Pat of Silver Bush Read Online Free PDF Page A

her music…a light up in mother’s room. A light for a moment flashed in the hall, as somebody went upstairs, bringing out the fan window over the front door.
    â€œOh, I’ve got such a lovely home,” breathed Pat, clasping her hands. “It’s such a nice friendly house. Nobody… nobody …has such a lovely home. I’d just like to hug it.”
    Pat had her egg in the kitchen with plenty of butter gravy, and then there was the final ceremony of putting a saucer of milk for the fairies on the well platform. Judy never omitted it.
    â€œThere’s no knowing what bad luck we might be having if we forgot it. Sure and we know how to trate fairies at Silver Bush.”
    The fairies came by night and drank it up. This was one of the things Pat was strongly inclined to believe. Hadn’t Judy herself seen fairies dancing in a ring one night when she was a girleen in Ould Ireland?
    â€œBut Joe says there are no fairies in P E. Island,” she said wistfully.
    â€œThe things Joe do be saying make me sometimes think the b’y don’t be all there,” said Judy indignantly. “Wasn’t there folks coming out to P. E. I. from the Ould Country for a hundred years, me jewel? And don’t ye be belaving there’d always be a fairy or two, wid a taste for a bit av adventure, wud stow himself away among their belongings and come too, and thim niver a bit the wiser? And isn’t the milk always gone be morning, I’m asking ye?”
    Yes, it was. You couldn’t get away from that.
    â€œYou’re sure the cats don’t drink it, Judy?”
    â€œOh, oh, cats, is it? There don’t be much a cat wudn’t do if it tuk it into its head, I’m granting ye, but the bouldest that iver lived wudn’t be daring to lap up the milk that was left for a fairy. That’s the only thing no cat’d ever do…be disrespictful to a fairy—and it’d be well for mortal craturs to folly his example.”
    â€œCouldn’t we stay up some night, Judy, and watch? I’d love to see a fairy.”
    â€œOh, oh, see, is it? Me jewel, ye can’t see the fairies unless ye have the seeing eye. Ye’d see nothing at all, only just the milk drying up slow, as it were. Now be off to bed wid ye and mind ye don’t forget yer prayers or maybe ye’ll wake up and find Something sitting on your bed in the night.”
    â€œI never do forget my prayers,” said Pat with dignity.
    â€œAll the better for ye. I knew a liddle girl that forgot one night and a banshee got hold av her. Oh, oh, she was niver the same agin.”
    â€œWhat did the banshee do to her, Judy?”
    â€œDo to her, is it? It put a curse on her, that it did. Ivery time she tried to laugh she cried and ivery time she tried to cry she laughed. Oh, oh, ’twas a bitter punishment. Now, what’s after plaguing ye? I can tell be the liddle face av ye ye’re not aisy.”
    â€œJudy, I keep thinking about that baby in the parsley bed. Don’t you think…they’ve no baby over at Uncle Tom’s. Couldn’t you give it to them? Mother could see it as often as she wanted to. We’re four of a family now.”
    â€œOh, oh, do ye be thinking four is innything av a family to brag av? Why, yer great-great-grandmother, old Mrs. Nehemiah, had seventeen afore she called it a day. And four av thim died in one night wid the black cholera.”
    â€œOh, Judy, how could she ever bear that ?”
    â€œSure and hadn’t she thirteen left, me jewel? But they do say as she was niver the same agin. And now it’s not telling ye agin to go to bed I’ll be doing…oh, no, it’s not telling. ”
    â€¢ • •
    Pat tiptoed upstairs, past the old grandfather clock on the landing that wouldn’t go…hadn’t gone for forty years. The “dead clock” she and Sid called it. But Judy always insisted that it told the right