Mistress Pat (5 page)

“I must write Hilary all about him,” laughed Pat. “He would delight in him. Oh, Judy, if Hilary could only drop in some of these November evenings as he used to do things would be perfect. It’s over two years now since he went away and it seems like a hundred. Is there any soup left for Sid, Judy?”

“Loads and lashings av it. Was it to the dance at South Glen he was going?”

“Wherever he went he took Madge Robinson,” said Cuddles. “He’s giving her quite a rush now. All summer it was Sara Russell. I believe Sid is a dreadful flirt.”

Pat smiled contentedly. There was safety in numbers. After all, Sid had never seemed really to have a serious notion of any girl since Bets had died. It pleased Pat to think he would be faithful to her sweet memory all his life … as she, Pat, would be. She would never have another intimate girl friend. She liked to think of herself as a happy old maid and Sid a happy old bachelor, living gaily together all their lives, loving and caring for Silver Bush, with Winnie and Cuddles and Joe coming home for long visits with their families, and McGinty and the cats living forever and Judy telling stories in the kitchen. One couldn’t think of Silver Bush without Judy. She had always been there and of course she always would be.

“Judy,” said Cuddles solemnly, turning back in the hall doorway on her way to bed, “Judy, mind you don’t go and fall in love with Josiah. I saw him winking at you.”

Judy’s only reply was a snort.

The days of that late autumn seemed to Pat to slip by like a golden river of happiness, even after the last cricket song had been sung. Mother was keeping well … father was jubilant over the good harvest … Cuddles was taking more interest in her lessons … the surplus kittens of the summer’s crop had all found excellent homes … and there was enough of dances and beaus to satisfy Pat’s not very passionate love of social life. Almost any time she would have preferred to roast apples and bandy lovely ghost stories in Judy’s kitchen to going to a party. Cuddles could not understand this: SHE was longing for the day when she would be old enough to go to dances and have “boyfriends.”

“I mean to have a great deal of ATTENTION,” she told Judy gravely. “A few flirtations … NICE ones, Judy … and then I’ll fall in love SENSIBLY.”

“Oh, oh,” said Judy with a twinkle, “I’m thinking that can’t be done, Cuddles darlint. A sinsible love affair now … it do be sounding a bit dull to me.”

“Pat says she’s never going to fall in love with anybody. I really believe she does want to be an old maid, Judy.”

“I’ve been hearing girls talk that way afore now,” scoffed Judy. But she was secretly uneasy. The Silver Bush girls in any generation had never been flirts but she would have liked Pat to show a little more interest in the young men who came and went at Silver Bush and took her to dances and pictures and corn-roasts and skating parties and moonlight snowshoe tramps. Pat had any number of “boyfriends” but friends were all they were or seemed likely to be. Judy was quite elated when Milton Taylor of South Glen began haunting Silver Bush and taking Pat out when she would go. But Pat would not go often enough to please Judy.

“Oh, oh, Patsy dear, he’ll have the finest farm in South Glen some day and the nice boy he is! It’s the affectionate husband he’d be making ye.”

“‘An affectionate husband,’” giggled Pat. “Oh, Judy, you’re so Victorian. Affectionate husbands are out of date. We like the cave men, don’t we, Cuddles?”

Cuddles and Pat exchanged grins. In spite of the difference in their ages they were great chums and Pat had a dreadful habit of telling Cuddles all about her beaus, what they did and what they said. Pat had a nippy tongue when she chose and the youths in question would not have been exactly delighted if they could have overheard her.

“But don’t you intend to get married sometime, Pat?” Cuddles asked once.

Pat shook her brown head impatiently.

“Oh … sometime perhaps … when I have to … but not for years and years. Why, Silver Bush couldn’t spare me.”

“But if Sid brings a wife in sometime …”

“Sid won’t do that,” cried Pat passionately. “I don’t believe Sid will ever marry. You know he was in love with Bets, Cuddles. I believe he will always be faithful to her memory.”

“Judy says men aren’t like that. And every one says May Binnie is making a dead set at him.”

“Sid will never marry May Binnie … that’s one thing I’m sure of,” said Pat. The very thought made her feel cold. She and May Binnie had always hated each other.

Tillytuck was almost as much interested in Pat’s affairs as was Judy. Every young man who came to Silver Bush got a severe scrutiny, though he knew it not, from Tillytuck’s little black eyes. It delighted him to listen to Pat’s badinage.

“Gosh, but she knows how to handle the men!” he exclaimed admiringly one night, when the door closed behind Pat and Milton Taylor. “She’ll make a fine wife for some one. I admit that I admire her deportment, Judy.”

