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the fam’ly warts to me!”
    “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.

4
    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