Pat of Silver Bush

  Sylvia Cyrilla’s father’s cousin in Charlottetown tried to cut his throat last week but Sylvia Cyrilla says he didn’t succeed and they took him to the hospital and sewed him up. (Alvin Sutton that wud be. Sure and none av the Suttons iver made a good job av innything they undertook.)

  Aunt Hazel’s father-in-law and mother-in-law live up the road a piece, Mr. and Mrs. James Madison. I often go up on errands. Mr. James has no use for me because I can’t eat a plate of porridge. He says it is a dish for a king. But I’m not a king. (Porridge, is it? Sure and I’m not running down porridge but skinny ould Jim Madison isn’t after being much av an advertisement for it.) They are very proud of their oldest daughter, Mary. She is an M.A. and won some great scholarships and is a teacher in a college. I suppose it is nice to be so clever, Judy. (Oh, oh, but I’m not hearing av her getting a man, though.) Mr. James likes to tease his wife. When Sylvia Cyrilla’s father asked him if he would get married over again he laughed and said yes, but not to the same woman. Mrs. James didn’t laugh though. (Oh, oh, she was after knowing it might be half fun and whole earnest.) They say Mr. James was very wild when he was young but he says if he hadn’t been there’d have been no stories to tell about him now…he’d be nothing but a dull old grandfather.

  I’ve been collecting stories ever since I’ve been here, Judy, so that I’ll have lots to tell when I’m old like you. There is one about a ghost on a farm belonging to Sylvia Cyrilla’s uncle who has whiskers. I mean the ghost has whiskers. Isn’t that funny? Can you imagine a ghost with whiskers? (Sure and I knew a ghost in ould Ireland wid a bald head. There’s no accounting (for the freaks av the craturs.) And Jen Davidson had a cousin who always cried when he was drunk. I thought it was because he was sorry he was drunk but Jen says it was because he couldn’t get drunk oftener. Old Mr. McAllister from the bridge was up to see Mr. James last Monday and said he would have been up Sunday only he was wrestling with Satan all day. Do you suppose he really was, Judy, or was he just speaking poetically. (Oh, oh, I’m guessing he must av been trying to keep on good terms wid his wife. She’d quarrel wid a feather bed, that one. Sure and he only married her be accident. Whin he proposed to her he was expicting her to say no and whin she said yes poor Johnny McAllister got the surprise av his life.) His brother was a dreadful man and died shaking his fist at God. (Ye cudn’t be ixpicting a McAllister to have inny manners, aven on his death bed, Patsy darlint.) The Maltby brothers have made up their quarrel after never speaking for thirty years. I don’t think they’re half as interesting now. Uncle Rob says they’ve made up because they’ve forgotten what they quarreled about but if anybody could remember it they’d start all over again. And Mr. Gordon Keys at the bridge keeps his wife in order by crocheting lace whenever she won’t do as he says. She hates to see him do it and so she gives in.

  The funniest story I’ve collected so far is this. Several years ago old Sam McKenzie was very sick in Charlottetown and everybody thought he was going to die. He was very rich and prominent, so Mr. Trotter, the undertaker, knew the family would want a fine coffin for him and he imported an extra fine one right off to have it ready because it was a very cold winter and he was afraid the strait might freeze over any day. And then old Sam went and got better and poor Mr. Trotter was left with that expensive coffin on his hands, and nobody likely to buy it. But he kept quiet and one day a few months afterwards old Tom Ramsay, who was rich and prominent, too, dropped dead when nobody expected him to. And Mr. Trotter told the family he had just one coffin on hand that was good enough and they took it and so old Tom Ramsay was buried in Sam McKenzie’s coffin. The secret leaked out after awhile and the Ramsays were furious but they couldn’t unbury him.

  That is my funniest story but the nicest is about old Mr. George McFadyen who died four years ago and went to heaven. At first he couldn’t find any Islanders but after a while he found out there were lots of them, only they had to be kept locked up for fear they would try to get back to the Island. Mr. James Madison told me that but he wouldn’t explain how he found out about Mr. McFadyen’s experience. Anyway I’m sure I’d feel like that, Judy. If I went to heaven I’d want to get back to Silver Bush.

