Sid along the Whispering Lane before the day had really begun!
“I hope this new kid will be a girl,” said Sid. “Two boys are enough in a family but nobody cares how many girls there are. And I hope it’ll be goodlooking.”
For the first time in her life Pat felt a dreadful stab of jealousy. But she was loyal, too.
“Of course it will. But you won’t like it better than me, will you … oh, please Siddy?”
“Silly! Of course I won’t like it better than you. I don’t expect to like it at all,” said Sid disdainfully.
“Oh, you must like it a little, because of mother. And oh, Sid, please promise that you’ll never like any girl better than me.”
“Sure I won’t.” Sid was very fond of Pat and didn’t care who knew it. At the gate he put his chubby arms about her and kissed her.
“You won’t ever marry another girl, Sid?”
“Not much. I’m going to be a bachelor like Uncle Tom. He says he likes a quiet life and I do, too.”
“And we’ll always live at Silver Bush and I’ll keep house for you,” said Pat eagerly.
“Sure. Unless I go west; lots of boys do.”
“Oh!” A cold wind blew across Pat’s happiness. “Oh, you must never go west, Sid … you couldn’t leave Silver Bush. You couldn’t find any nicer place.”
“Well, we can’t all stay here, you know, when we grow up,” said Sid reasonably.
“Oh, why can’t we?” cried Pat, on the point of tears again. The lovely morning was spoiled for her.
“Oh, well, we’ll be here for years yet,” said Sid soothingly. “Come along. There’s Judy giving Friday and Monday their milk.”
“Oh, Judy,” gasped Pat, “did you find it?”
“Sure and didn’t I that? The prettiest baby ye iver set eyes on and swate beyond iverything. I’m thinking I must be putting on me dress-up dress whin I get the work done be way av cilebrating.”
“Oh, I’m so glad it’s pretty because it belongs to our family,” said Pat. “Can we see it right away?”
“Indade and ye can’t, me jewel. It’s up in yer mother’s room and she’s sound aslape and not to be disturbed. She had a wakeful night av it. I was a tarrible long time finding that baby. Me eyesight isn’t what it was I’m grieving to say. I’m thinking that’s the last baby I’ll iver be able to find in the parsley bed.”
3
Judy gave Pat and Sid their breakfast in the kitchen. Nobody else was up. It was such fun to have breakfast there with Judy and have the milk poured over their porridge out of her “cream cow” … that little old brown jug in the shape of a cow, with her tail curled up in a most un-cowlike fashion for a handle and her mouth for a spout. Judy had brought the cream cow from Ireland with her and prized it beyond all saying. She had promised to leave it to Pat when she died. Pat hated to hear Judy talk of dying, but, as she had also promised to live a hundred years … D. V… . . that was nothing to worry about yet awhile.
The kitchen was a cheery place and was as tidy and spotless as if Silver Bush had not just been passing through a night of suspense and birth. The walls were whitewashed snowily: the stove shone: Judy’s blue and white jugs on the scoured dresser sparkled in the rays of the rising sun. Judy’s geraniums bloomed in the windows. The space between stove and table was covered by a big, darkred rug with three black cats hooked in it. The cats had eyes of yellow wool which were still quite bright and catty in spite of the fact that they had been trodden over for many years. Judy’s living black cat sat on the bench and thought hard. Two fat kittens were sleeping in a patch of sunlight on the floor. And, as if that were not enough in the cat line, there were three marvellous kittens in a picture on the wall … Judy’s picture, likewise brought out from Ireland. Three white kittens with blue eyes, playing with a ball of silk thread gloriously entangled. Cats and kittens might come and go at Silver Bush, but Judy’s kittens were eternally young and frisky. This was a comfort to Pat who, when she was very young, was afraid they might grow up and change, too. It always broke her heart when some beloved kitten turned overnight into a lanky half-grown cat.
There were other pictures … Queen Victoria at her coronation and King William riding his white horse over the Boyne: a marble cross, poised on a dark rock in a raging ocean, lavishly garlanded with flowers, having a huge open Bible on a purple cushion at its foot: the Burial of the Pet Bird: mottoes worked in wool … Home Sweet Home … Upwards and Onwards. These had all been judged at successive spring cleanings to be unworthy of the other rooms but Judy wouldn’t have them burned. Pat wouldn’t have liked them anywhere else but she liked them on the walls of Judy’s kitchen. It wouldn’t have been quite the same without them.
It was lovely, Pat thought as she ate her toast, that everything was just the same. She had had a secret, dreadful fear that she would find everything changed and different and heartbreaking.
Dad came in just as they finished and Pat flew to him. He looked tired but he caught her up with a smile.
“Has Judy told you that you have a new sister?”
“Yes. I’m glad. I think it will be an improvement,” said Pat, gravely and staunchly.
Dad laughed.
“That’s right. Some folks have been afraid you mightn’t like it … might think your nose was out of joint.”
“My nose is all right,” said Pat. “Feel it.”
“Av course her nose is all right. Don’t ye be after putting inny such notions in her head, Long Alec Gardiner,” said Judy, who had bossed little Long Alec about when he was a child and continued to do so now that he was big Long Alec with a family of his own. “And ye naden’t have been thinking that child wud be jealous … she hasn’t a jealous bone in her body, the darlint. Jealous, indade!” Judy’s grey-green eyes flashed quite fiercely. Nobody need be thinking the new baby was more important than Pat or that more was going to be made of it.
4
It was well on in the forenoon when they were allowed upstairs. Judy marshalled them up, very imposing in her blue silk dress, of a day when it was a recommendation for silk that it could stand alone. She had had it for fifteen years, having got it in honour of the bride young Long Alec was bringing to Silver Bush, and she put it on only for very special occasions. It had been donned for every new baby and the last time it had been worn was six years ago at Grandmother Gardiner’s funeral. Fashions had changed considerably but what cared Judy? A silk dress was a silk dress. She was so splendid in it that the children were half in awe of her. They liked her much better in her old drugget but Judy tasted her day of state.
A nurse in white cap and apron was queening it in mother’s room. Mother was lying on her pillows, white and spent after that dreadful headache, with her dark wings of hair around her face and her sweet, dreamy, golden-brown eyes shining with happiness. Aunt Barbara was rocking a quaint old black cradle, brought down from the garret … a cradle a hundred years old which Great-great-Grandfather Nehemiah had made with his own hands. Every Silver Bush baby had been rocked in it. The nurse did not approve of either cradles or rocking
