“Ah well, it isn’t likely. A rolling stone gathers no moss. Though he wasn’t lazy…I’ll say that for him. And you can tell him my parting word was…believe in predestination, Josiah, and you’ll be welcome home at any time.”

Mrs. Tillytuck was gone. The echo of her steps died away down the walk. Pat and Rae went into their long repressed spasm. Mrs. Binnie said there was always something about Tillytuck that made her think he was married.

Judy was very silent, her only remark being, as she watched Mrs. Tillytuck driving out of the yard,

“A bean-pole like that!”

CHAPTER 45

Tillytuck did not show up for supper, having gone on an errand, real or pretended, to Silverbridge. But he slipped into the kitchen at night, when Judy and Rae and Pat were roasting apples around the fire, and slid into his own corner. Judy bustled about to get him a liddle bite and was markedly cordial. Sure and couldn’t she be as civil to Tillytuck now as she pleased when nobody could ever again be thinking she was setting her cap for him!

“I suppose you were all a bit surprised to learn I was a family man?” he said, in a tone of mingled sheepishness and bravado.

“Tillytuck, tell us all about it,” pleaded Rae. “We’re dying of curiosity.”

Tillytuck fitted his fingertips carefully together. “There ain’t much to tell,” he said…and proceeded to tell it, punctuated by gentle snorts from Judy.

“I’ve often wondered how I came to do it. It all begun with a moon. You can never trust a moon.”

“Oh, oh, we must have something to blame our mistakes on,” said Judy, good-humoredly, as she set a large plateful of his favorite cinnamon buns beside him on the corner of the table.