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in the yard, Uncle Tom’s buildings were like a little town by themselves. He had so many of them…pig houses and hen houses and sheep houses and boiler houses and goose houses and turnip houses…even an apple house which Pat thought was a delightful name. North Glen people said that Tom Gardiner put up some kind of a new building every year. Pat thought they all huddled around the big barn like chickens around their mother. Uncle Tom’s house was an old one, with two wide, low windows that looked like eyes on either side of a balcony that was like a nose. It was a prim and dignified house but all its primness couldn’t resist its own red front door which was just like an impish tongue sticking out of its face. Pat always felt as if the house was chuckling to itself over some joke nobody but itself knew, and she liked the mystery. She wouldn’t have liked Silver Bush to be like that: Silver Bush mustn’t have secrets from her : but it was all right in Swallowfield.
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    If it had not been for mother’s headache and the doctor coming and Judy Plum’s parsley bed Pat would have thought it romantic and delightful to have spent a night at Swallowfield. She had never been there for a night before…it was too near home. But that was part of its charm…to be so near home and yet not quite home…to look out of the window of the gable room and see home…see its roof over the trees and all its windows lighted up. Pat was a bit lonely. Sid was far away at the other end of the house. Uncle Tom had made speeches about doctors and black bags until Aunt Edith had shut him up…or Pat. Perhaps it was Pat.
    â€œIf you mean, Uncle Tom,” Pat had said proudly, “that Dr. Bentley is bringing us a baby in a black bag you’re very much mistaken. We grow our own babies. Judy Plum is looking for ours in the parsley bed at this very minute.”
    â€œWell…I’m…dashed,” said Uncle Tom. And he looked as if he were dashed. Aunt Edith had given Pat a pin-wheel cookie and hustled her off to bed in a very pretty room where the curtains and chair covers were of creamy chintz with purple violets scattered over it and where the bed had a pink quilt. All very splendid. But it looked big and lonesome.
    Aunt Edith turned the bedclothes and saw Pat cuddled down before she left. But she did not kiss her as Aunt Barbara would have done. And there would be no Judy Plum to tiptoe in when she thought you were asleep and whisper, “God bless and kape ye through the night, me jewel.” Judy never missed doing that. But tonight she would be hunting through the parsley bed, likely never thinking of her “jewel” at all. Pat’s lips trembled. The tears were very near now…and then she thought of Weeping Willy. One disgrace like that was enough in a family. She would not be Weeping Pat.
    But she could not sleep. She lay watching the chimneys of Silver Bush through the window and wishing Sid’s room were only near hers. Suddenly a light flashed from the garret window of Silver Bush…flashed a second and disappeared. It was as if the house had winked at her…called to her. In a moment Pat was out of bed and at the window. She curled up in the big flounced and ruffled wing chair. It was no use to try to sleep so she would just cuddle here and watch dear Silver Bush. It was like a beautiful picture…the milk-white house against its dark wooded hill, framed in an almost perfectly round opening in the boughs of the trees. Besides…who knew?…maybe Ellen Price was right after all and the storks did bring the babies. It was a nicer idea than any of the others. Perhaps if she watched she might see a silvery bird, flying from some far land beyond the blue gulf’s rim and lighting on the roof of Silver Bush.
    The boughs of the old fir tree outside tapped on the house. Dogs seemed to be barking everywhere over North Glen. Now and