Chapter 9

      A Day to Spend

      Table of Contents

      1

      Again it was September at Silver Bush … a whole year since Aunt Hazel was married: and now it seemed to Pat that Aunt Hazel had always been married. She and Uncle Bob often came “home” for a visit and Pat was very fond of Uncle Bob now, and even thought his flying jibs were nice. The last time, too, Aunt Hazel had had a darling, tiny baby, with amber-brown eyes like Pat’s own. Cuddles wasn’t a baby any longer. She was toddling round on her own chubby legs and was really a sister to be proud of. She had been through all her teething at eleven months. It was beautiful to watch her waking up and beautiful to bend over her while she was asleep. She seemed to know you were there and would smile delightedly. A spirit of her own, too. When she was eight months old she had bitten Uncle Tom when he poked a finger into her mouth to find out if she had any teeth. He found out.

      And now had come the invitation for Pat to spend a Saturday at the Bay Shore farm, with Great-aunt Frances Selby and Great-aunt Honor Atkins … not to mention “Cousin” Dan Gowdy and a still greater aunt, who was mother’s great-aunt. Pat’s head was usually dizzy when she got this far and small wonder, as Judy would say.

      Pat loved the sound of “a day to spend.” It sounded so gloriously lavish to “spend” a whole day, letting its moments slip one by one through your fingers like beads of gold.

      But she was not enthusiastic over spending it at the Bay Shore. When she and Sid had been very small they had called the Bay Shore the Don’t-touch-it House guiltily, to themselves. Everybody was so old there. Two years ago, when she had been there with mother, she remembered how Aunt Frances frowned because when they were walking in the orchard, she, Pat, had picked a lovely, juicy, red plum from a laden tree. And Aunt Honor, a tall lady with snow-white hair and eyes as black as her dress, had asked her to repeat some Bible verses and had been coldly astonished when Pat made mistakes in them. The great-aunts always asked you to repeat Bible verses … so said Winnie and Joe who had been there often … and you never could tell what they would give when you got through … a dime or a cooky or a tap on the head.

      But to go alone to the Bay Shore! Sidney had been asked, too, but Sidney had gone to visit Uncle Brian’s while his teeth were attended to. Perhaps it was just as well because Sidney was not in high favour at the Bay Shore, having fallen asleep at the supper table and tumbled ingloriously off his chair to the floor, with an heirloom goblet in his hand, the last time he was there.

      Pat talked it over with Judy Friday evening, sitting on the sandstone steps at the kitchen door and working her sums to be all ready for Monday. Pat was a year older and an inch taller, by the marks Judy kept on the old pantry door where she measured every child on its birthday. She was well on in subtraction and Judy was helping her. Judy could add and subtract. When her head was clear she could multiply. Division she never attempted.

      The kitchen behind them was full of the spicy smell of Judy’s kettle of pickles. Gentleman Tom was sitting on the well platform, keeping an eye on Snicklefritz, who was dozing on the cellar door, keeping an eye on Gentleman Tom. In the corner of the yard was a splendid pile of cut hardwood which Pat and Sid had stacked neatly up in the summer evenings after school. Pat gloated over it. It was so prophetic of cosy, cheerful winter evenings when the wind would growl and snarl because it couldn’t get into Silver Bush. Pat would have been perfectly happy if it had not been for the morrow’s visit.

      “The aunts are so … so stately,” she confided to Judy. She would never have dared criticise them to mother who had been a Selby and was very proud of her people.

      “The grandmother av thim was a Chidlaw,” said Judy as if that explained everything. “I’m not saying but they’re a bit grim but they’ve had a tarrible lot av funerals at the Bay Shore. Yer Aunt Frances lost her man afore she married him and yer Aunt Honor lost hers after she married him and they’ve niver settled which got the worst av it. They’re a bit near, too, it must be confessed, and thim wid lashings of money. But they do be rale kind at heart and they think a lot av all yer mother’s children.”

      “I don’t mind Aunt Frances or Aunt Honor, but I’m a little afraid of Great-great-aunt Hannah and Cousin Dan,” confessed Pat.

      “Oh, oh, ye nadn’t be. Maybe ye’ll not be seeing the ould leddy at all. She hasn’t left her own room for sixteen years and she’s ninety-three be the clock, so she is, and there don’t be minny seeing her. And ould Danny is harmless. He fell aslape at the top av the stairs and rolled down thim whin he was a lad. He was niver the same agin. But some do be saying he saw the ghost.”

      “Oh, Judy, is there a ghost at Bay Shore?”

      “Not now. But long ago there was. Oh, oh, they were tarrible ashamed av it.”

      “Why?”

      “Ye know they thought it was kind av a disgraceful thing to have a ghost in the house. Some folks do be thinking it an honour but there ye are. I’m not denying the Bay Shore ghost was a troublesome cratur. Sure and he was a nice, frindly, sociable ghost and hadn’t any rale dog-sense about the proper time for appearing. He was a bit lonesome it wud seem. He wud sit round on the footboards av their beds and look at thim mournful like, as if to say, ‘Why the divil won’t ye throw a civil word to a felly?’ And whin company come and they were all enjying thimselves they’d hear a dape sigh and there me fine ghost was. It was be way av being tarrible monotonous after a while. But the ghost was niver seen agin after yer great-great-uncle died and yer Great-aunt Honor tuk to running things. I’m thinking she was a bit too near, aven for a ghost, that one. So ye nadn’t be afraid av seeing him but ye’d better not be looking too close at the vase that makes the faces.”

      “A vase … that makes faces!”

      “Sure, me jewel. It’s on the parlour mantel and it made a face once at Sarah Jenkins as was hired there whin she was dusting it. She was nather to hold nor bind wid fright.”

      This was delightful. But after all, Pat thought Judy was a little too contemptuous of the Bay Shore people.

      “Their furniture is very grand, Judy.”

      “Grand, is it?” Judy knew very well she had been snubbed. “Oh, oh, ye can’t be telling me innything about grandeur. Didn’t I work in Castle McDermott whin I was a slip av a girleen? Grandeur, is it? Lace and sating bed-quilts, I’m telling ye. And a white marble staircase wid a golden bannister. Dinner sets av solid gold and gold vases full av champagne. And thiry servants if there was one. Sure and they kipt servants to wait on the other servants there. The ould lord wud pass round plates wid gold sovereigns at the Christmas dinner and hilp yerself.