“Did you give the countess a swig out of your black bottle, Judy?” asked Sid, who had arrived home and come to find out why nobody had got supper ready for him. “If she left anything in the pantry I’d be glad of a bite.”

“Why did you take her into the pantry just as she was leaving, Judy?” asked Pat.

“Oh, oh, I’d promised to give her a jar av me strawberry jam. But she’ll niver be getting it home safe…there do be something in an ocean v’yage it can’t be standing…she’ll be firing it overboard afore she’s half way across. She said to me in the pantry, Patsy dear, that ye did be having a lovely smile and a grand sinse av fun. Sure and I’m putting that bit av biscuit she lift on her plate in me glory box for a kapesake. It was her third so there did be no insult in her laving it. Well, it do be all over and whether I’ll slape a wink tonight or not the Good Man Above only knows.”

Judy was snoring soundly enough in the kitchen chamber when Pat and Cuddles went to bed. Young Joe Merritt had been around Silver Bush that night, wanting Pat to go to a picture with him but Pat had refused. Judy, as usual, wanted to know why poor Joe was always being snubbed. Wasn’t he be way av being a rale nice young man and a cousin av the Charlottetown Merritts at that?

“I haven’t a fault to find with him, Judy,” said Pat gravely, “but our taste in jokes is entirely different.”

“Oh, oh, that’s sarious,” agreed Judy…and crossed Joe Merritt’s name from her list of possibles.

“Pull up the blind and let the night in, Cuddles. And don’t light the lamp yet. When you light it you make an enemy of the dark. It stares in at you resentfully. Just now it’s kind and friendly. Let’s sit here at the window and talk it all over. It would be wicked to go to sleep too soon on such a night.”