Pat of Silver Bush

  “He needs a friend so much,” she explained. “I’ve got three brothers now. But of course I’ll always love you best, Siddy.”

  “You’d better, old girl,” said Sid. “If you don’t I’ll like May Binnie better’n you.”

  “Of course I couldn’t love anybody better than my own family,” said Pat, still wistfully.

  But Sid ran in to coax a snack out of Judy Plum. He was in high spirits for he had just discovered a new wart on his left hand. That meant he was ahead of Sam Binnie at last. They had been ties for quite a time.

  Pat crept a bit lonesomely up the back stairs and sat down by the round window. The little pearly pool over in the field was mirroring black spruce trees against a red sunset. For a moment the windows of the Long Lonely House were ablaze…then went sorrowfully out. There was not even a kitten to be seen in the yard. Oh, if Sid had just been a little jealous of Jingle! She knew how she would feel if he had made a chum of any girl but her. Suppose he should ever like May Binnie better…hateful May Binnie with her bold black eyes. For a moment she almost hated herself for liking Jingle.

  Then she thought of Happiness and the water laughing down the stones in that secret place.

  “Jingle likes my eyes,” thought Pat. “Friends are nice.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Black Magic

  It was in the last week of October that McGinty disappeared. Pat was just as heart-broken as Jingle. It seemed now that Jingle and McGinty had been always part of her life…as if there could never have been a time when they did not come over Jordan every Saturday afternoon or slip into Judy’s kitchen in the chill “dims” for an evening of fun and laughter. To Jingle, who had never known a real home, these evenings were wonderful…little glimpses into another world.

  The only fly in Pat’s ointment was that Sid and Jingle didn’t hit it off very well. Not that they disliked each other; they simply did not speak the same language. Had they been older they might have said they bored each other. Sid thought Jingle a queer, moony fellow with his dream houses and his dark glasses and his ragged clothes, and said so. Jingle thought Sid had a bit too high an opinion of himself, even for a Gardiner of Silver Bush, and did not say so. Thus it came about that Pat and Sid played and prowled together after school, but Saturday afternoons, when Sid wanted to be off with Joe at the farm work, she gave to Jingle. For the most they spent them in Happiness and Jingle built no end of houses and had a new idea every week for the house he was going to build for Pat. Pat was interested in it although of course she would never live anywhere but at Silver Bush. They explored woodland and barrens and stream but Pat never took Jingle to the Secret Field. That was her and Sid’s secret just as Happiness was hers and Jingle’s. Pat hugged herself in delight. Secrets were such lovely things. She used to sit in church and pity the people who didn’t know anything about the Secret Field and Happiness.

  McGinty went everywhere with them and was the happiest little dog in the world. And then…there was no McGinty.

  Pat found Jingle in Happiness one afternoon, face downwards amid the frosted ferns, sobbing as if his heart would break. Pat herself had been feeling a good deal like crying. For one thing, that hateful May Binnie had given Sid an apple in school the day before…a wonderful apple with Sid’s initials and her own…such cheek!…in pale green on its red side. May had pasted the letters over the apple weeks before and this was the result. Sid was quite tickled over it but Pat would have hurled the apple into the stove if she had dared. Sid put it on the dining-room mantel and she had to look at it during every meal. Then, too, Sid had been cross with her that morning because it had rained the day before.

  “You prayed for rain Thursday night…I heard you,” he reproached her. “And you knew I wanted Friday to be fine.”

  “No, I didn’t, Siddy,” wailed Pat. “I heard dad saying the springs were so low…and the one in Hap…the one that Jordan comes from is. That was why I prayed for rain. I’m sorry, Siddy.”

  “Don’t call me Siddy,” retorted Sid, who seemed full of grievances just then. “You know I hate it.”

  “I won’t, ever again,” promised Pat. “Please don’t be mad at me, Siddy…Sid, I mean. I just can’t bear it.”

  “Well, don’t be a baby then. You’re worse than Cuddles,” said Sid. But he gave her a careless hug and Pat was partially comforted. Only partially. She set off for Happiness rather dolefully but the sight of Jingle’s distress drove all thoughts of her own troubles from her mind.

