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1

It was only a few evenings later that there was a commotion in the house at Silver Bush … pale faces … mysterious comings and goings. Aunt Barbara came over with a new white apron on, as if she were going to work instead of visit. Judy stalked about, muttering to herself. Father, who had been hanging round the house all day rather lazily for him, came down from mother’s room and telephoned with the dining-room door shut. Half an hour afterwards Aunt Frances came over from the Bay Shore and whisked Winnie and Joe off on an unlooked-for weekend.

Pat was sitting on Weeping Willy’s tombstone. She was on her dignity for she felt that she was being kept out of things somehow and she resented it. There was no resorting to mother who had kept her room all the afternoon. So Pat betook herself to the graveyard and the society of her family ghosts until Judy Plum came along … a portentously solemn Judy Plum, looking wiser than any mortal woman could possibly be.

“Pat, me jewel, wud ye be liking to spend the night over at yer Uncle Tom’s for a bit av a change? Siddy will be going along wid ye.”

“Why?” demanded Pat distantly.

“Yer mother do be having a tarrible headache and the house has got to be that still. The doctor’s coming …”

“Is mother bad enough to want a doctor?” cried Pat in quick alarm. Mary May’s mother had had the doctor a week before … and died!

“Oh, oh, be aisy now, darlint. A doctor’s just a handy thing to have round whin a body has one of thim headaches. I’m ixpecting yer mother to be fine and dandy be the morning if the house is nice and quiet tonight. So just you and Siddy run over to Swallowfield like good children. And since the moon do be at its full at last I’m thinking it’s high time for the parsley bed. No telling what ye’ll be seeing here tomorrow.”

“That baby, I suppose,” said Pat, a little contemptuously. “I should think, Judy Plum, if mother has such a bad headache it’s a poor time to bother her with a new baby.”

“She’s been waiting for it so long I’m looking for it to iffect a miraculous cure,” said Judy. “Innyhow, it’s tonight or niver wid that moon. It was be way av being just such a night whin I found you in the parsley bed.”

Pat looked at the moon disapprovingly. It didn’t look like a proper moon … so queer and close and red and lanterny. But it was all of a piece with this odd night.

“Come, skip along … here’s yer liddle nighty in the black satchel.”

“I want to wait for Sid.”

“Siddy’s hunting me turkeys. He’ll be over whin he finds thim. Sure, ye’re not afraid to go alone? It’s only a cat’s walk over there and the moon’s lit up.”

“You know very well, Judy Plum, that I’m not afraid. But things are … queer … tonight.”

Judy chuckled.

“They do take spells av being that and far be it from me to deny it. Likely the woods are full av witches tonight but they won’t be bothering ye if ye mind yer own business. Here’s a handful av raisins for ye, same as ye git on Sundays, and niver be bothering yer head wid things ye can’t understand.”

Pat went over to Swallowfield rather unwillingly, although it was a second home to her … the adjoining farm where Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara lived. Judy Plum approved of Aunt Barbara, had an old vendetta with Aunt Edith, and had no opinion of old bachelors. A man should be married. If he wasn’t he had cheated some poor woman out of a husband. But Pat was very found of big, jolly Uncle Tom, with his nice, growly way of speaking, who was the only man in North Glen still wearing a beard … a beautiful, long, crinkly black beard. She liked Aunt Barbara, who was round and rosy and jolly, but she was always a little afraid of Aunt Edith, who was thin and sallow and laughterless, and had a standing feud with Judy Plum.

“Born unmarried, that one,” Judy had been heard to mutter spitefully.

Pat went to Swallowfield by the Whispering Lane, which was fringed with birches, also planted by some long-dead bride. The brides of Silver Bush seemed to have made a hobby of planting trees. The path was picked out by big stones which Judy Plum whitewashed as far as the gate; from the gate Aunt Edith did it, because Uncle Tom and Aunt Barbara wouldn’t be bothered and she wasn’t going to let Judy Plum crow over her. The lane was crossed half way by the gate and beyond it were no birches but dear fence corners full of bracken and lady fern and wild violets and caraway. Pat loved the Whispering Lane. When she was four she had asked Judy Plum if it wasn’t the “way of life” the minister had talked about in church; and somehow ever since it had seemed to her that some beautiful secret hid behind the birches and whispered in the nodding lace of its caraway blossoms.

She skipped along the lane, lighthearted again, eating her raisins. It was full of dancing, inviting shadows … friendly shadows out for a playmate. Once a shy grey rabbit hopped from bracken clump to bracken clump. Beyond the lane were dim, windy pastures of twilight. The air smelled deliciously. The trees wanted to be friends with her. All the little grass stems swayed towards her in the low breezes. Uncle Tom’s barn field was full of woolly-faced lambs at their evening games and three dear wee Jersey calves, with soft, sweet eyes, looked at her over the fence. Pat loved Jersey calves and Uncle Tom was the only man in North Glen who kept Jerseys.

