“Exactly!” Pat bit the word off and her brook-brown eyes were full of a rather dangerous fire. “We have always been good friends and so I would naturally be interested in hearing any good news about him. All that…that hurts me is that he should have left me to hear it from others. Rae Gardiner, what are you looking at me like that for?”

“I’ve always thought,” said Rae, taking her life in her hands, “that you…that you cared much more for Hilary than you ever suspected yourself, Pat.”

Pat laughed a little unsteadily.

“Rae, don’t be a goose. You and Judy have always been a little delirious on the subject of Hilary. I’ve always loved Hilary and always will. He’s just like a dear brother to me. Do you realize how many years it is since I’ve seen him? Of course we’ve drifted apart even as friends. It was inevitable. Even our correspondence is dying a natural death. I haven’t had a letter from him since he went abroad.”

“I was only a child when he went away but I remember how I liked him,” said Rae. “I used to think he was the nicest boy in the world.”

“So he was,” said Pat. “And I hope he’s going to marry someone who is nice enough for him.”

“He really was in love with you, wasn’t he, Pat?”

“He thought he was. I knew he would get over that.”

“Well…” Rae had been irradiated all day with some secret happiness and now it came out…“Brook is coming over for a week before college opens. I do hope Miss Macaulay will have my blue georgette done by that time. And I think I’ll have a little jacket of that lovely transparent blue velvet we saw in town to go with it. I feel sure Brook will love me in that dress.”

“I thought he loved you in any dress,” teased Pat.

“Oh, he does. But there are degrees, Pat.”

“And no one,” thought Pat a little drearily, “cares how I’m dressed.”

She looked out of the window and saw a rising moon…and remembered old moonrises she had watched with Hilary…“when she was a girl.” That phrase of May’s rankled. And Mrs. Binnie had been rather odious the other day, assuring her again there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it…apropos of the announcement of the engagement of a South Glen girl to Donald Holmes.

“You’re young enough yet,” said Mrs. Binnie soothingly. “And when people say you’re beginning to look a bit old-maidish I always tell them, ‘Is it any wonder? Think of the responsibility Pat has had for years, with her mother ill and so much on her shoulders. No wonder she’s getting old-looking afore her time.’”