“Couldn’t you stay till mother comes?” asked Pat, as the countess rose, gently and regretfully displacing her lapful of silken cat.

“I’m so sorry I can’t. I’ve really stayed too long as it is. I have to catch that boat train. But it has been delightful. And I can tell Clara that at least I’ve seen Mary’s dear girls. You’ll be coming to England someday I’m sure, and when you do you must look me up. I’m so sorry to put this beautiful cat down.”

“You’ve got hairs all over your stomach, ma’am,” said Tillytuck. “Dogs ain’t like that now.”

If looks could have slain Judy would have been a murderess. But the countess put her hands on Pat’s shoulders, kissed her cheek and bowed her head, shaking with laughter.

“He’s priceless,” she whispered. “Priceless. And so is your Judy. Darlings, I only wish I could have stayed longer.”

The countess picked up a little squashy hat with a gold and brown feather on it that looked like a hand-me-down from the Silverbridge store, adjusted a silver fox stole which Pat knew must have cost a small fortune, kissed Cuddles, made a mysterious visit into the pantry with Judy, donned a pair of antiquated gauntlets and went out to her car. Before she got in she looked around her. Silver Bush had cast over her the spell it cast over all.

“A quiet, beautiful place where there is time to live,” she said, as if speaking to herself. Then she waved her hand to Judy…“We had such a pleasant little chat, hadn’t we?”…and was gone.

“Oh, oh, but Silver Bush has been honored this day,” said Judy as they went back in.

“Judy, tell us everything…I’m simply bursting. And how did you come to have supper in the kitchen?”

“Oh, oh, don’t be blaming me,” entreated Judy. “It do be a long story that’ll take some telling. Niver did I live through such an afternoon in me life. Tillytuck, do ye be wanting a liddle bite? Not that ye desarve it…but there’s some av the pittaties and sausages lift if ye care for them.”

“What’s good enough for a countess is good enough for me,” said Tillytuck, sitting down to the table with avidity. “She’s a fine figure of a woman that, though maybe a bit broader in the beam than you’d expect of a countess, symbolically speaking. I found something alluring about her.”

“Come out to the graveyard,” whispered Judy to the girls. “We won’t be disturbed there and I can be telling ye the tale. Sure and ’twill be one for the annals of Silver Bush.”

“Uncle Brian has just phoned that mother was away to a picnic with some friends of Aunt Helen’s and he couldn’t locate her.”