dear dead near him in the Gardiner plot where she might have company in the lone new land. And how old was the little Lilian? Pat thought if any of the Silver Bush ghosts did “walk” she wished it might be Lilian. She wouldn’t be the least afraid of her.
There were many children buried there … nobody knew how many because there was no stone for any of them. The Great-greats had horizontal slabs of red sandstone from the shore propped on four legs, over them, with all their names and virtues inscribed thereon. The grass grew about them thick and long and was never disturbed. On summer afternoons the sandstone slabs were always hot and Gentleman Tom loved to lie there, beautifully folded up in slumber. A paling fence, which Judy Plum whitewashed scrupulously every spring, surrounded the plot. And the apples that fell into the graveyard from overhanging boughs were never eaten. “It wudn’t be rispictful,” explained Judy. They were gathered up and given to the pigs. Pat could never understand why, if it wasn’t “rispictful” to eat those apples, it was any more “rispictful” to feed them to the pigs.
She was very proud of the graveyard and very sorry the Gardiners had given up being buried there. It would be so nice, Pat thought, to be buried right at home, so to speak, where you could hear the voices of your own folks every day and all the nice sounds of home … nice sounds such as Pat could hear now through the little round window. The whir of the grindstone as father sharpened an axe under the sweetapple-tree … a dog barking his head off somewhere over at Uncle Tom’s … the west wind rustling in the trembling poplar leaves … the saw-wheats calling in the silver bush — Judy said they were calling for rain … Judy’s big white gobbler lording it about the yard … Uncle Tom’s geese talking back and forth to the Silver Bush geese … the pigs squealing in their pens … even that was pleasant because they were Silver Bush pigs: the Thursday kitten mewing to be let into the granary … somebody laughing … Winnie, of course. What a pretty laugh Winnie had; and Joe whistling around the barns … Joe did whistle so beautifully and half the time didn’t know he was whistling. Hadn’t he once started to whistle in church? But that was a story for Judy Plum to tell. Judy, take her own word for it, had never been the same again.
The barns where Joe was whistling were near the orchard, with only the Whispering Lane that led to Uncle Tom’s between them. The little barn stood close to the big barn like a child … such an odd little barn with gables and a tower and oriel windows like a church. Which was exactly what it was. When the new Presbyterian church had been built in South Glen Grandfather Gardiner had bought the old one and hauled it home for a barn. It was the only thing he had ever done of which Judy Plum hadn’t approved. It was only what she expected when he had a stroke five years later at the age of seventy-five, and was never the same again though he lived to be eighty. And say what you might there hadn’t been the same luck among the Silver Bush pigs after the sty was shifted to the old church. They became subject to rheumatism.
3
The sun had set. Pat always liked to watch its western glory reflected in the windows of Uncle Tom’s house beyond the Whispering Lane. It was the hour she liked best of all the hours on the farm. The poplar leaves were rustling silkily in the afterlight; the yard below was suddenly full of dear, round, fat, furry pussy-cats, bent on making the most of the cat’s light. Silver Bush always overflowed with kittens. Nobody ever had the heart to drown them. Pat especially was fond of them. It was a story Judy loved to tell … how the minister had told Pat, aged four, that she could ask him any question she liked. Pat had said sadly, “Why don’t Gentleman Tom have kittens?” The poor man did be resigning at the next Presbytery. He had a tendency to laughing and he said he couldn’t preach wid liddle Pat Gardiner looking at him from her pew, so solemn-like and reproachful.
In the yard were black Sunday, spotted Monday, Maltese Tuesday, yellow Wednesday, calico Friday, Saturday who was just the colour of the twilight. Only striped Thursday continued to wail heartbrokenly at the granary door. Thursday had always been an unsociable kitten, walking by himself like Kipling’s cat in Joe’s story book. The old gobbler, with his coral-red wattles, had gone to roost on the orchard fence. Bats were swooping about … fairies rode on bats, Judy said. Lights were springing up suddenly to east and west … at Ned Baker’s and Kenneth Robinson’s and Duncan Gardiner’s and James Adams’. Pat loved to watch them and wonder what was going on in the rooms where they bloomed. But there was one house in which there was never any light … an old white house among thick firs on the top of a hill to the southwest, two farms away from Silver Bush. It was a long, rather low house … Pat called it the Long Lonely House. It hadn’t been lived in for years. Pat always felt so sorry for it, especially in the “dim” when the lights sprang up in all the other houses over the country side. It must feel lonely and neglected. Somehow she resented the fact that it didn’t have all that other houses had.
“It wants to be lived in, Judy,” she would say wistfully.
There was the evening star in a pale silvery field of sky just over the tall fir tree that shot up in the very centre of the silver bush. The first star always gave her a thrill. Wouldn’t it be lovely if she could fly up to that dark swaying fir-top between the evening star and the darkness?
Chapter 3
Concerning Parsley Beds
1
The red rose was nearly finished and Pat suddenly remembered that Judy had said something about rooting in the parsley bed.
“Judy Plum,” she said, “what do you think you’ll find in the parsley bed?”
“What wud ye be after thinking if I told ye I’d find a tiny wee new baby there?” asked Judy, watching her sharply.
Pat looked for a moment as if she had rather had the wind knocked out of her. Then …
“Do you think, Judy, that we really need another baby here?”
“Oh, oh, as to that, a body might have her own opinion. But wudn’t it be nice now? A house widout a baby do be a lonesome sort av place I’m thinking.”
“Would you … would you like a baby better than me, Judy Plum?”
There was a tremble in Pat’s voice.
“That I wudn’t, me jewel. Ye’re Judy’s girl and Judy’s girl ye’ll be forever if I was finding a dozen babies in the parsley bed. It do be yer mother I’m thinking av. The fact is, she’s got an unaccountable notion for another baby, Patsy, and I’m thinking we must be humouring her a bit, seeing as she isn’t extry strong. So there’s the truth av the matter for ye.”
“Of course, if mother wants a baby I don’t mind,” conceded Pat. “Only,” she added wistfully, “we’re such a nice little family now, Judy … just mother and daddy and Aunt Hazel and you and Winnie and Joe and Sid and me. I wish we could just stay like that forever.”
“I’m not saying it wudn’t be best. These afterthoughts do be a bit upsetting whin ye’ve been thinking a family’s finished. But there it is … nothing’ll do yer mother but a baby. So it’s poor Judy Plum must get down on her stiff ould marrow-bones and see what’s to be found in the parsley bed.”
“Are babies really found in parsley beds, Judy? Jen Foster says the doctor brings them in a black bag. And Ellen Price says a stork brings them. And Polly Gardiner says old Granny Garland from the bridge brings them in her basket.”
“The