“Oh, oh, we all do know how to be handling the men at Silver Bush, Tillytuck,” said Judy loftily.

For it was “Judy” and “Tillytuck” now. Judy would none of Josiah and “mister” was too formal to keep up for long. They were excellent friends after a fashion. It seemed to Judy, as to everybody, that Tillytuck must have always been at Silver Bush. It was impossible to believe that it was only six weeks since he had dropped in with his owl and his fiddle and Just Dog. The very cats purred louder when he came into the house. To be sure, Gentleman Tom never quite approved of him. But then Gentleman Tom had always been a reserved, taciturn cat who never really took up with any one but Judy.

Tillytuck had his prescriptive corner and chair in the kitchen and he was always slipping in to ask Judy to make a cup of tea for him. The fun of it, to Pat and Cuddles, was that Judy always made it, without a word of complaint. She soon discovered that Tillytuck had a sweet tooth where pies and cake were concerned and when she was in a good humour with him there was usually a triangle of one or a slice of the other waiting for him, to the amusement of the girls who affected to believe that Judy was “sweet” on Tillytuck, much to her scorn. Sometimes she would even sit down on the other side of the stove and drink a cup of tea with him. When she felt compelled to scold him he always soothed her with a compliment.

“See how I can manage the weemen,” he would whisper complacently to Pat. “Ain’t it the pity I’m not a marrying man?”

“Perhaps you may marry yet,” responded Pat with a grave face, dropping a dot of red jelly like a gleaming ruby in the pale yellow centre of her lemon tarts.

“Maybe … when I make up my mind whether I want to take pity on Judy or not,” Tillytuck answered with a wink. “There’s times when I think she’d suit me. She’s fond of talking and I’m fond of listening.”

Judy ignored nonsense of this kind. She had, so she informed the girls, taken Tillytuck’s measure once and for all.

She was, however, very bitter because he never went to church. Judy thought all hired men ought to go to church. It was only respectable. If they did not go who knew but that censorious neighbours would claim it was because they were so overworked at Silver Bush during the week that they did not be having the strength to go to church on Sundays. But Tillytuck was adamantine to her arguments.

“I don’t approve of human hymns,” he said firmly. “Nothing should be sung in churches but the psalms of David … with maybe an occasional paraphrase on special occasions. Them’s my principles and I sticks to them. I always sing a psalm before I go to bed and every Sunday morning I read a chapter in my testament.”

“And on Waping Willy’s tombstone,” muttered Judy, who, for some mysterious reason resented Tillytuck’s habit of going into the graveyard to read the said chapter.

And then … Christmas was drawing near and Great Preparations were being made. You could hear the capitals in Tillytuck’s voice when he referred to them. They were going to have a real “reunion.” Winnie and Frank would come and Uncle Tom and Aunt Edith and Aunt Barbara from Swallowfield and Aunt Hazel and Uncle Rob Madison and their five children and the Bay Shore Great-aunts if their rheumatism let them. In fact, it was to be what Judy called “a regular tommyshaw” and Pat was brimful of happiness and expectation over it all. It would be the first “real” Christmas since she had become the virtual mistress of Silver Bush. The previous one Frank had had bronchitis, so he and Winnie couldn’t come, and the one before that Aunt Hazel’s family had measles and Hilary was not there for the first time in years, and it hadn’t been a Christmassy Christmas at all. But everything would be different this year. And Joe expected to be home for the first Christmas since he went away. Judy’s turkeys were fat as fat could be and there was to be a goose because dad liked goose and a couple of ducks because Uncle Tom liked ducks. As for the rest of the bill of fare, Pat was poring over cookbooks most of her spare time. Many and old were the cookbooks of Silver Bush, full of clan recipes that had stood the test of time. Most of them had nice names linked up with all kinds of people who had invented the recipes … many of them people who were dead or in far lands. It gave Pat a thrill to thumb them over … Grandmother Selby’s jellied cabbage salad … Aunt Hazel’s ginger cookies … Cousin Miranda’s beefsteak pie … the Bay Shore pudding … Great-grandmother Gardiner’s fruit cake … Old Joe Pingle’s mince pie … Uncle Horace’s raisin gravy. Pat never could find out who Old Joe Pingle was. Nobody, not even Judy, seemed to know. But Uncle Horace had brought the recipe for raisin gravy home from his first voyage and told Judy he had killed a man for it … though nobody believed him.

