Altogether it had not been a pleasant day. May had had a fit of the sulks and had taken it out slamming doors….Rover had eaten a plateful of fudge Pat had set outside to cool…. Judy had seemed down-hearted about something…perhaps the news about Hilary though she never referred to it but only muttered occasionally to herself about “strange going-ons.” Pat decided that she felt a trifle stodgy and needed something to pep her up a bit. She would find it at the Long House…she always did. Whenever life seemed a bit gray…whenever she felt a passing pang of loneliness over the changes that had been and…worse still…would be, she went up the hill to David and Suzanne. Whenever the door of the Long House clanged behind her it seemed to shut out the world, with its corroding discontents and vexations. Once, Pat thought with a stab of pain, she had felt that way when she went into Silver Bush. That she couldn’t feel so any longer was a very bitter thing…a thing she couldn’t get used to. But tonight as she and David and Suzanne sat around the fire—it was a cool September night and any excuse served when they wanted to light that fire…and cracked nuts and talked…or didn’t talk…the bitterness faded out of Pat’s heart as it always did in their company. Suzanne was rather quiet, sitting with Alphonso curled up in her lap: but Pat and David never found themselves lacking for something to say. Pat looked at the motto that ran in quaint, irregular letters around the fireplace.

“There be three gentle and goodlie things,

To be here,

To be together,

And to think well of one another.”

That was true: and while it remained true one could bear anything else, no matter what sort of a hole it left in your life. What a dear Suzanne was! And what nice eyes David had…very whimsical when they were not tender and very tender when they were not whimsical. And his voice…what did his voice always remind her of? She could never tell but she knew it was something that always tugged at her heart. And she knew he liked her very much. It was nice to be liked…nice to have such friends to come to whenever you wanted to.