Beyond, in the yard, Uncle Tom’s buildings were like a little town by themselves. He had so many of them … pig houses and hen houses and sheep houses and boiler houses and goose houses and turnip houses … even an apple house which Pat thought was a delightful name. North Glen people said that Tom Gardiner put up some kind of a new building every year. Pat thought they all huddled around the big barn like chickens around their mother. Uncle Tom’s house was an old one, with two wide, low windows that looked like eyes on either side of a balcony that was like a nose. It was a prim and dignified house but all its primness couldn’t resist its own red front door which was just like an impish tongue sticking out of its face. Pat always felt as if the house was chuckling to itself over some joke nobody but itself knew, and she liked the mystery. She wouldn’t have liked Silver Bush to be like that: Silver Bush mustn’t have secrets from her: but it was all right in Swallowfield.

2

If it had not been for mother’s headache and the doctor coming and Judy Plum’s parsley bed Pat would have thought it romantic and delightful to have spent a night at Swallowfield. She had never been there for a night before … it was too near home. But that was part of its charm … to be so near home and yet not quite home … to look out of the window of the gable room and see home … see its roof over the trees and all its windows lighted up. Pat was a bit lonely. Sid was far away at the other end of the house. Uncle Tom had made speeches about doctors and black bags until Aunt Edith had shut him up … or Pat. Perhaps it was Pat.

“If you mean, Uncle Tom,” Pat had said proudly, “that Dr. Bentley is bringing us a baby in a black bag you’re very much mistaken. We grow our own babies. Judy Plum is looking for ours in the parsley bed at this very minute.”

“Well … I’m … dashed,” said Uncle Tom. And he looked as if he were dashed. Aunt Edith had given Pat a pinwheel cookie and hustled her off to bed in a very pretty room where the curtains and chair covers were of creamy chintz with purple violets scattered over it and where the bed had a pink quilt. All very splendid. But it looked big and lonesome.

Aunt Edith turned the bedclothes and saw Pat cuddled down before she left. But she did not kiss her as Aunt Barbara would have done. And there would be no Judy Plum to tiptoe in when she thought you were asleep and whisper, “God bless and kape ye through the night, me jewel.” Judy never missed doing that. But tonight she would be hunting through the parsley bed, likely never thinking of her “jewel” at all. Pat’s lips trembled. The tears were very near now … and then she thought of Weeping Willy. One disgrace like that was enough in a family. She would not be Weeping Pat.

But she could not sleep. She lay watching the chimneys of Silver Bush through the window and wishing Sid’s room were only near hers. Suddenly a light flashed from the garret window of Silver Bush … flashed a second and disappeared. It was as if the house had winked at her … called to her. In a moment Pat was out of bed and at the window. She curled up in the big flounced and ruffled wing chair. It was no use to try to sleep so she would just cuddle here and watch dear Silver Bush. It was like a beautiful picture … the milk-white house against its dark wooded hill, framed in an almost perfectly round opening in the boughs of the trees. Besides … who knew? … maybe Ellen Price was right after all and the storks did bring the babies. It was a nicer idea than any of the others. Perhaps if she watched she might see a silvery bird, flying from some far land beyond the blue gulf’s rim and lighting on the roof of Silver Bush.

The boughs of the old fir tree outside tapped on the house. Dogs seemed to be barking everywhere over North Glen. Now and then a big Junebug thudded against the window. The water in the Field of the Pool glimmered mysteriously. Away up on the hill the moonlight glinting on one of the windows of the Long Lonely House gave it a strange, momentary appearance of being lighted up. Pat had a thrill. A treetop behind the house looked like a witch crouched on its roof, just alighted from her broomstick. Pat’s flesh crawled deliriously. Maybe there really were witches. Maybe they flew on a broomstick over the harbour at nights. What a jolly way of getting about! Maybe they brought the babies. But no, no. They didn’t want anything at Silver Bush that witches brought. Better the parsley bed than that. It was a lovely night for a baby to come. Was that a great white bird sailing over the trees? No, only a silvery cloud. Another Junebug … swoop went the wind around Uncle Tom’s apple house … tap-tap went the fir boughs … Pat was fast asleep in the big chair and there Sidney found her when he slipped cautiously in at dawn before any one else at Swallowfield was up.

“Oh, Siddy!” Pat threw her arms about him and held him close to her in the chair. “Isn’t it funny … I’ve been here all night. The bed was so big and lonesome. Oh, Sid, do you think Judy has found it yet?”

“Found what?”

“Why … the baby.” Surely it was all right to tell Sid now. It was such a relief not to have a guilty secret from him any longer. “Judy went hunting for it in the parsley bed last night … for mother, you know.”

Sid looked very wise … or as wise as a boy could look who had two big, round, funny brown eyes under fuzzy golden-brown curls. He was a year older than Pat … he had been to school … he knew just what that parsley bed yarn amounted to. But it was just as well for a girl like Pat to believe it.

“Let’s go home and see,” he suggested.

Pat got quickly into her clothes and they crept noiselessly downstairs and out of doors into a land pale in the morning twilight. The dew-wet earth was faintly fragrant. Pat had no memory of ever having been up before sunrise in her life. How lovely it was to be walking hand in hand with Sid along the Whispering Lane before the day had really begun!

“I hope this new kid will be a girl,” said Sid. “Two boys are enough in a family but nobody cares how many girls there are. And I hope it’ll be goodlooking.”

