Pat of Silver Bush (24 page)

“Your devoted daughter,

“Pat.

“P.S. Aunt Hazel says I ought to have my hair bobbed. Do you think Judy would mind now? Sylvia Cyrilla says her mother cried for a week when she had hers bobbed but she likes it now.

“P.G.”

(Letter to Sid)

“Dearest Sid:—

“I’m so glad to hear you are getting better and able to eat. The Maiden Aunt says you shouldn’t be let eat much when you are getting over measles but I guess Judy knows better than a Maiden Aunt. I hated to think you were sick and me not there to fan your fevered brow or do a single thing for you. But I knew Judy would look after you if mother couldn’t spare time from Cuddles.

“I like it here. It is a nice friendly house and Aunt Hazel lets me stay up till half past nine. But I will be glad when I can go home. I hope I won’t take the measles but I think it would be real exciting to be sick. They would make such a fuss over me then. When you get well we must go back to our Secret Field and see how our spruces are.

“Sylvia Cyrilla says that Fred Davidson and his sister Muriel used to be devoted to each other just like you and me but they quarrelled and now they never speak. Oh, Sid, don’t let us EVER quarrel. I couldn’t bear it.

“Of course they are only Davidsons.

“Sylvia Cyrilla says the South Glen Petersons got a bad scare last week. They thought Myrtle Peterson had eloped. But it turned out she was only drowned. And Sylvia says May Binnie is your girl. She isn’t, is she, Sid? You’d never have a Binnie for a girl. They are not in our class.

“I wish you would marry Bets when you grow up. I wouldn’t mind HER coming to Silver Bush. She would love it as much as I do and I’m sure she’d make you a lovely wife. And she wouldn’t mind my living with you I know.

“If the grey and white barn-cat has kittens tell Joe to save one for me.

“It will soon be ploughing time. I’ll be home in time to help pick the apples. Bert Madison is teaching me how to tie a sailor’s knot and I’ll show you but you won’t show May Binnie, will you, Sid?

“Your own dear sister,

“Pat.

“P.S. Aunt Hazel says I ought to have my hair bobbed. Do you think it would improve me? But what would Judy say?”

(Letter to Jingle)

“Dear Jingle:—

“It was ripping of you to write me so often. I’m glad you missed me. Nobody at Silver Bush have SAID they missed me. I supposed Sid and Cuddles were too sick to, and Winnie and Joe are so big now I guess I don’t matter much to them.

“I’m up in the garret. I like to sit here and watch the trees in the spruce valley getting black and listen to the wind moaning round the chimneys. Tonight it’s the kind that Judy calls the ghost wind. It makes me think of that piece of poetry you read the last day we were in Happiness.

“The midnight wind came wild and dread Swelled with the voices of the dead.

“Those lines always give me a lovely creepy shudder, Jingle, and I’m glad you feel it, too. Sid thinks it’s all bosh. He laughs at me when I wonder what is the meaning of the things the trees are always saying and what some of the winds are always so sorry for. But you never laugh at me, Jingle. Every night here, before I go to sleep I lie still and think I can hear the water falling over the mossy rock in dear Happiness.

“How is McGinty? Give him a hug for me. The Maiden Aunt has a dog but I’m sorry for it. She never lets it out of her sight and the poor thing has nothing but a rubber rat to play with. They have several dogs at Sylvia Cyrilla’s, Bert’s dog and Myrtle’s dog and the family dog, but none of these are as nice as McGinty. Uncle Rob’s father down the road has a dog but he is not an exciting dog. Uncle Rob says he is always so tired he has to lean against a fence to bark. Speaking of dogs, I found such a lovely poem in Aunt Hazel’s scrapbook called The Little Dog Angel. I cried when I read it because I thought of you and McGinty. I could just SEE McGinty slipping out of heaven’s gates between St. Peter’s legs to ‘bark a welcome to you in the shivering dark.’ Oh, Jingle, I’m sure dear little dogs like McGinty MUST have souls.

“I wonder what you’d think of Aunt Hazel’s house. I think you’d say it was too tall. But it’s really very nice inside. Only there are no back steps to sit on and no round window and no dead clock.

“What do you think, Jingle? Old Mr. Peter Morgan from the harbour told me he was a pirate in his young days and buried a treasure worth millions on a West Indies island and never could find the place again. If he had told me that four years ago I would have believed him but he has left it too late. I wish it was as easy to believe things as it used to be.

“The fence back of Uncle Robert’s house is the line between Queen’s and Prince county. It’s perfectly thrilling, Jingle, to think you can go into another county just by climbing over a fence. Somehow you expect everything to be different. I climb over it every day just to get the nice adventury feeling. Aunt Hazel says it doesn’t take much to give me a thrill but I think it is lucky. What would life be without a few thrills? And what would life be without Betses and Jingles and Sids and Judys and Silver Bushes?

