The Silver Bush folks had suspected for some time that Rae was going to be the beauty of the family and at last they were sure of it. Martin Madison, who had three ugly daughters, said contemptuously that Rae Gardiner was only two dimples and a smile. But there was more to her than that. Tillytuck considered that he had put it in a nutshell when he said she had all the other North Glen girls skinned a mile. There was some “glamour” about her that they didn’t have. She really had a headful of brains and talked of being a doctor…more to horrify Judy than anything else since she had really no especial hankering for a “career.” And she was clever enough to conceal her cleverness, especially from the youths who began to come to Silver Bush…boys of the generation after Pat, whom they regarded as quite elderly. Rae was very popular with them: she had a come-and-find out air about her that intrigued them and she had practiced a faraway, mysterious smile so faithfully before her mirror that it drove them quite crazy guessing what she was thinking of. None of them interested her at all, not being in the least like the pictures of the movie stars she kept pinned on the wall at the head of her bed. But, she coolly told Pat, they would do for getting your hand in.

Rae was full of life. Her every step was a dance, her every gesture full of grace and virility. She went about looking for thrills and always found them. Pat, looking at the exquisite oval of her little unwritten face, sighed and wondered what life had for this dear sister. She was far more worried over Rae’s future than her own and mothered her to what Rae considered an absurd degree. It was provoking when you were feeling romantic and ethereal to be cautioned to put on your overshoes! And to be told you were a snob because you complained of Tillytuck saying queer things in the kitchen when you were entertaining a Charlottetown boy and his sister in the Little Parlor.

“I’m not a snob, Pat. You know very well Tillytuck is always saying odd things. Of course they’re great fun and we laugh at them but strangers don’t understand. And that Little Parlor door won’t stay shut. I’ll never forget the look on Jerry Arnold’s face last night when he heard Judy and Tillytuck in one of their arguments.”

Rae came to an end of breath and italics which gave Pat a chance to say bitingly,

“Jerry Arnold’s father was a junk man twenty years ago.”