Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

Though snowless, it was cold enough to freeze the Pool solid. Sid taught Pat to skate and Jingle learned for himself, with a pair of old skates Judy dug out of the attic for him. Jingle skating, his long legs clad as usual in ragged trousers, his lanky body encased in an old "yallery-green" sweater whose sleeves his aunt had darned with red, his ill-cut hair sticking out from under an old cap of his uncle's, was rather an odd object.

"Isn't he a sight?" laughed Sid.

"He can't help his looks," said Pat loyally.

"Oh, oh, that b'y will be having the fine figure whin he's filled out a bit and he's got more brains in his liddle finger than ye have in yer whole carcase, Sid, me handsome lad," said Judy.

And then unreasonable Pat was furious with Judy for maligning Sid.

"Sure and it's the hard life I have among ye all," sighed Judy. "Be times I'm thinking I'd better have taken ould Tom. Well, they tell me he's single yet."

Whereupon Pat dissolved in tears and begged Judy to forgive her and never, never leave them.

Although once in a while a few delicate white flakes flew against your face in the late afternoons, it was December before the first real snow came, just in time to make a white world for Christmas, much to Judy's relief, since a green Christmas meant a fat grave- yard, she said. Pat sat curled up at her round window and watched gardens and fields and hills grow white under the mysterious veil of the falling snow, and the little empty nests in the maple by the well fill up with it. Every time she looked out the world had grown whiter.

"I love a snowstorm," she said rapturously to Judy.

"Oh, oh, is there innything ye don't love, me jewel?"

"It's nice to love things, Judy."

"If ye don't be loving thim too hard. If ye do ... they hurt ye too much in the ind."

"Not Silver Bush. Silver Bush will never hurt me, Judy."

"What about whin ye have to lave it?"

"You know I'm never going to leave Silver Bush, Judy ... never. Oh, Judy, see how white the Hill of the Mist is. And how lonesome the Long Lonely House looks. I wish I could go and build a fire in it sometimes and warm it up. It would feel better."

"Oh, oh, ye're not thinking houses raly fale, are ye now?"

"Oh, Judy, I'm SURE they do. Jingle says so, too. I know Silver Bush does. It's glad when we are and sorry when we are. And if it was left without any one to live in it it would break its heart. I know Silver Bush has always been a little ashamed of me because I could never get up in school Friday afternoons and say a piece like the others. And then last Friday I did. I learned the Haunted Spring from Jingle and I got up on the floor ... oh, Judy, it was awful. My legs shook so ... May Binnie giggled ... and I couldn't get a word out. I was just going to run back to my seat ... and I thought of Silver Bush and how could I come home and face it if I was such a coward. And I just up and said my piece right out and Miss Derry said, 'Well done, Patricia,' and the scholars all clapped. And when I came home I'm sure Silver Bush smiled at me."

"Ye're a quare child enough yet," said Judy. "But I'm glad ye didn't let May Binnie triumph over ye. That's a liddle girl I'm not liking much and I don't care who knows it."

"Sid likes her," said Pat, a bit forlornly.

Soon Silver Bush became a house full of secrets. Mystery lurked everywhere and Judy went about looking like a bobbed Sphinx. Pat helped her make the pudding and helped Winnie and mother decorate the dining room and wreathe the banisters with greenery from the woods around the Secret Field. And she helped Sid pick his presents in the Silverbridge store for every one but her. She did not feel hurt when he slipped off upstairs in the store to the room where the dishes were kept and she did not ask him what the bulging parcel in his pocket was as they went home. She only wondered a bit dismally whether it was for her or May Binnie.

It was such fun wading home from the mail-box with armfuls of brown parcels that were not to be opened until Christmas morning and then revealed lovely boxes of silver paper tied with gold ribbons. Christmas itself was a wonderful day. Jingle and McGinty came for dinner. They had had a narrow escape from not coming. Pat was so mad because Judy told her to be sure and ask her beau that she wouldn't say a word to Jingle about it until the very "dim" of Christmas Eve. Then she suddenly relented and tore off to the garret to set a candle in the window. There was no telephone at the Gordon place and she and Jingle had agreed that when she wanted him specially she was to set a light in the garret window. Jingle arrived speedily and so got his Christmas invitation by the skin of his teeth.

It was the first time in his life that Jingle had had a real Christmas and McGinty nearly died of the dinner he ate. Everybody got presents ... even Jingle. Judy gave him a pair of mittens and Pat gave him a little white china dog with blue eyes and a pink china ribbon around its neck ... the best she could afford after all the family had been remembered out of her small hoard. Nobody knew what earthly use it could be to Jingle but he slept with it under his pillow that night and got more warmth from it than from Judy's mittens. His mother had not sent him anything ... not even a letter. It took all the comfort Jingle got out of the blue- eyed dog to keep back the tears when he remembered this. He tried to make excuses for her. Perhaps in Honolulu, that land of eternal summer, they didn't have Christmases.

Sidney gave Pat a jug with a golden lining ... a little fat brown jug that seemed somehow to have grown fat from laughing. Pat loved it but she thought Jingle's present the most wonderful thing she got. A doll's house which he had made himself and which was really a much more wonderful bit of work than Pat had any idea of. Long Alec whistled when he saw it and Uncle Tom said, "By ginger!"

"I hadn't any money to buy you a present," said Jingle, who had spent his solitary, long-saved quarter on a Christmas card for his mother, "so I made this."

"I like something that's made better than something that's bought," said Pat. "Oh, what chimneys ... and real windows that OPEN."

"That's nothing to the house I'll build for you some day, Pat."

Christmas Day was just like all the pleasant Christmases at Silver Bush. The only exciting thing was a terrible fight all over the kitchen between Gentleman Tom and Snooks, the pet owl. Snooks was quite a family pet by now. He endured and was endured by Thursday and Snicklefritz but he and Gentleman Tom had declared war on each other at sight. Gentleman Tom was licked and fled into ignominious retreat under the stove: but there were a good many feathers strewn over the kitchen floor first.

One night the following week Pat excitedly called out to Judy,

"Oh, Judy ... Judy ... I've got a growing pain!"

She had never had growing pains and both she and Judy were afraid she wouldn't grow properly. Long Alec talked worriedly of rheumatism but Judy laughed at him and sat up half the night rubbing Pat's legs joyously.

"Ye'll be taking a start this spring and growing like a weed after this," she promised Pat. "Sure and it's a rale relief to me mind, I'm telling ye. I'm not wanting inny sawed-off girls at Silver Bush."

After Christmas the snow went away and the January winds whined over cold, hard-frozen pastures and through grey, cold trees. Only the red edges of the furrows in the Mince Pie field had little feathers of white on them and a persistent wreath lay along the north side of the Hill of the Mist.

January evenings were pleasant at Silver Bush. Uncle Tom would come over and he and dad would sit by Judy's stove and talk, while Pat and Jingle and Sidney listened and Winnie and Joe studied their lessons in the dining room. They would talk of politics and pigs and finally drift into family histories and community tales. The white-washed walls of the old kitchen re-echoed to their laughter. Sometimes Uncle Tom got mad and the shadow of his big beard would quiver with indignation on the wall. But Uncle Tom's rages never lasted long. One thump of his fist on the table and all was well again.