  I was afraid when it blew so hard last night some of our trees would blow down. If Joe saves a kitten for me be sure you give it some cream, Judy. Jen Davidson has an aunt that has been married four times. (Oh, oh, the lies she must av been after telling the min, that one!) Jen seems proud of her but Uncle Rob says she ought to be more economical with husbands when there isn’t enough to go round. I think he said that to tease the Maiden Aunt. Madge Davidson is going to marry Crofter Carter. (Sure and she’s a bit shopworn or she wudn’t be after looking at him. I’ve seen the day a Davidson wudn’t walk on the same side av the road as a Carter.) Ross Halliday and Marinda Bailey at Silverbridge are married. They were engaged for fifteen years. I suppose they got tired of it. (Sure and Marinda Bailey always said she wudn’t marry till she got used to the thought av it. She was always a bit soft in the head, that one. But the min same to like that sort I’m telling ye. She niver had inny looks but kissing goes be favor and if Ross is the happy man at last it isn’t Judy Plum that’ll grudge it to him.) Mrs. Samuel Carter is dead and the funeral is Friday. They’ve had a terrible lot of funerals there, Sylvia Cyrilla says, but Mr. Carter says funerals are not as expensive as weddings when all is said and done. (And that’s no drame whin ye have to support yer son-in-laws as Sam Carter has. I’m telling ye.)

  I hope you won’t be tired reading this long letter, Judy. I’ve written some of it every day for a week and just put down everything that came into my head. I’ll soon be home now and we can talk everything over. Don’t let anybody change any of the furniture about when I’m away. If this letter is bulgy it’s just because I’ve put so many hugs in it for you.

  Your loving

  Patsy

  P.S. Aunt Hazel says she thinks my hair would grow darker if it was bobbed. Do you think it would, Judy?

  P.

  (Sure and it’s the good latter she does be writing. It’s the lonesome place around here widout the liddle dancing fate and the dear laugh av her. That way she has av smiling at ye as if there was some nice liddle joke atween ye’ll carry her far. But nixt year will be lashings av time to talk av bobbing. Sure and I must be putting this letter in me glory box.)

  CHAPTER 22

  Three Daughters of One Race

  If the years did not exactly whirl past after you were twelve, as the Maiden Aunt had so dolefully predicted, they really did seem to go faster. Pat and Bets could hardly believe that their thirteenth birthday was so near when mother told Pat that Joan and Dorothy were coming over from St. John for a visit and it would be nice to have a little party for them.

  “You can have it on your birthday. That is Bets’ birthday, too, and you will kill three birds with one stone,” said mother gaily.

  Pat was not very keen about parties…not as keen as Judy would have liked her to be. Neither was she especially excited over the visit of Joan and Dorothy Selby, although she was rather curious. She had heard a good deal at one time or another about the beauty of Dorothy. Both Joan and Dorothy had had their pictures in a society paper as “the lovely little daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Selby of Linden Lodge.” One would just like to see for oneself if Dorothy were as pretty as family gossip reported.

  “I don’t believe she’s a bit prettier than Winnie.”

  “Oh, oh, ’tis likely not, if Winnie was dressed up like her…sure and it’s sometimes the fine feathers that make the fine birds. But yer Uncle Albert was the fine-looking b’y and they say Dorothy takes after him. He’s niver been home much. He got a gay young wife that thought things dull here.”

  “Joan and Dorothy are being educated at a convent boarding school,” said Pat. “I suppose they’ll be frightfully clever.”

  Judy sniffed.

  “Oh, oh, cliverness can’t be put in wid a spoon aven
at yer convints. We do be having some brains at Silver Bush. Don’t let thim overcrow ye, Pat, wid their fine city ways and convint brading. Howsomiver, I ixpect they’re nice liddle girls and seeing as they’re yer only cousins on the spindle side I’m hoping ye’ll take to thim.”