  “Oh, Jingle, what’s the matter?”

  “McGinty’s gone,” said Jingle, sitting up.

  “Gone?”

  “Gone…or lost. He went with me to the store at Silverbridge last night and he…he disappeared. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Oh, Pat!”

  Jingle’s head went down again. He didn’t care who saw him cry. Pat mingled her tears with his but assured him that McGinty would be found…must be found.

  Followed a terrible week. No trace of McGinty could be discovered. Judy was of opinion that the dog had been stolen. Jingle put up a notice in the stores offering a reward of twenty-five cents…all he had in the world…for the recovery of McGinty. Pat wanted to make it forty-five cents…she had a dime and was sure she could borrow another from Judy. But Jingle wouldn’t let her. Pat prayed every bedtime that McGinty might be found and sat up in the middle of the night to pray again.

  “Dear God, please bring McGinty back to Jingle. Please, dear God. You know he’s all Jingle’s got with his mother so far away.”

  And everything was in vain. There was no trace of McGinty. Jingle went home every night with no little golden-brown comrade running through the yard to meet him. He could not sleep, picturing a little lost dog alone in the world on a bleak autumn night. Where was McGinty? Was he cold and lonely? Maybe he wasn’t getting enough…or anything…to eat.

  “Judy, can’t you do something?” begged Pat desperately. “You’ve always said there was a bit of a witch in you. You said once your grandmother could turn herself into a cat whenever she wanted to. Can’t you find McGinty?”

  Judy—who had, however, decided that something must be done before Pat worried herself to death…shook her head.

  “I’ve been trying, me jewel, but I know whin I’m bate. If I had me grandmother’s magic book I might manage it. But there it is. My advice to ye is to go and see Mary Ann McClenahan on the Silverbridge road. She’s a witch in good standing I belave, though I’m telling the world she do be a bit hefty for a broomstick. If she can’t hilp ye I don’t know av inny that can.”

  Pat had been compelled to give up believing in fairies but she still had an open mind towards witches. They had certainly existed once. The Bible said so. And you couldn’t get away from the fact that Judy’s grandmother had been one.

  “Are you sure Mary Ann McClenahan is a witch, Judy?”

  “Oh, oh, she always knows what ye do be thinking av. That shows she’s a witch.”

  Pat ran to tell Jingle. She found him standing on the stone bridge over Jordan, scowling viciously at the sky and shaking his fist at it.

  “Jingle…you’re not…praying that way?”

  “No, I was just telling God what I thought of the whole business,” said Jingle despairingly.

  But he agreed to go the next evening to Mary Ann McClenahan’s. They asked Sid to go, too…the more the safer…but Sid was training a young owl he had caught in the silver bush and declined to have any truck with witches. They started off staunchly, although Joe, going off to plow the Mince Pie field, with a delightful jingle of chains about his horses, solemnly warned them to watch out.

  “Old Mary Ann signed her name in the devil’s book you know. I’d jump out of my skin if she looked cross-wise at me.”

  Pat was not easily frightened and remained in her skin. If God, seemingly, wouldn’t pay any attention to your desperate little prayers could you be blamed if you
resorted to a witch?

  “Mind ye’re home afore dark,” cautioned Judy. “Sure and ’tis Hollow Eve this blessed night and all the dead folks will be walking. Ye just do be telling Mary Ann yer story straight out and do as she bids ye.”

  Jingle and Pat went down the lane where the wind blew the shadows of bare birches about and waves of dead leaves lay along under the spruce hedges. The late autumn sunshine flowed goldenly about them. The Hill of the Mist wore a faint purple scarf. Pat had on her new scarlet tam and was pleasantly conscious of it, amid all her anxieties about McGinty. Jingle strode along, his hands in his ragged pockets, and his still raggeder trousers flapping about his bare legs. Pat had never been out on the main road with him in broad daylight before. In Happiness and along the kinks of Jordan it did not matter how he was dressed. But here…well, she hoped none of the Binnies would be abroad, that was all.

