“Yes.” A shadow fell over Pat’s face. Everyone in North Glen knew by this time that Tom Gardiner was writing to a lady in California, though not even the keenest of the gossips had found out anything more, not even her name. “Swallowfield really needs painting but it has needed it for years. And now Uncle Tom seems to have a mania for sprucing things up. He’s even going to have that dear old red door stained and grained. I’ve always loved that red door so much. Judy, you don’t think there is anything in that story of his going to be married, do you?”

“I wudn’t be saying. And me fine Aunt Edith wudn’t be liking it,” said Judy in a tone which indicated that for her, at least, there would be balm in Gilead if Tom Gardiner really up and married at last. “There do be another story round, Patsy, that Joe do be ingaged to Enid Sutton. Is there inny truth in it?”

“I can’t say. He saw a good deal of her when he was home. Well, she is a very nice girl and will suit Joe very well.”

Pat felt herself very magnanimous in thus according approval to Joe’s reputed choice. If it had been Sid…Pat shivered a little. But Sid wouldn’t be thinking of marrying for years yet.

“Oh, oh, if it iver comes to a widding I hope Enid will be having better luck wid her dress than her mother had. There was a dressmaker in town making it…the Suttons houlding thimsilves a bit above the Silverbridge dressmaker…and she was sick, but she sint word she’d have the dress ready for the widding day widout fail. Whin the morning come, she did be phoning up she had sint it be the train but whin the train come in niver a widding dress was on it. And, what’s more, that dress niver turned up…niver, Patsy dear. The poor liddle bride was married in a blue serge suit and tears.”

“Whatever became of the dress, Judy?’

“The Good Man Above knows and Him only. It was shipped be the ixpress agent at Charlottetown and that was the last iver seen or heard av it. White sating and lace! But at that I do be thinking she was luckier than the bride at Castle McDermott.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, oh, it was a hundred years afore me time there but the story was tould me. She wint to the wardrobe and put her hand in to fetch out her widding dress and…” Judy leaned forward dramatically in the gathering gloom…“and it was grasped by a bony hand!”

“Whose?” Pat shivered deliciously.