Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

"Now, why in the world should I have been thinking about you?" said Pat airily. Nobody could have dreamed that she had been thinking about nothing else. Nobody would have dreamed how exultant she was at this proof that Sunday had meant to him what it had meant to her.

"Indeed, I don't know why," he agreed with a masterly sigh. "I only know that I want you to be very, very nice to me."

He walked home with her. Sid and Bets faded away into the blue crystal of the night and they were alone. To walk with Harris over the hills, with the dark woods behind and a starry sky above and the cool white birches along the meadow fences, was something never to be forgotten. Pat was afraid everything she said was stupid. But Harris didn't seem to think so. Not that she said a great deal. Harris was the talker. She listened breathlessly while he described his recent trip in an aeroplane. He was going to be a bird-man. No tame career for HIM.

"What a dull old party," yawned Winnie, as she scrambled into bed. Frank had not been there.

And to Pat it had been cataclysmic. She held her pretty dress caressingly to her face before she hung it in her closet. HE had liked it. She would keep that dress forever. Judy should never have IT for her hooked rugs. She put the flowery paper serviette HE had spread over her knee at supper in her glory box, smoothing and folding it with reverent fingers. She lay awake until the pale golden dawn came in, recalling all he had said and saying it over again to herself. She worried for fear she had been too stiff. Perhaps he wouldn't understand. Judy always said to give them the fun of a chase ... but Judy was old-fashioned. When she wakened to find the sunshine raining all over her bed she wondered how any one could be unhappy in such a world. She could never feel sad again.

She went about in a dream all day haunted by the ghostly echoes of the violins ... by HIS voice ... and by lines of romantic poetry that came and went like beautiful wraiths in her memory. Read life's meaning in each other's eyes. Bets had a poem with that line in it in HER glory box and Pat had once thought it silly. Oh, THIS was life. She knew its meaning now.

"Let me be seeing yer tongue," said Judy anxiously at night. "I'm thinking ye're after catching cold at that dance. Ather that or ... is it a beau, Patsy darlint? Won't ye be telling ould Judy if it's a beau?"

"Judy, you're too ridiculous."

No matter how hard she tried Pat couldn't hide her secrets from her family. Soon they all knew that Pat "had a crush" on Harris Hynes and got no end of fun out of it. Nobody, to Pat's indignation, took it very seriously ... except Judy and Bets. She told Bets all about it the first night she spent at the Long House. Every once in so long she and Bets simply HAD to sleep together and talk things over. Bets was quite enthralled to find herself the confidante of a real love affair. She got almost as many thrills out of it as Pat.

For Pat life had become a serial of excitement. The curves of the dullest road were intriguing because she might meet Harris J. Hynes around them. The prosiest sermon good old Mr. Paxton might preach became eloquent when her eyes exchanged messages with Harris' across the aisle. She blushed furiously when he entered a room unexpectedly or when he handed her a book from the Sunday School library or held a door open for her to pass through. His manners were so courtly!

She marked a little ring around the date in the calendar in her glory box on which he first called her "dear." He had given her the calendar ... a calendar in the shape of a pink rose with gilt greetings on its petal months. "To mark your happy days on," he told her. "Frightfully sentimental," jeered Winnie. But Judy was quite enraptured with it.

"I do be kind av liking a sentimental beau, Patsy. They do mostly seem to be too hard-boiled nowadays."

Pat had one of her moments of beauty when he told her he had been watching her window light half the night. (It was really Judy's light but neither Harris nor Pat ever knew that.) It was thrilling to discover that he liked cats and was not in the least annoyed when Bold-and-Bad rubbed against his best trousers and haired them. Really, his temper must be angelic! Pat would not have been surprised to find he had wings under his navy blue coat.

And it was the delight of all delights to go to the movies at Silverbridge with him.

A theatre had been started in the shabby old community hall in Silverbridge and pictures were shown Wednesday and Saturday nights. Judy was persuaded to go once but never again. She said it was too upsetting. Pat was sure she could never forget the first time Harris took her.

"Has any one ever told you how lovely you were?" he whispered, as he helped her on with her coat in the Silver Bush kitchen.

"Lots of people," laughed Pat mendaciously, with an impish light in her eyes.

("Oh, oh, that's the way to answer thim," exulted Judy to herself in the pantry. "You won't be finding the Silver Bush girls too aisy, MR. Hynes.")

Pat felt as sparkling as the night. They went to Silverbridge by a short cut up the hill, past the Long House and down over the fields to the river. The white sorcery of winter was all around them and her arm was tucked warmly in the curve of Harris' arm. Just a little ahead were Sid and Bets. Sid was really having quite a case on Bets, much to Pat's delight.

"I couldn't dream of anything more perfect," she told Judy.

"Oh, oh, Bets'll be having a dozen other beaus yet afore she settles down ... like yerself," retorted Judy. Whereat Pat went off in high dudgeon. Well, old folks couldn't understand.

"I wonder who was the first person to think the new moon beautiful," said Pat dreamily.

"I've no eyes for the moon to-night," said Harris significantly.

Pat felt faintly chilled. The implication of Harris' remark was complimentary ... but that slim crescent hanging over the snowy spruces that were like silver palms was so exquisite that Pat wanted Harris to share its loveliness with her. Hilary would have. Then she was horrified at such a thought.

She forgot her momentary disloyalty in the theatre. It WAS so wonderful ... Pat would have worked that word to death that winter if she had not given it an occasional rest by using "marvellous." Crowds were around them but they were alone in the scented darkness. Once Harris took her hand and held it. When she tried to pull it away ... "say please," whispered Harris. Pat did not say please.

The only fly in her ointment was the beauty of the screen sirens. Did they ever sneeze ... have cold sores ... swallow a crumb the wrong way? How could any boy sit and look at them a whole evening and then see ANYTHING in ordinary, everyday girls? It was almost worse than last Sunday in church when Myra Lockley had been there, the guest of Dell Robinson. Pat couldn't keep her eyes off Myra's dazzling complexion ... all her own, too. You could tell that. Pat was sure Myra spent the whole service gazing at the navy blue back of Harris Hynes who had taken a notion that day to sit in his family pew up front. She tried to tease Harris a little about Myra the next evening when they were skating on the moonlight pool. Harris had just laughed and said, "There WAS a Myra."

At first Pat was pleased. Then she wondered if the day would ever come when he would say, "There was a Patricia."

Her first love letter was another "wonderful" thing. Harris had gone to visit a friend in town and Pat had never expected him to write her. But he did. Pat found the letter behind Judy's clock when she came home from school.

"Sure and I tucked it out of sight so that me bould Siddy shudn't be seeing it," whispered Judy.