Pat of Silver Bush (41 page)

It was such a loyal old house … always faithful to those who loved it. You felt it was your friend as soon as you stepped into it. It was full of dear yesterdays and beautiful old years. It had been assimilating beauty and loveliness … which is not quite the same thing … for generations. There had been so many things in this house and it had not forgotten one of them. Love and sorrow … tragedies … comedies. Babies had been born … brides had dreamed … all sorts of fashions had come and gone before the old mirrors. Its very walls seemed to hold laughter.

The house remembered her whole life. IT had always been the same … IT had never changed … not really. Only little surface changes. How she loved it! She loved it in morning rose and sunset amber, and best of all in the darkness of night, when it loomed palely through the gloom and was all her own. This beauty was hers … all hers. Life could never be empty at Silver Bush. Somebody had pitied her once … “so out of the world.” Pat laughed. Out of the world? Nay, she was IN the world here … HER world. “I dwell among my own people.” Wise Shulamite!

A mysterious content flooded her. This was home.

THE END