  • • •

  Mrs. McClenahan’s little, white-washed house with its bright blue door was a good two miles from Silver Bush, along the Silverbridge road. A huge willow, from which a few forlorn, pale-yellow leaves were fluttering down on the gray roof, overshadowed it, and there was a quaint little dormer window over the door.

  “Oh, Pat, look at that window,” whispered Jingle, forgetting even McGinty in his momentary ecstasy. “I never saw such a lovely window. I’ll put one like that in your house.”

  The window might be all right but the paling was very ragged and the yard it enclosed was a jungle of burdocks. Pat reflected that being a witch didn’t seem like a very profitable business after all. She thought shrewdly that if she had ever signed her name in the devil’s book she would have made a better bargain than that.

  Jingle knocked on the blue door. Presently steps sounded inside. A prickly sensation went over Pat. Perhaps after all it was not right to tamper with the powers of darkness. Then the door opened and Mary Ann McClenahan stood on the threshold, looking down at them out of tiny black eyes, surrounded by cushions of fat. Her untidy hair was black too, coal-black, although she must be as old as Judy. Altogether she looked much too plump and jolly for a witch and Pat’s terror passed away.

  “Now who may ye be and what might ye be wanting wid me,” said Mrs. McClenahan with an accent three times as strong as Judy’s.

  Pat had the Selby trick of never wasting words or breath or time.

  “Hilary Gordon here has lost his dog and Judy said if we came to you perhaps you could find it for him. That is, if you really are a witch. Are you?”

  Mary Ann McClenahan’s look at once grew secretive and mysterious.

  “Whisht, child…don’t be talking av witches in the open daylight like this. Little ye know what might happen. And finding a lost cratur isn’t something to be done on a dure-step. Come inside…and at that ye’d better come up to the loft where I can go on wid me waving. I’m waving a table-cloth for the fairies up there. All the witches in P. E. Island promised to do one apiece for thim. The poor liddle shiftless craturs left all ther tablecloths out in the frost last Tuesday night and ’twas the ruination av thim.”

  They went up the narrow stairs to a cluttered loft where Mrs. McClenahan’s loom stood by the window that had caught Jingle’s eye. On the sill a perfectly clean black cat was licking himself all over to make himself cleaner. His big, yellow, black-rimmed eyes shone rather uncannily in the gloom of the loft. In spite of his being a witch’s cat Pat liked the look of him. What she would have felt like had she known that he was her lost and deplored Sunday, given to Mary Ann McClenahan by Judy a year before I cannot tell you. Luckily Sunday had grown out of all recognition.

  Mrs. McClenahan pushed a stool and a rickety chair towards the children and went back to her weaving.

  “Sure and I can’t be wasting a moment. It’s the quane’s own cloth I’m waving and sour enough her Majesty’ll look if it’s not finished on time.”

  Pat knew very well it was only a flannel blanket Mary Ann was weaving but she was not going to contradict a witch. Besides…perhaps Mary Ann did turn it into a gossamer web when she had finished it…one of those things of jeweled mist and loveliness you saw on the grass and on the fern beds along the woods on a summer morning.

  “So ye’ve come to get me to find the b’y’s McGinty,” said Mary Ann. “Oh, I know the name…I’m after knowing all about it. Yer Aunt Edith’s cat was telling mine the whole story at the last dance we had. Yer Aunt Edith do be too grand for the likes av us but it’s liddle she thinks where her cat do be going be spells. It’s lucky ye come in the right time av the moon. I cudn’t have done a thing for ye nixt wake. But now there’s maybe just a chanct. Why doesn’t that fine lady mother av yours iver be coming to see ye, young Hilary Gordon?”

  Jingle thought witches were rather impertinent. However, if you dealt with them…

  “My mother lives too far away to come often,” he explained politely.

  Mary Ann McClenahan shrugged her fat shoulders.

  “Ye’re in the right to make excuses for her, young Hilary, but I’ve me own opinion av her and ye nadn’t get mad at me for saying so bekase a witch doesn’t have to care who gets mad. And now that I’ve got that off me chist I’ll be thinking av yer dog. It’ll take a bit av conniving.”

  Mrs. McClenahan leaned over and extracted two hand-fills of raisins from a paper bag on a shelf.