“Chum Pat.

“P.S. Aunt Hazel says she thinks I ought to have my hair bobbed. Would you like me bobbed, Jingle?”

(Letter to Judy with Judy’s comments)

“My Own Dear Judy:—

“It just seems ages since I left home and I’ve been so lonesome for you all and the dear old kitchen. Aunt Hazel’s kitchen is very up to date but it isn’t as cosy as ours, Judy. When I get homesick at nights I go up to the garret and watch the lights of Silver Bush and picture out what every one is doing and I see you setting bread in the kitchen, talking to yourself, (fancy that now.) And Gentleman Tom thinking away on his bench. (Sure and it’s the grand thinker ye are, Tom. I’m after telling the world ye can think more in a day than most folks can in a wake.) They have no cats here because Uncle Robert’s Maiden Aunt visits so often and so long and she doesn’t like them. I don’t like the Maiden Aunt very well. (Oh, oh, small blame to ye for that, Patsy.) She is very homely. I know I’m not much to look at myself but I haven’t a nose like hers. Everything, even her hair, seems to be frightened of it and trying to get away from it. (Sure and there’s observation for ye.) And yet I’m a little sorry for her, Judy, (oh, oh, the tinder heart av her now), because she is really lonely. She hasn’t anybody or any place to love. That must be dreadful.

“Aunt Hazel has the loveliest blue quilt, quilted in fans, on her spare bed. And she has the rose mat you hooked for her on her living room floor. She is very proud of it and points it out to every one. (Oh, oh, so I’m getting me name up, it sames.) She hasn’t a parlour or she would have put it there. It isn’t fashionable to have parlours now, Sylvia Cyrilla says. I don’t know what she’d say if she knew we have TWO. (Sure and who cares what she’d say? A parlour sounds far grander than a living room inny day.)

“Mother says I can have a new red dress this winter, Judy. And I hope she’ll let me get a little red hat to go with it. (Oh, oh, but that would be rale chick.) Jen Davidson says she is going to have two new hats. She says the Davidsons always do. Well, you can’t wear more than one hat at a time, can you, Judy? (The philosophy av her.) The Maiden Aunt sniffs when I talk of clothes but Aunt Hazel says that is because she can’t afford them herself and if Uncle Robert didn’t help her out every year she wouldn’t have a stitch to her back. (Sure and folks don’t be wanting minny stiches to their backs nowadays, jidging be the fashion books I’ve been seeing.)

“Oh, Judy dear, the Maiden Aunt say it isn’t right to tell fairy tales, not even that there is a Santa Claus. (Set her up wid it.) But I’m going to keep on believing in fairy rings and horseshoes over the door and witches on broomsticks. It makes life so thrilling to believe in things. If you believe in a thing it doesn’t matter whether it exists or not. (Sure and she cud argy a Philadelphy lawyer down, the darlint.)

“We don’t have any eating between meals here, Judy. I guess it’s healthier but when bedtime comes I DO think of your eggs and butter. I think a snack at bedtime is healthy. (Sure and all sinsible people do be thinking the same.) But Aunt Hazel is a good cook. She can make the loveliest ribbon cake. I wish you would learn to make ribbon cake, Judy. (Oh, oh, yer ribbon cake, is it? I’m too old a dog to be larning yer new millinery tricks.) But her cranberry pies aren’t as nice as yours, Judy. They’re too sweet. (Oh, oh, the blarney of the cratur! She’s after wanting to put me in the good humour.) Sylvia Cyrilla’s mother can make lovely Devonshire cream. (Devonshire crame, is it? I cud make Devonshire crame afore she was born or thought of. But will ye be telling me where the crame is to come from wid ivery drop of milk sint off to the cheese factory?) But she isn’t a good cook in other ways. Her things LOOK all right but something always TASTES wrong. Not enough salt or too much, or no flavouring or something like that. (No gumption, me jewel, that’s the trouble. No gumption.)

“Sylvia Cyrilla’s father’s cousin in Charlottetown tried to cut his throat last week but Sylvia Cyrilla says he didn’t succeed and they took him to the hospital and sewed him up. (Alvin Sutton that wud be. Sure and none av the Suttons iver made a good job av innything they undertook.)

