Mistress Pat Read Online Free Page B

hurts me yet. I’m going over to sit on Weeping Willy’s slab in the graveyard for a while and just dream. I feel shimmery today…as if I was made of sunbeams.”
    When Cuddles said things like that Pat had a vague feeling that Cuddles was clever and ought to be educated if it could be managed. But it had to be admitted that so far Cuddles seemed to share the family indifference to education. She went in unashamedly for “a good time” and pounced on life like a cat on a mouse.
    Pat slipped away for one of her dear pilgrimages to the Secret Field…that little tree-encircled spot at the very back of the farm, which she and Sid had discovered so long ago and which she, at least, had loved ever since. Almost every Sunday evening, when they walked over the farm, talking and planning…for Sid was developing into an enthusiastic farmer…they ended up with the Secret Field, which was always in grass and always bore a wonderful crop of wild strawberries. Sid had promised her he would never plough it up. It was really too small to be worthwhile cultivating anyhow. And if it were ploughed up there might never be any more of Judy’s famous wild strawberry shortcakes or those still more delicious things Pat made and which she called strawberry cream pies.
    It was nice to go there with Sid but it was even nicer to go alone. There was nothing then to come between her and the silent, rapt communion she seemed to hold with it. It was the loneliest and loveliest spot on the farm. Its very silence was friendly and seemed to come out of the woods around it like a real presence. No wind ever blew there and rain and snow fell lightly. In summer it was a pool of sunlight, in winter a pool of frost…now in autumn a pool of color. Musky, spicy shadows seemed to hover around its gray old fences. Pat always felt that the field knew it was beautiful and was happy in its knowledge. She lingered in it until the sun set and then went slowly back home, savoring every moment of the gathering dusk. What a lovely phrase “gathering dusk” was…almost as lovely as Judy’s “dim”, though the latter had a certain eerie quality that always gave Pat a rapture.
    At the top of the hill field she paused, as always, to gloat over Silver Bush. The light shone out from the door and windows of the kitchen where Judy would be preparing supper, with the cats watching for a “liddle bite” and McGinty cocking a pointed ear for Pat’s footstep. Would it be as nice when that unknown creature, the all-too-necessary hired man, would be hanging round, waiting for his supper? Of course it wouldn’t. He would be a stranger and an alien. Pat fiercely resented the thought of him.
    They would have supper by lamplight now. For a while she always hated to have to light the lamp for supper…it meant that the wind had blown the summer away and that winter nights were closing in. Then she liked it…it was so cozy and companionable and Silver Bushish, with Judy’s “dim” looking in through the crimson vines around the window.
    The color of home on an autumn dusk was an exquisite thing. The trees all around it seemed to love it. The house belonged to them and to the garden and the green hill and the orchard and they to it. You couldn’t separate them, Pat felt. She always wondered how anyone could live in a house where there were no trees. It seemed an indecency, like a too naked body. Trees…to veil and caress and beshadow…trees to warn you back and beckon you on. Lombardies for stateliness…birches for maiden grace…maples for friendliness…spruce and fir for mystery…poplars to whisper secrets. Only they never really did. You thought you understood as long as you listened…but when you left them you realized they had just been laughing at you…thin, rustling, silky laughter. All the trees kept some secret. Who knew but that all those white birches,