  Joan and Dorothy had not been at Silver Bush twenty-four hours before Pat had secretly made up her mind that she was not going to “take” to them. Perhaps, although she would never have owned it, she was a little jealous of Dorothy who certainly lived up to her reputation for beauty. She was prettier than Winnie…though Pat never could be got to admit that she was prettier than Bets. Her hair was a dark, nutty brown, dipping down prettily over her forehead, and it made Pat’s look even more gingery and faded by contrast. She had velvety brown eyes that made Pat’s amber-hued ones look almost yellow. She had beautiful hands…which she put up to her face very often and which made everybody else’s look sunburned and skinny. Joan, who was the brainy one and made no great claims to beauty, was very proud of Dorothy’s looks and bragged a little about them.

  “Dorothy is the prettiest girl in St. John,” she told Pat.

  “She is very pretty,” admitted Pat. “Almost as pretty as Winnie and Bets Wilcox.”

  “Oh, Winnie! “ Joan looked amused. “Winnie is quite nice-looking, of course. You would be, too, if your hair wasn’t so long and terribly straight. It’s so Victorian.”

  Probably Joan hadn’t any very clear idea what Victorian meant but had heard somebody say it and thought it would impress this rather independent country cousin.

  “Judy doesn’t want me to bob my hair,” said Pat coldly.

  “Judy? Oh, that quaint old servant of yours. Do you really let her run you like that?”

  “Judy isn’t a servant,” cried Pat hotly.

  “Not a servant? What is she then?”

  “She’s one of the family.”

  “Don’t you pay her wages?”

  Pat had really never thought about it.

  “I…I suppose so.”

  “She is a servant then. Of course it’s awfully sweet of you to love her as you do but mother says it doesn’t do to make too much of servants. It makes them forget their place. Judy isn’t very respectful I notice. But of course it’s different in the country. Oh, look at Dorothy over there by the lilies. Doesn’t she look like an angel?”

  Pat permitted herself an impertinence.

  “I’ve heard that pretty girls hardly ever make pretty women. Do you think it’s true, Joan?”

  “Mother was a pretty girl and she is a pretty woman. Mother was a Charlottetown Hilton,” said Joan loftily.

  Pat knew nothing about Charlottetown Hiltons but she understood Joan was putting on airs, as Judy would say.

  This was when they had been several days at Silver Bush. They had been very polite the first day. Silver Bush was such a charming spot…the garden was so “quaint”…the well was so “quaint”…the church barn was so “quaint”…the graveyard was “priceless.” What was the matter? Pat knew in a flash. They were patronizing the garden and the well and the barn. And the graveyard!

  “You drink water out of a tap, I suppose,” she said scornfully.

  “Oh, you are the funniest darling,” said Dorothy, hugging her.

  But after that they did not condescend quite so much. They had all sized each other up and formed opinions that would last for some time. Pat liked Dorothy well enough but Joan was a “blow.”

  “I wish you could see our mums,” she said when Pat showed her the garden. “Dad always takes all the prizes at the Horticultural Show with them. Why doesn’t Uncle Alec cut that old spruce down? It shades the corner too much.”

  “That tree is a friend of the family,” said Pat.

  “I wouldn’t have violets in that corner,” suggested Dorothy. “I’d have them over at the west side.”

  “But the violets have always been in that corner,” said Pat.

  “How this gate creaks!” said Joan with a shudder. “Why don’t you oil it?”

  “It has always creaked,” said Pat.

  “Your garden is quaint but rather jungly. It ought to be cleared out,” said Dorothy as they left it.

  Pat had learned a few things since the day she had slapped Norma. For the honor of Silver Bush no guest must be insulted. Otherwise there is no knowing what she might have done to Dorothy.

  It was just as bad inside the house. Joan was all for changing the furniture about if it had been her house.

  “Do you know what I’d do? I’d put the piano in that corner.”

  “But it belongs in this corner,” said Pat.

  “The room would look so much better, darling, if you just changed it a little,” said Joan.

  “The room would hate you if you changed it,” cried Pat.

  Joan and Dorothy exchanged amused glances behind her back. And Pat knew they did. But she forgave them because they praised Bets. Bets, they said, was lovely, with such sweet ways.

