“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 grave-yard was “priceless.” What was the matter? Pat knew in a flash. They were patronising the garden and the well and the barn. And the grave-yard!
“You drink water out of a tap, I suppose,” she said scornfully.
“Oh, you are the funniest darling,” said Dorothy, hugging her.
But after 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 honour 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.”
Patronising! That was the word for it. She had patronised 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 practised 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.
2
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 grave-yard 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-tree 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 codfish 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.
“It is nice here in summer,” admitted Joan on one of these evenings, “but it must be frightfully dull in winter.”
“It isn’t. Winter here is lovely. One can be so cosy in winter,” retorted Pat.
“You haven’t even a furnace,” said Joan. “How in the world do you keep from freezing to death?”
“We’ve stoves in every room,” said Pat proudly. “And heaps of good firewood . . . look at the pile over there. We can see our fires . . . we don’t have to sit up to a hole in the floor to get warm.”
Joan laughed.
“We have steam radiators, silly . . . and open fireplaces. You are funny, Pat . . . you’re so touchy about Silver Bush. One would think you thought it was the only place in the world.”
“It is . . . for me,” said Pat.
“Joe doesn’t think so,” said Joan. “I’ve had talks with Joe when we were out driving. He isn’t contented here, Pat.”
Pat stared.
“Did Joe tell you that?”
“Oh, not in so many words but I could see. I don’t think any of you here really understand Joe. He doesn’t like farming . . . he wants to be a sailor. Joe is a boy with very deep feelings, Pat, but he doesn’t like showing them.”
“The idea of her explaining Joe to me,” sobbed Pat to Judy, after the girls had gone to their bed in the Poet’s room. “I know Joe has some silly ideas about sailing, just as well as she does, but father says he’ll soon have more sense. I’m sure Joe would never want to go away from Silver Bush.”
“Ye can’t all be staying here foriver, darlint,” warned Judy.
“But we needn’t think of that for years yet, Judy. Joe is only nineteen. And Joan to be putting on airs about ‘understanding’ him!”
“Oh, oh, that’s where the shoe pinches,” chuckled Judy.
“And Joan asked me to-day if I didn’t think Dorothy had a lovely laugh. She said Dorothy was noted for her laugh. I agreed, just to be polite, Judy . . .”
“Oh, oh, if one hadn’t to be polite! But thin . . . one has.”
“But I don’t think Dorothy’s laugh is half as pretty as Winnie’s, Judy.”
“Sure and they’ve both got the Selby laugh and ye can’t be telling which av thim is laughing if ye don’t see her. But I’m knowing nather ye nor Joan cud be convinced av that. The trouble is, me jewel, that ye and Joan are a bit too much alike in a good minny things iver to be hitting it off very well.”
Pat did not tell Judy everything that had stung her. Joan had said,
“After all, that Jingle of yours has a lovely smile.”
“He’s not my Jingle,” said Pat shortly. And what difference did it make to Joan whether Jingle had a lovely smile or not? Hadn’t she made fun of his hair and his glasses and his frayed trousers? And she had also laughed at Uncle Tom’s beard and Judy’s book of Useful Knowledge. One was “Victorian” and the other was “outmoded.” They condescended to Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara, too . . . they were “such quaint old darlings.” Pat had never been so conscious of the leak stain on the dining-room ceiling and the worn places in the Little Parlour carpet until she saw Joan looking at them, and she had not noticed how mossy the shingles of the kitchen roof were growing until Joan said amiably that she rather liked old houses.
“Our house is really rather too new. It’s of white stucco with a red-tiled roof . . . a bit glaring. Father says it will mellow with time.”
“I never like new houses,” said Pat. “They haven’t any ghosts.”
“Ghosts? But you don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Pat?”
“I didn’t mean ghosts . . . exactly.”
“What did you mean then?”
“Oh . . . just that . . . when a house has been lived in for years and years . . . something of the people who have lived in it stays in it.”
“You quaint darling!” said Dorothy.
3
Pat exulted in the freedom and silence of home after they had gone. It was altogether delightful to be alone again. The books that had been strewn everywhere were back in their places; the Poet’s room was no longer cluttered up with alien dresses and shoes and brushes and necklaces.
“Isn’t it nice just to be here by ourselves and no outsiders?” she said to Judy as they sat on the steps. A night of dim silver was brooding over the bush and the pale, perfect gold of the trembling aspen leaves had faded into shadow. The still air was full of far, muted surf thunder. Gentleman Tom had arranged himself beautifully on the well platform and the two orange kittens were blinking their jewel eyes and purring their small hearts out on Pat’s lap.
“Mother says she is so sorry I didn’t love my cousins. I do love them, Judy, but I don’t like them.”
“Oh, oh, but three’s a crowd,” said Judy. “Two girls can be getting on very well but whin there’s three av ye and all high-steppers, some one’s bound to get rubbed the wrong way. Often have I been seeing it.”
“I liked Joan in spots . . . but she made me feel unimportant, Judy. She snubbed me.”
“Sure and she’d snub the moon, that one. But she’s the cliver one for all.”
“And she bragged . . . she did.”
“The Hiltons always did be liking to make a bit av a splash. And didn’t ye do a bit av snubbing and bragging now yersilf, Patsy darlint? Thought I’m not saying ye didn’t be having the aggravation. There don’t be minny families that haven’t their own liddle kinks. Even the Selbys now, niver to mintion the Gardiners. Ye have to be making allowances. I’m thinking ye’d av been liking the girls better if it wasn’t for yer liddle jealousy, Patsy . . .”
“I wasn’t jealous, Judy!”
“Oh, oh, be honest now, me jewel. Ye was jealous of Joan because Joe liked her and ye was jealous of Dorothy because Sid and Cuddles liked her. Ye have yer liddle faults, Patsy, just as they have.”
“I don’t tell fibs anyway. They told mother when they went away they had had a perfectly lovely time. They hadn’t. That was a lie, Judy.”
“Oh, oh . . . a polite lie maybe . . . and maybe not all a lie. They had it in spots as ye sa
y, I’m thinking.”
“Anyway there’s one word I never want to hear again as long as I live, Judy, and that’s ‘quaint.’”
“Quaint, is it? Sure and whin Joan called Gintleman Tom quaint I’ll be swearing the baste winked at me. I cud av been telling Miss Joan her own grandfather was quaint the night he got up to be making a spach at a Tory meeting and his wife, who was born a Tolman and be the same token a Grit, laned over from the sate behind and pulled him down be his coat-tails. Ye cud hear the thud all over the hall. Not a word wud she let him be saying. Oh, oh, quaint!”
“Sometimes, Judy, they made me awful mad . . . inside.”
“But ye kept it inside. That shows ye’re getting on. It’s what we all have to be larning, me jewel, if we want to be living wid folks paceable. Mad inside, is it? Sure and I was mad inside ivery day they was here whin they began showing off in me own kitchen. And that Joan one talking about kaping ‘abreast av the times.’ Sure, thinks I to mesilf, if chasing around in circles after yer own tail is kaping up wid the times ye’re the lady that can be doing it. And thin I wud be thinking that yer Aunts at the Bay Shore were just the same whin they were liddle girls and thinks I, fam’lies must be standing be each other and life will be curing us all av a lot av foolishness. I wudn’t wonder if ye’d be mating the girls some time agin whin ye’ve all got a bit riper and finding ye like thim very well.”
Pat received this prediction in sceptical silence. She looked up to the Long House where the light in Bets’ window was glowing like a friendly star on a dark hill.
“Anyway I’m glad Bets and I can be alone again. Bets is the only girl I want for a friend.”
“What will ye be doing whin she grows up and goes away?”
“Oh, but she never will, Judy. Even if she gets married she will go on living at the Long House because she is the only child. And I’ll always be here and we’ll always be together. We have it all arranged.”
Judy sighed and nudged.
“Don’t be after saying thim things out loud, Patsy . . . not out loud, darlint. Sure and ye niver can tell who might be listening to ye.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 323