“Aunt Hazel’s father-in-law and mother-in-law live up the road a piece, Mr. and Mrs. James Madison. I often go up on errands. Mr. James has no use for me because I can’t eat a plate of porridge. He says it is a dish for a king. But I’m not a king. (Porridge, is it? Sure and I’m not running down porridge but skinny ould Jim Madison isn’t after being much av an advertisement for it.) They are very proud of their oldest daughter, Mary. She is an M. A. and won some great scholarships and is a teacher in a college. I suppose it is nice to be so clever, Judy. (Oh, oh, but I’m not hearing av her getting a man, though.) Mr. James likes to tease his wife. When Sylvia Cyrilla’s father asked him if he would get married over again he laughed and said yes, but not to the same woman. Mrs. James didn’t laugh though. (Oh, oh, she was after knowing it might be half fun and whole earnest.) They say Mr. James was very wild when he was young but he says if he hadn’t been there’d have been no stories to tell about him now … he’d be nothing but a dull old grandfather.

“I’ve been collecting stories ever since I’ve been here, Judy, so that I’ll have lots to tell when I’m old like you. There is one about a ghost on a farm belonging to Sylvia Cyrilla’s uncle who has whiskers. I mean the ghost has whiskers. Isn’t that funny? Can you imagine a ghost with whiskers? (Sure and I knew a ghost in ould Ireland wid a bald head. There’s no accounting for the freaks av the craturs.) And Jen Davidson had a cousin who always cried when he was drunk. I thought it was because he was sorry he was drunk but Jen says it was because he couldn’t get drunk oftener. Old Mr. McAllister from the bridge was up to see Mr. James last Monday and said he would have been up Sunday only he was wrestling with Satan all day. Do you suppose he really was, Judy, or was he just speaking poetically. (Oh, oh, I’m guessing he must av been trying to keep on good terms wid his wife. She’d quarrel wid a feather bed, that one. Sure and he only married her be accident. Whin he proposed to her he was expicting her to say no and whin she said yes poor Johnny McAllister got the surprise av his life.) His brother was a dreadful man and died shaking his fist at God. (Ye cudn’t be ixpicting a McAllister to have inny manners, aven on his death-bed, Patsy darlint.) The Maltby brothers have made up their quarrel after never speaking for thirty years. I don’t think they’re half as interesting now. Uncle Rob says they’ve made up because they’ve forgotten what they quarrelled about but if anybody could remember it they’d start all over again. And Mr. Gordon Keys at the bridge keeps his wife in order by crocheting lace whenever she won’t do as he says. She hates to see him do it and so she gives in.

“The funniest story I’ve collected so far is this. Several years ago old Sam McKenzie was very sick in Charlottetown and everybody thought he was going to die. He was very rich and prominent, so Mr. Trotter, the undertaker, knew the family would want a fine coffin for him and he imported an extra fine one right off to have it ready because it was a very cold winter and he was afraid the strait might freeze over any day. And then old Sam went and got better and poor Mr. Trotter was left with that expensive coffin on his hands, and nobody likely to buy it. But he kept quiet and one day a few months afterwards old Tom Ramsay, who was rich and prominent, too, dropped dead when nobody expected him to. And Mr. Trotter told the family he had just one coffin on hand that was good enough and they took it and so old Tom Ramsay was buried in Sam McKenzie’s coffin. The secret leaked out after awhile and the Ramsays were furious but they couldn’t unbury him.

“That is my funniest story but the nicest is about old Mr. George McFadyen who died four years ago and went to heaven. At first he couldn’t find any Islanders but after awhile he found out there were lots of them, only they had to be kept locked up for fear they would try to get back to the Island. Mr. James Madison told me that but he wouldn’t explain how he found out about Mr. McFadyen’s experience. Anyway I’m sure I’d feel like that, Judy. If I went to heaven I’d want to get back to Silver Bush.

“I was afraid when it blew so hard last night some of our trees would blow down. If Joe saves a kitten for me be sure you give it some cream, Judy. Jen Davidson has an aunt that has been married four times. (Oh, oh, the lies she must av been after telling the min, that one!) Jen seems proud of her but Uncle Rob says she ought to be more economical with husbands when there isn’t enough to go round. I think he said that to tease the Maiden Aunt. Madge Davidson is going to marry Crofter Carter. (Sure and she’s a bit shopworn or she wudn’t be after looking at him. I’ve seen the day a Davidson wudn’t walk on the same side av the road as a Carter.) Ross Halliday and Marinda Bailey at Silverbridge are married. They were engaged for fifteen years. I suppose they got tired of it. (Sure and Marinda Bailey always said she wudn’t marry till she got used to the thought av it. She was always a bit soft in the head, that one. But the min same to like that sort I’m telling ye. She niver had inny looks but kissing goes be favour and if Ross is the happy man at last it isn’t Judy Plum that’ll grudge it to him.) Mrs. Samuel Carter is dead and the funeral is Friday. They’ve had a terrible lot of funerals there, Sylvia Cyrilla says, but Mr. Carter says funerals are not as expensive as weddings when all is said and done. (And that’s no drame whin ye have to support yer son-in-laws as Sam Carter has. I’m telling ye.)