Judy was planning to get a new “dress-up dress” for the occasion. Her old one, a blue garment of very ancient vintage, was ralely a liddle old-fashioned.

“And besides, Patsy dear, I’d be nading it if I took a run over to ould Ireland some av these long-come-shorts. I can’t be getting the thought out av me head iver since Cuddles put it in. Sure and if I wint I’d want to make a rale good apparance afore me ould frinds, not to spake av a visit to Castle McDermott. What wud ye think av a nice wine-colour, Patsy? They tell me it’s rale fashionable, this fall. And mebbe sating as a bit av a change from silk.”

Pat, although the thought of Judy going to Ireland, even if only for a visit, gave her a nasty sensation, entered heartily into the question of the new dress and went to town with Judy to help in the selection and bully the dressmaker into making it exactly as Judy wanted it. Uncle Tom was in town that day and they saw him dodging out of a jeweller’s shop, trying hastily to secrete a small, ornately wrapped parcel in his pocket before he encountered them. Not succeeding, he muttered something about having to see a man and shot down a side street.

“Uncle Tom is awfully mysterious about something these days,” said Pat. “What do you suppose he has been buying in that shop? I’m sure it couldn’t have been anything for Aunt Edith or Aunt Barbara.”

“Oh, oh, Patsy dear, I’m belaving yer Uncle Tom has a notion av getting married. I know the signs.”

Pat experienced another disagreeable sensation. Change at Swallowfield was almost as bad as change at Silver Bush. Uncle Tom and the aunts had ALWAYS lived there … always would. Pat couldn’t fit an Aunt Tom into the picture at all. “Oh, Judy, I can’t think he would be so foolish. At his age! Why, he’s sixty!”

“Wid me own eyes, Patsy, I saw him rading a letter one day and stuffing it into his pocket like mad whin he caught me eye on him. And blushing! Whin a man av his age do be blushing there’s something quare in the wind. Do ye be minding back in the summer Cuddles telling us she was after mailing letters from him to a lady?”

Pat sighed and put the disagreeable matter out of her mind. She wasn’t going to have the afternoon spoiled. There were many things to buy besides Judy’s satin dress. Pat loved shopping. It was so fascinating to go into the big department store and pick things to buy … pretty things that just wanted to be taken away from all the glitter and too-muchness to be made part of a real home. They had to have some new overdrapes for the dining-room and new covers for the Big Parlour cushions and a set of little glass dishes to serve the chilled fruit cocktails Pat had decided on for the first course of the Christmas dinner. Judy was a little dubious about trying to put on too much style … “cocktails” had a quare sound whin all was said and done and Silver Bush had always been a great timperance place …

“Oh, Judy darling, it isn’t that kind of cocktails at all. Just bits of fruit … and juice … and a red maraschino cherry on top. You’ll love them.”

Judy surrendered. If Patsy wanted quality dishes she must have them. Anyhow, Judy was sure the Binnies never opened a dinner with cocktails and it was always well to be a few frills ahead of them. Judy enjoyed every minute of her excursion to town and brought home a wine-coloured satin of a lustre to dazzle even Castle McDermott. It dazzled Tillytuck to whom Judy proudly displayed it that night.

“A bit too voluptuous” was all he would say. And got no pie that night. Tillytuck confessed to himself as he took his way to the granary that this was one of the times he had failed in tact. If he has known that Judy had in the pantry a cold roast duck and a dish of browned potato which she had intended to share with him by way of a “liddle bite” he would have had still poorer opinion of his tact. As it was, Cuddles discovered it and she and Pat and Judy did justice to it before they went to bed, Sid coming in at the last to pick the bones and listen to Judy’s story about a lost diamond ring that had been found in a turkey’s crop cut open by accident.

“And that do be minding me … did I iver be telling ye av the first time yer Aunt Hazel dressed a turkey for dinner whin she was a slip av a girleen? Oh, oh, there niver was such a disgrace at Silver Bush. It tuk us years to live it down.”

“What happened, Judy?”

“Ye’ll niver be telling her I told ye? Well, thin, she tuk a great notion to be dressing and stuffing the turkey for dinner one time and nobody was to interfere wid it. We didn’t be ixpicting any company that day, just having the turkey for ourselves we were, not being Binnies as sells ivery blessed thing off the farm they can and living on potatoes and point. But unixpicted company come … quality folks from town no less … a mimber of Parlymint and his lady wife. I did be thanking me stars we had the turkey but oh, oh, what happened whin yer dad cut a slice off the brist, maning to give all white mate to the lady visitor!”