PAT OF SILVER BUSH & MISTRESS PAT (Complete Series). Люси Мод Монтгомери
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: