The glow at Pat’s heart when she went to sleep was with her when she woke and went with her through the day…an exquisite day of sunshine when beauty seemed veritably to shimmer over fields and woods and sea…when there were great creamy cloud-mountains with amber valleys beyond the hills…when the air was full of the sweet smell of young grasses in early morning. Pat and Hilary went back into the past. Its iridescence was over everything they looked at. They went to the well down which Hilary had once gone to rescue a small cat…and Pat, looking down it as she had not looked for a long time, saw the old Pat-of-the-Well with Hilary’s face beside her in its calm, fern-fringed depths. They made pilgrimages to the Field of the Pool and the Mince Pie Field and the Buttercup Field and the Field of Farewell Summers. They went to the orchard and saw the little glade among the spruces of the Old Part where all the Silver Bush cats were buried.

“I wonder if the spirits of all the pussy folk and the doggy folk I’ve loved will meet me with purrs and yaps of gladness at the pearly gates,” said Pat whimsically, as they went through the graveyard to McGinty’s grave. “We buried him right here, Hilary. He was such a dear little dog. I’ve never had the heart for a dog since. Dogs come and go…Sid always has one for the cows…and May’s dog isn’t so bad as dogs go…but I can never let myself really love a dog again.”

“I’ve never had one either. Of course I’ve never had a place I could keep a dog and do justice to him. Someday…perhaps….” Hilary stopped and looked at Judy’s whitewashed stones along the graveyard paths and around her “bed” of perennials…Judy did not hold with herbaceous borders…by the turkey house, where bloomed gallant delphiniums higher than your head. May could never understand why her delphiniums didn’t flourish the way Judy’s did.

“It’s jolly to see these again. I’ll have some whitewashed stones…” Hilary checked himself again. He gazed about him greedily. “I’ve seen many wonderful abodes since I went away, Pat…palaces and castles galore…but I’ve never seen any place so absolutely right as Silver Bush. It’s good to be here again and find it so unchanged.”

“I’ve tried to keep it so,” said Pat warmly.