  “Here, stow these away in yer liddle insides whilst I do a bit av thinking.”

  There was silence for awhile. The children devoted themselves to the business of eating and watching Mrs. McClenahan’s shuttle fly back and forth. Pat eyed her wonderingly. Had she really signed her name in the devil’s big black book, as Joe said?

  Presently Mrs. McClenahan caught her eye and nodded.

  “Ye’ve got a liddle mole on yer neck. Sure and ’tis the witch’s mark. Come now, child dear, wudn’t ye like to be a witch? Think av the fun av riding on a broomstick.”

  Pat had thought of it. The idea had a charm. Though she would have preferred to fly on a swallow’s back, skimming over the steeples and dark spruce woods at night. But…

  “Must I sign my name in the devil’s book?” she whispered.

  Mrs. McClenahan nodded solemnly.

  “I’d pick out a rale nice shiny black divil for ye…though mind ye, it’s the fact that aven divils are not what they used to be.”

  “I think I’m too young to be a witch, thank you,” said Pat decidedly.

  Mrs. McClenahan chuckled.

  “Sure and it’s the young witches that do be having the power, child dear. No sinse in waiting till ye’re gray as an owl. Think it over…’tisn’t ivery one can be a witch…we’re that exclusive ye’d niver belave. As for this McGinty cratur. Whin ye lave here folly yer noses up the hill and turn yerselves around t’ree times, north, south, east and west. Then go down the hill to Silverbridge. There’s a house just foreninst the bridge wid a rid door like yer Uncle Tom’s, only faded like. Turn yerselves about t’ree times again and knock twict on the door. And if inny one comes…mind I’m not saying inny one will…cross yer fingers and ask, ‘Is McGinty here?’ Thin, if ye get McGinty…mind I’m not saying ye will…make a good use av yer legs and ask no questions. That’s all I can be doing for ye.”

  “And what is your charge for the advice?” asked Jingle gravely, producing his quarter.

  “Sure and we can’t charge folks wid moles innything. It’s clane aginst our rules.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. McClenahan,” said Pat. “We’re very much obliged to you.”

  “You do be a pair av mannerly children at that,” said Mrs. McClenahan. “If you hadn’t been it wudn’t be Mary Ann McClenahan that wud have hilped ye to a dog. I’m that fed up wid the sass and impidence av most av the fry around here. It was difirunt whin I was young. Now hurry along…sure and wise folks will be indures afore moonrise on Hollow Eve. Don’t forget the turning round part or ye may look f
or yer McGinty till the eyes fall out av yer heads.”

  Mrs. McClenahan stood on her doorstep and watched them out of sight. Then she said a queer thing for a witch. She said,

  “God bless the liddle craturs.”

  Whereat Mary Ann McClenahan waddled over to Mr. Alexander’s across the road and asked if she might use their phone to call up a frind at the bridge, plaze and thank ye.

  • • •

  The October day was burning low behind the dark hills when Pat and Jingle left Mrs. McClenahan’s. When they reached the top of the hill they turned themselves around three times and bowed gravely to north, south, east and west. When they paused before the red-doored house at Silverbridge they turned three times again. If there were no McGinty at the end of the quest it should be through no failure of theirs to perform Witch McClenahan’s ritual scrupulously.

  When Jingle knocked twice the door was opened with uncanny suddenness and the doorway filled by a giant of a man in sock feet, with a bushy red head and a week’s growth of red whisker. A very strong whiff floated out, reminding Pat of something Judy took out of a black bottle now and again in winter for a cold.

  They both crossed their fingers and Jingle said hoarsely,

  “Is McGinty here?”

  The man turned and opened a mean little door at his right. Inside, on a rickety chair, sat McGinty. The look of misery in the poor dog’s eyes changed to rapture. With one bound he was in Jingle’s arms.

  “He come here one night about a wake ago,” said the man. “That cold and hungry he was…and we tuk him in.”

  “That was real good of you,” said Pat, since Jingle was temporarily bereft of speech.

  “Wasn’t it that now?” said the man with a grin.

  Something about him made Pat remember Witch McClenahan’s advice to make friends of their legs.