Lucy Montgomery - Pat of Silver Bush

"They'll just cut her up for an experiment," said Aunt Edith wrathfully. " I know them."

"Indade and I wudn't put it by thim," agreed Judy bitterly.

Mother herself would not hear of an operation. She felt that it couldn't be afforded: but she didn't tell Long Alec that. She merely said that she was frightened of it. Long Alec rather marvelled at this. He had never associated fear of any kind with his wife. But then neither had he ever associated that strange languor and willingness to lie quietly and let other people do the work. Mother had never hurried through life; she had walked leisurely ... Judy was wont to say she had never known any one who made so little noise moving round a house ... but she got a surprising amount of work done.

Pat got through the exams eventually and even dared to hope she had done fairly well. She left Queen's with a good deal of regret and grimy Linden Avenue with none at all. Home again to dear Silver Bush, never more to leave it ... for the home school was promised her and Pat had already in imagination spent a year's salary on Silver Bush. Several years', in fact ... there were so many things she wanted to do for it. How she loved it! The house and everything about it were linked inextricably with her life and thought. There was one verse in the Bible she could never understand. Forget also thine own people and thy father's house. It always made her shiver. How could anybody do THAT?

She fell in love with life all over again on those spring evenings when she walked over the hill or by Jordan or in the secret paths of her enchanted birches. Winds ... delicate dawns ... starry nights ... shore fields blurred by a silvery fog ... the cool wet greenness of the spring rains ... all had a message for her and all made her think of Bets ... even yet Pat's voice quivered when she pronounced that name.

Where was Bets?

"In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams"

did her footsteps wind?

"I wonder if Bets isn't homesick in heaven for THIS?" Pat pointed to the white lilac over the garden fence. "And she must miss the sunsets. This is just such a night as she loved, Judy. Oh, Judy, last spring she was HERE. All winter at Queen's, where she had never been, it wasn't so hard. But here ... everything seems to speak of her. To-night, when I smell that white lilac it seems to me that she must be near. She doesn't seem dead any more. She just seems around the corner somewhere, still dear and loving. But oh, I want her so!"

"Pat," came Cuddles' voice, clear and insistent at her elbow, "do you think I have It?"

"We'll be having our hands full wid that same young Cuddles," Judy had confided to Pat that very day. "In a few years that is, whin she grows into her eyes. Yer Uncle Tom sees it. Wasn't it only yisterday he sez to me, sez he, 'Ye'll be finding her a handful.' Oh, oh, she'll dance through life, that one."

Pat could not realize that Cuddles was by way of getting to be a big girl. It was only yesterday she had been an adorable baby, with dimpled arms and cheeks, whose very look said "come and love me." And now she was eleven ... with one teasing, unruly curl hanging down the middle of her forehead and a nose that even at eleven was not the smudge of other elevens. And her eyes! No wonder Cuddles was spoiled. When she looked up sorrowfully and appealingly, she was never punished severely. You couldn't punish a young saint gone astray. Cuddles' eyes were always asking for something and always getting it. Unlike Pat, Cuddles revelled in chums and Silver Bush was over-run with them ... "chattering like crows," said Judy indulgently. Judy was proud of Cuddles' popularity. As for the opposite sex ... well, if tributes of sticky candies and moist apples, and stickier and moister dabs of kisses meant anything Cuddles certainly had "It."

"When I was eleven," said Pat with the tone of eighty, "I wasn't thinking of such things, Miss Rachel."

"Oh, but I'm a modern child," said Cuddles serenely. "And Trix Binnie says you've got to have It or the boys won't look at you."

Judy shook her grey head solemnly, as if to remark, "If they say these things in the green tree what will they say in the dry?" But Cuddles persisted.

"You might tell me what it is, Pat, and if you think I've got It. After all" ... Cuddles was very serious .... "I'd rather get information from my own family than from the Binnies."

"The sinse av her now!" said Judy.

Pat took Cuddles off into the grave-yard and, sitting on Wild Dick's tombstone, tried to give her some "information." She felt that she must fill mother's place with darling Cuddles now. Mother must not be bothered.

And then the shadow, which had been creeping nearer and nearer, pounced.

Mother was ill ... mother was very, very ill.

Mother was dying.

Nobody said it but everybody knew it. Except Judy who stubbornly refused to believe it. Judy wouldn't give up hope. She hadn't got "the sign."

"And I'll not be belaving it till I do," she said.

Pat wouldn't believe it either.

"Mother can't die," she said desperately, "not OUR mother."

They had always taken mother so for granted. She had always been there ... she always would be there. How was it possible to picture anything else?

Pat had not even Hilary to help her through those weeks. Hilary was up west, helping another uncle build a house. The task delighted Hilary. It had an ideal quality for him. Besides, before he could design houses he wanted to know all about building them, from the ground up.

"Bets last year ... and now mother," thought Pat.

Then came a torturing hope. The specialist who was called in advised an operation. With it, he conceded, there was a chance. Without it, none.

Judy, when she heard there was to be an operation, gave up hope at once, sign or no sign.

"Oh, oh, it's mesilf shud be dying instid av her," she muttered. "I don't be knowing what the Good Man Above means, so I don't."

Gentleman Tom winked inscrutably.

"Ye can't be doing innything, cat dear. Ye wudn't let what was after Patsy that time get her. But ye can't be guarding Mrs. Long Alec ... not if they take her to that hospital to be cut up. And her a Selby av the Bay Shore!"

Pat was up in mother's room. A new Pat ... older ... graver. But more hopeful. As long as one had a little hope!

Mother had asked to be propped up in bed, so that she might see the green fields she loved. Her hands lay on the counterpane. It was strange to see mother's hands so white and idle.

She was to be taken to the hospital the next day. Mother was very fine and simple and brave about it. But when had mother ever been anything else? Mother had never been excitable like the Gardiners. Her SPIRIT was always at rest, so that any one who came into her presence was always conscious of a great calm. Her eyes were still the asking eyes of a girl and yet there was something maternal about her bosom that made you want to lay your head on it if you were tired or troubled.

"The apple blossoms are out. I'm glad I've seen them once more. I was a girl under them once, Pat, like you ... and your father ..."

Mother's voice trailed off into some hinterland of happy remembrance.

"You'll see the apple blossoms for many more springs, mother darling. You'll come back from the hospital cured and well ... and I've ordered a lovely day for you to go on."

Mother smiled.

"I hope so. I've never given myself up yet, Pat. But I'd like to talk to you a little about some things ... supposing I don't come back. We must look that in the face, dearest. Winnie will be marrying Frank ... and you will have to take my place, you know."

"I ... I know," choked Pat. "And I'll never, never marry, mother, I promise that. I'll stay here and keep a home for dad and Sid and Cuddles. Sid won't want to marry ever, when he has me."