  “Oh, oh, she has the good heart, av course she has the good manners,” said Judy.

  Pat warmed to Joan when Joan admired the bird-house Jingle had given her. Jingle had a knack of making delightful bird-houses. But when the girls met Jingle Joan lost grace again. Dorothy was sweet to him…perhaps a little too sweet…but Joan saw only the badly cut hair and the nondescript clothes. And Dorothy enraged Pat by saying afterwards, “It’s awfully sweet of you to be nice to that poor boy.”

  Patronizing! That was the word for it. She had patronized Jingle, too. And yet Jingle liked to hear Dorothy play on the piano. It couldn’t be denied she could do it. Winnie’s performance was nothing beside hers. Both the Selby girls were musical…. Joan practiced night and day on her guitar and Dorothy “showed off” her pretty little paws on the piano.

  “Ye’d be thinking she mint to tear the kays out be the roots,” muttered Judy, who did not like to see Winnie so eclipsed.

  • • •

  So the visit was not a great success although the older folk…all but Judy…thought the girls got on beautifully. Pat found it a bit hard to keep Joan and Dorothy amused…and they had to be amused all the time. They could not hunt their fun for themselves as she and Bets could. Pat showed them the graveyard and introduced them to all the fields by name, to the Old Part and the Whispering Lane. She even tried not to mind when Sid took Dorothy back and showed her the Secret Field. But it did hurt horribly.

  She knew the family thought Sid was “sweet” on Dorothy. Perhaps that was better than being sweet on May Binnie. But Pat did not want Sid to be sweet on anybody.

  “You’re just jealous of Dorothy because Cuddles has taken such a fancy to her,” jeered Sid.

  “I’m not…I’m not,” cried Pat. “Only…that was our secret.”

  “We’re getting too big to have secret fields and all that nonsense,” said Sid in a grown-up manner.

  “I hate growing up,” sobbed Pat. “Oh, Sid, I don’t mind you liking Dorothy…I’m glad you like her…but she didn’t care about that field.”

  “No, she didn’t,” admitted Sid. “She said what on earth did we see in it to make a secret of. And what did we see, Pat, if it comes to that?”

  “Oh!” Pat felt helpless. If Sid couldn’t see what they had seen he couldn’t be made to.

  Joan and Dorothy did not care for the play-house in the birch bush; they did not care for hunting kittens in the barn: two fluffy-tailed orange ones left them cold, although Dorothy did distracting things with them when any boys were around. She cuddled them under her lovely chin and even kissed the sunwarm tops of their round, velvety heads…“Just,” as Judy muttered to herself, “to be making the b’ys wish they were kittens.”

  They knew nothing about “pretending adventures.” They did not like fishing in Jordan with long fat worms; they could not sit for hours on a fence or boulder or apple-tre
e bough and talk over the things they saw, as Pat and Bets could. They found nothing delightful in sitting on Weeping Willy’s tombstone and looking for the first star. Joe took them driving in the evenings and the party was a bit of excitement. They wore dresses the like of which had never been seen in North Glen before and were remembered for years by the girls who saw them. But they were bored, though they tried politely to hide it.

  One thing they did like, however…sitting in the kitchen or on the back door-steps in the September twilights, when the sky was all full of a soft brightness of a sun that had dropped behind the dark hills and the birchen boughs in the big bush waved as if tossing kisses to the world, listening to Judy’s stories while they ate red, nut-sweet apples. It was the one time when Pat and her cousins really liked each other. Nor…though Dorothy thought it so “quaint” to eat in the kitchen…did they despise Judy’s “liddle bites” after the story telling. Pat caught them exchanging amused glances over Judy’s fried eggs and cod-fish cakes but they praised her bishop’s bread and doughnuts so warmly that Judy’s heart softened to them a bit. Judy felt rather self-reproachful because she did not like these girls better herself after having been so anxious that Pat should like them. Gentleman Tom, who had never noticed any one but Judy, seemed to take a fancy to Joan and followed her about. Pat thought Judy would be jealous but not a bit of it…apparently.

  “He knows she nades watching, that one,” sniffed Judy.