adopted and May tearfully told her mother, in Judy’s hearing, that she “simply couldn’t do a thing in her husband’s house.” She was determined to have a “herbaceous border” and nagged at Sid until he interceded with Pat and it was decided that it might be made across the bottom of the little lawn, where hitherto nothing but lilies of the valley had grown wildly and thickly. There were plenty of other lilies of the valley about but Pat hated to see those ploughed up and May’s iris and delphiniums and what Mrs. Binnie called “concubines,” set in their place. Because May really did not care a bit for flowers. She wanted her herbaceous border because Olive had told her they were all the fashion now and everyone in town was making one.

“Do you know that May badgered Sid at last into taking her back and showing her the Secret Field?” asked Rae.

Yes, Pat knew it. May had laughed on her return.

“I’ve seen your famous field, Pat…nothing but a little hole in the woods. And you’ve been making such a fuss over it all these years.”

To Pat it was the ultimate treason that Sid should have showed May the Secret Field…their Secret Field. But she could not blame him. He had to do it for peace’s sake.

“You love your sister better than your wife,” May told him passionately, whenever he refused to do anything Pat didn’t want done. He and May had begun to quarrel violently and life at Silver Bush was made bitter all that summer by it. Meal times were the worst. The bickering between them was almost incessant.

“Oh, do let us have one meal without a fight,” Long Alec remarked in exasperation one day. Pat, who had been listening in silence to May’s sarcasm and Sid’s sulky replies, rose and went to her room.