Читать книгу Pat of Silver Bush - L. M. Montgomery - Страница 14

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Judy gave Pat and Sid their breakfast in the kitchen. Nobody else was up. It was such fun to have breakfast there with Judy and have the milk poured over their porridge out of her “cream cow” ... that little old brown jug in the shape of a cow, with her tail curled up in a most un-cowlike fashion for a handle and her mouth for a spout. Judy had brought the cream cow from Ireland with her and prized it beyond all saying. She had promised to leave it to Pat when she died. Pat hated to hear Judy talk of dying, but, as she had also promised to live a hundred years ... D. V. ... that was nothing to worry about yet awhile.

The kitchen was a cheery place and was as tidy and spotless as if Silver Bush had not just been passing through a night of suspense and birth. The walls were whitewashed snowily: the stove shone: Judy’s blue and white jugs on the scoured dresser sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. Judy’s geraniums bloomed in the windows. The space between stove and table was covered by a big, dark-red rug with three black cats hooked in it. The cats had eyes of yellow wool which were still quite bright and catty in spite of the fact that they had been trodden over for many years. Judy’s living black cat sat on the bench and thought hard. Two fat kittens were sleeping in a patch of sunlight on the floor And, as if that were not enough in the cat line, there were three marvellous kittens in a picture on the wall ... Judy’s picture, likewise brought out from Ireland. Three white kittens with blue eyes, playing with a ball of silk thread gloriously entangled. Cats and kittens might come and go at Silver Bush, but Judy’s kittens were eternally young and frisky. This was a comfort to Pat who, when she was very young, was afraid they might grow up and change, too. It always broke her heart when some beloved kitten turned overnight into a lanky half-grown cat.

There were other pictures ... Queen Victoria at her coronation and King William riding his white horse over the Boyne: a marble cross, poised on a dark rock in a raging ocean, lavishly garlanded with flowers, having a huge open Bible on a purple cushion at its foot: the Burial of the Pet Bird: mottoes worked in wool ... Home, Sweet Home ... Upwards and Onwards. These had all been judged at successive spring cleanings to be unworthy of the other rooms but Judy wouldn’t have them burned. Pat wouldn’t have liked them anywhere else but she liked them on the walls of Judy’s kitchen. It wouldn’t have been quite the same without them.

It was lovely, Pat thought as she ate her toast, that everything was just the same. She had had a secret, dreadful fear that she would find everything changed and different and heart-breaking.

Dad came in just as they finished and Pat flew to him. He looked tired but he caught her up with a smile.

“Has Judy told you that you have a new sister?”

“Yes. I’m glad. I think it will be an improvement,” said Pat, gravely and staunchly.

Dad laughed.

“That’s right. Some folks have been afraid you mightn’t like it ... might think your nose was out of joint.”

“My nose is all right,” said Pat. “Feel it.”

“Av course her nose is all right. Don’t ye be after putting inny such notions in her head, Long Alec Gardiner,” said Judy, who had bossed little Long Alec about when he was a child and continued to do so now that he was big Long Alec with a family of his own. “And ye naden’t have been thinking that child wud be jealous ... she hasn’t a jealous bone in her body, the darlint. Jealous, indade!” Judy’s grey-green eyes flashed quite fiercely. Nobody need be thinking the new baby was more important than Pat or that more was going to be made of it.