LITMIR.BIZ

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be a cinnymon bun left over from supper.”

      Judy, who never wore an apron, turned up her drugget skirt around her waist, showing her striped petticoat, and stalked downstairs, talking to herself as was her habit. Gentleman Tom followed her like a dark familiar. Pat uncoiled herself and went down to let Thursday into the granary. She still had a queer feeling though she could not decide whether it was really in her stomach or not. The world all at once seemed a bit too big. This new baby was an upsetting sort of an idea. The parsley bed had suddenly become a sinister sort of place. For a moment Pat was tempted to go to it and deliberately tear it all up by the roots. Judy wouldn’t be able to find a baby in it then. But mother … mother wanted a baby. It would never do to disappoint mother.

      “But I’ll hate it,” thought Pat passionately. “An outsider like that!”

      If she could only talk it over with Sid it would be a comfort. But she had promised Judy not to say a word to anybody about it. It was the first time she had ever had a secret from Sid and it made her feel uncomfortable. Everything seemed to have changed a little in some strange fashion … and Pat hated change.

      2

      Half an hour later she had put the thought of it out of her mind and was in the garden, bidding the flowers goodnight. Pat never omitted this ceremony. She was sure they would miss her if she forgot it. It was so beautiful in the garden, in the late twilight, with a silvery hint of moonrise over the Hill of the Mist. The trees around it … old maples that Grandmother Gardiner had planted when she came as a bride to Silver Bush … were talking to each other as they always did at night. Three little birch trees that lived together in one corner were whispering secrets. The big crimson peonies were blots of darkness in the shadows. The bluebells along the path trembled with fairy laughter. Some late June lilies starred the grass at the foot of the garden: the columbines danced: the white lilac at the gate flung passing breaths of fragrance on the dewy air: the southernwood … Judy called it “lad’s love” … which the little Quaker Great-grand had brought with her from the old land a hundred years ago, was still slyly aromatic.

      Pat ran about from plot to plot and kissed everything. Tuesday ran with her and writhed in furry ecstasy on the walks before her … walks that Judy had picked off with big stones from the shore, dazzlingly whitewashed.

      When Pat had kissed all her flowers goodnight she stood for a little while looking at the house. How beautiful it was, nestled against its wooden hill, as if it had grown out of it … a house all white and green, just like its own silver birches, and now patterned over charmingly with tree shadows cast by a moon that was floating over the Hill of the Mist. She always loved to stand outside of Silver Bush after dark and look at its lighted windows. There was a light in the kitchen where Sid was at his lessons … a light in the parlor where Winnie was practising her music … a light up in mother’s room. A light for a moment flashed in the hall, as somebody went upstairs, bringing out the fan window over the front door.

      “Oh, I’ve got such a lovely home,” breathed Pat, clasping her hands. “It’s such a nice friendly house. Nobody … nobody … has such a lovely home. I’d just like to hug it.”

      Pat had her eggs in the kitchen with plenty of butter gravy, and then there was the final ceremony of putting a saucer of milk for the fairies on the well platform. Judy never omitted it.

      “There’s no knowing what bad luck we might be having if we forgot it. Sure and we know how to trate fairies at Silver Bush.”

      The fairies came by night and drank it up. This was one of the things Pat was strongly inclined to believe. Hadn’t Judy herself seen fairies dancing in a ring one night when she was a girleen in Ould Ireland?

      “But Joe says there are no fairies in P. E. Island,” she said wistfully.

      “The things Joe do be saying make me sometimes think the b’y don’t be all there,” said Judy indignantly. “Wasn’t there folks coming out to P.E.I, from the Ould Country for a hundred years, me jewel? And don’t ye be belaving there’d always be a fairy or two, wid a taste for a bit av adventure, wud stow himself away among their belongings and come too, and thim niver a bit the wiser? And isn’t the milk always gone be morning, I’m asking ye?”

      Yes, it was. You couldn’t get away from that.

      “You’re sure the cats don’t drink it, Judy?”

      “Oh, oh, cats, is it? There don’t be much a cat wudn’t do if it tuk it into its head, I’m granting ye, but the bouldest that iver lived wudn’t be daring to lap up the milk that was left for a fairy. That’s the one thing no cat’d ever do … be disrespictful to a fairy — and it’d be well for mortal craturs to folly his example.”

      “Couldn’t we stay up some night, Judy, and watch? I’d love to see a fairy.”

      “Oh, oh, see, is it? Me jewel, ye can’t see the fairies unless ye have the seeing eye. Ye’d see nothing at all, only just the milk drying up slow, as it were. Now be off to bed wid ye and mind ye don’t forget yer prayers or maybe ye’ll wake up and find Something sitting on your bed in the night.”

      “I never do forget my prayers,” said Pat with dignity.

      “All the better for ye. I knew a liddle girl that forgot one night and a banshee got hold av her. Oh, oh, she was niver the same agin.”

      “What did the banshee do to her, Judy?”

      “Do to her, is it? It put a curse on her, that it did. Ivery time she tried to laugh she cried and ivery time she tried to cry she laughed. Oh, oh, ‘twas a bitter punishment. Now, what’s after plaguing ye? I can tell be the liddle face av ye ye’re not aisy.”

      “Judy, I keep thinking about that baby in the parsley bed. Don’t you think … they’ve no baby over at Uncle Tom’s. Couldn’t you give it to them? Mother could see it as often as she wanted to. We’re four of a family now.”

      “Oh, oh, do ye be thinking four is innything av a family to brag av? Why, yer great-great-grandmother, Old Mrs. Nehemiah, had seventeen afore she called it a day. And four av thim died in one night wid the black cholera.”

      “Oh, Judy, how could she ever bear that?”

      “Sure and hadn’t she thirteen left, me jewel? But they do say as she was niver the same agin. And now it’s not telling ye agin to go to bed I’ll be doing … oh, no, it’s not telling.”

      3

      Pat tiptoed upstairs, past the old grandfather clock on the landing that wouldn’t go … hadn’t gone for forty years. The “dead clock” she and Sid called it. But Judy always insisted that it told the right time twice a day. Then down the hall to her room, with a wistful glance at the close-shut spare-room door as she passed it … the Poet’s room, as it was called, because a poet who had been a guest at Silver Bush had slept there for a night. Pat had a firm belief that if you could only open the door of any shut room quickly enough you would catch all the furniture in strange situations. The chairs crowded together talking, the table lifting its white muslin skirts to show its pink sateen petticoat, the fire shovel and tongs dancing a fandango by themselves. But then you never could. Some sound always warned them and they were back in their places as demure as you please.

      Pat said her prayers … Now I Lay me, and the Lord’s Prayer, and then her own prayer. This was always the most interesting part because she made it up herself. She could not understand people who didn’t like to pray. May Binnie, now. May had told her last Sunday in Sunday School that she never prayed unless she was scared about something. Fancy that!

      Pat prayed for everybody in the family and for Judy Plum and Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara … and for Sailor Uncle Horace at sea … and everybody else’s sailor uncle at sea … and all the cats and Gentleman Tom and Joe’s dog … “little black Snicklefritz with his curly tail,” so that God wouldn’t get mixed up between Joe’s dog and Uncle Tom’s dog who was big and black with a straight tail … and any fairies that might

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