Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

Judy always gave them a box of eats to take back Monday morning.

"As long as one can get a liddle bite one can kape up," she would say.

Pat wondered how Queen's students who got home only once in a blue moon, survived. But then their homes were not Silver Bush!

Pat met him for the first time at the Dramatic Club's exclusive dance in the Queen's auditorium, by which they celebrated the successful presentation of their play Ladies in Waiting. Pat had been one of the ladies and had been voted exceptionally good, although in certain vivid scenes she could never look "passionate" enough to satisfy an exacting director.

"HOW can any one look passionate with a cute nose?" she would ask him pathetically. In the end she looked impish and elusive which seemed to take just as well with the audience.

He came up to her and told her that he was going to dance with her. He never asked a girl to dance or drive with him ... he simply told her that she was going to do it. That, said the Queen's girls, was his "line." It seemed to be a popular one, though the girls he didn't notice talked contemptuously of cave man stuff.

"I've been wondering all the evening who you were," he told her.

"Couldn't you have found out?" asked Pat.

"Perhaps. But I wanted to find out from yourself alone. We are going to the sun-porch presently to see if the moon is rising properly and then we can discover who we are."

Pat discovered that he was Lester Conway and that he was in his third year at Queen's, but had just come back to college after an absence caused by pneumonia. She also discovered that his home was in Summerside.

"I know you're thinking just what I'm thinking," he said gravely. "That we have been living ten miles apart all our lives and have never met till now."

His tone implied that all their lives had been terribly wasted. But then, everything he said seemed to have some special significance. And he had a way of leaning towards you that shut out all the rest of the world.

"What an escape I've had. I was so bored with the whole affair that I was just going to go when ... you happened. I saw you coming downstairs and ever since that moment I've been afraid to look away for fear you'd disappear."

"Do you say that to every girl half an hour after you've met her?" demanded Pat, hoping that the sound of her voice would keep him from hearing how her heart was thumping.

"I've never said it to any girl before and I think you know that. And I think you've been waiting for me, haven't you?"

Pat was of the opinion that she had but she had enough Silver Bush sense to keep her from saying so. A lovely colour was staining her cheeks. Her French-English-Scotch-Irish-Quaker blood was running like quicksilver through her veins. Yes, THIS was love. No nonsense this time about your knees shaking ... no emotional thrills. Just a deep, quiet conviction that you had met your fate ... some one you could follow to the world's end ... "beyond its utmost purple rim" ... "deep into the dying day" ...

He told her he was going to drive her home and did, through a night drenched with moonlight. He told her that he was going to see her soon again.

"This wonderful day has come and gone but there will be another to- morrow," he said, dropping his voice and whispering the final word confidentially as he announced this remarkable fact.

Pat thought she was getting very sensible because she slept quite well that night ... after she once got to sleep.

It was speedily an item of college gossip that Lester Conway and Pat Gardiner had a terrible "case" on each other. It was a matter of speculation what particular brand of magic she had used, for Lester Conway had never really fallen for any girl before though he had played around with several.

He was a dark lover ... Pat felt that she could never bear a fair man again, remembering Harris Jemuel's golden locks. He was not especially good-looking but Pat knew she had got far beyond the stage of admiring movie stars. He was distinguished-looking ... with that faint, mysterious scowl. Lester thought he looked more interesting when he was scowling ... like Lara and those fellows. His psychology was sound. Whenever a girl met him she wondered what he looked like when he smiled ... and tried to find out.

He was appallingly clever. There was nothing he couldn't do. He danced and skated and footballed and hockeyed and tennised and sang and acted and played the ukulele and drew. He had designed the last cover for The Lantern. Very futuristic, that drawing was. And in the February number he had a poem, To a Wild Blue Violet, containing some daring lines in spite of its Victorian title. It was unsigned and speculation was rife as to who had written it and who the wild blue violet was. Pat knew. It speaks volumes for her condition of heart and mind that she didn't see anything comical in being called a blue violet. If she had been sane she would have known that a brown-and-orange marigold was more in her line. She was, in spite of her infatuation, a bit surprised to find that Lester could write poetry. She had faintly and reluctantly suspected that he wouldn't know poetry when he saw it. But A Wild Blue Violet was "free verse." Everything else, Lester told her, was outmoded. The tyranny of rhyme was ended forever. She would never have dared let him know after that that she had bought a second-hand volume called Poems of Passion and underlined half of them. I shall be dust when my heart forgets, she underlined twice.

She was horribly afraid she wasn't half clever enough for him. He completely flabbergasted her one evening by a casual reference to the Einstein theory ... looking at her sidewise to see if she were properly impressed. Pat didn't know anything about the Einstein theory. She did not suspect that neither did he and spent much of the night writhing over her ignorance. What must he think of her? She went to the public library and tried to read up about it but it made her head ache and she was unhappy until the next evening when Lester told her she was as wonderful as a new-mooned April evening.

"I'd like to know if you said that because it just came into your head or if you made it up last night," said Pat. Her tongue was always her own, whatever her heart might be. But she was happy again in spite of Einstein. Lester really did not pay many compliments, so one prized it when he did. Not like Harris Hynes whose "line" had evidently been to say something flattering whenever he opened his mouth. Judy had always said HE must have kissed the Blarney stone. How wraith-like Harris seemed now, beside Lester's scowls and commands. To think she had ever fancied she cared for him! Mere school-girl infatuation ... calf love. He had so little appreciation of the beautiful, poor fellow. She recalled pointing out the Hill of the Mist to him one moonlit winter night and he had said admiringly that it looked like a frosted cake. Poor Harris!

And poor Hilary! HE had had to retire into his corner again. No more evenings in the park ... no more rambles together. Even the week-end walks did not often come his way now. The car roads held and Lester drove her home in his little red roadster. He was the only boy at Queen's who had his own car. There was no pea soup in Judy's kitchen for HIM. And Pat almost prayed that he wouldn't notice the terrible crack in the dining-room ceiling.

It worried Pat a little that Judy didn't have much of a mind to him. Not that she ever said so. It was what she DIDN'T say. And her tone when Pat told her he was one of the Summerside Conways ... Lester B. Conway.

"Oh, oh, it do be a noble name. And is it any secret what the B. do be standing for? Not Bartholomew be inny chance?"

"B. stands for Branchley," said Pat shortly. "His mother was one of the Homeburn Branchleys."