For the first time in her life Pat felt a dreadful stab of jealousy. But she was loyal, too.

“Of course it will. But you won’t like it better than me, will you … oh, please Siddy?”

“Silly! Of course I won’t like it better than you. I don’t expect to like it at all,” said Sid disdainfully.

“Oh, you must like it a little, because of mother. And oh, Sid, please promise that you’ll never like any girl better than me.”

“Sure I won’t.” Sid was very fond of Pat and didn’t care who knew it. At the gate he put his chubby arms about her and kissed her.

“You won’t ever marry another girl, Sid?”

“Not much. I’m going to be a bachelor like Uncle Tom. He says he likes a quiet life and I do, too.”

“And we’ll always live at Silver Bush and I’ll keep house for you,” said Pat eagerly.

“Sure. Unless I go west; lots of boys do.”

“Oh!” A cold wind blew across Pat’s happiness. “Oh, you must never go west, Sid … you couldn’t leave Silver Bush. You couldn’t find any nicer place.”

“Well, we can’t all stay here, you know, when we grow up,” said Sid reasonably.

“Oh, why can’t we?” cried Pat, on the point of tears again. The lovely morning was spoiled for her.

“Oh, well, we’ll be here for years yet,” said Sid soothingly. “Come along. There’s Judy giving Friday and Monday their milk.”

“Oh, Judy,” gasped Pat, “did you find it?”

“Sure and didn’t I that? The prettiest baby ye iver set eyes on and swate beyond iverything. I’m thinking I must be putting on me dress-up dress whin I get the work done be way av cilebrating.”

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s pretty because it belongs to our family,” said Pat. “Can we see it right away?”

“Indade and ye can’t, me jewel. It’s up in yer mother’s room and she’s sound aslape and not to be disturbed. She had a wakeful night av it. I was a tarrible long time finding that baby. Me eyesight isn’t what it was I’m grieving to say. I’m thinking that’s the last baby I’ll iver be able to find in the parsley bed.”

3

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, darkred 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 heartbreaking.

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.

4

It was well on in the forenoon when they were allowed upstairs. Judy marshalled them up, very imposing in her blue silk dress, of a day when it was a recommendation for silk that it could stand alone. She had had it for fifteen years, having got it in honour of the bride young Long Alec was bringing to Silver Bush, and she put it on only for very special occasions. It had been donned for every new baby and the last time it had been worn was six years ago at Grandmother Gardiner’s funeral. Fashions had changed considerably but what cared Judy? A silk dress was a silk dress. She was so splendid in it that the children were half in awe of her. They liked her much better in her old drugget but Judy tasted her day of state.

A nurse in white cap and apron was queening it in mother’s room. Mother was lying on her pillows, white and spent after that dreadful headache, with her dark wings of hair around her face and her sweet, dreamy, golden-brown eyes shining with happiness. Aunt Barbara was rocking a quaint old black cradle, brought down from the garret … a cradle a hundred years old which Great-great-Grandfather Nehemiah had made with his own hands. Every Silver Bush baby had been rocked in it. The nurse did not approve of either cradles or rocking but she was powerless against Aunt Barbara and Judy combined.

“Not have a cradle for it, do ye be saying?” the scandalised Judy ejaculated. “Ye’ll not be intinding to put the swate wee cratur in a basket? Oh, oh, did inny one iver be hearing the like av it? It’s niver a baby at Silver Bush that’ll be brought up in your baskets, as if it was no better than a kitten, and that I’m telling ye. Here’s the cradle that I’ve polished wid me own hands and into that same cradle she’ll be going.”

Pat, after a rapturous kiss for mother, tiptoed over to the cradle, trembling with excitement. Judy lifted the baby out and held it so that the children could see it.

“Oh, Judy, isn’t she sweet?” whispered Pat in ecstasy. “Can’t I hold her for just the tiniest moment?”

“That ye can, darlint,” … and Judy put the baby into Pat’s arms before either nurse or Aunt Barbara could prevent her. Oh, oh, that was one in the eye for the nurse!

Pat stood holding the fragrant thing as knackily as if she had been doing it all her life. What tiny, darling legs it had! What dear, wee, crumpled paddies! What little pink nails like perfect shells!

“What colour are its eyes, Judy?”

“Blue,” said Judy, “big and blue like violets wid dew on them, just like Winnie’s. And it’s certain I am that she do be having dimples in her chakes. Sure a woman wid a baby like that naden’t call the quane her cousin.”

“‘The child that is born on the Sabbath day

Will be bonny and blithe and good and gay,’”

said Aunt Barbara.

“Of course she will,” said Pat. “She would, no matter what day she was born on. Isn’t she our baby?”

“Oh, oh, there’s the right spirit for ye,” said Judy.

“The baby must really be put back in the cradle now,” said the nurse by way of reasserting her authority.

Pat relinquished it reluctantly. Only a few minutes ago she had been thinking of the baby as an interloper, only to be tolerated for mother’s sake. But now it was one of the family and it seemed as if it had always been at Silver Bush. No matter how it had come, from stork or black bag or parsley bed, it was there and it was theirs.