Mistress Pat by L. M. Montgomery Read Free Book Online

and Joe coming home for long visits with their families, and McGinty and the cats living forever and Judy telling stories in the kitchen. One couldn’t think of Silver Bush without Judy. She had always been there and of course she always would be.
    â€œJudy,” said Cuddles solemnly, turning back in the hall doorway on her way to bed, “Judy, mind you don’t go and fall in love with Josiah. I saw him winking at you.”
    Judy’s only reply was a snort.

CHAPTER 4
    The days of that late autumn seemed to Pat to slip by like a golden river of happiness, even after the last cricket song had been sung. Mother was keeping well…father was jubilant over the good harvest…Cuddles was taking more interest in her lessons…the surplus kittens of the summer’s crop had all found excellent homes…and there was enough of dances and beaus to satisfy Pat’s not very passionate love of social life. Almost any time she would have preferred to roast apples and bandy lovely ghost stories in Judy’s kitchen to going to a party. Cuddles could not understand this: she was longing for the day when she would be old enough to go to dances and have “boyfriends.”
    â€œI mean to have a great deal of attention ,” she told Judy gravely. “A few flirtations… nice ones, Judy…and then I’ll fall in love sensibly .”
    â€œOh, oh,” said Judy with a twinkle, “I’m thinking that can’t be done, Cuddles darlint. A sinsible love affair now…it do be sounding a bit dull to me.”
    â€œPat says she’s never going to fall in love with anybody. I really believe she does want to be an old maid, Judy.”
    â€œI’ve been hearing girls talk that way afore now,” scoffed Judy. But she was secretly uneasy. The Silver Bush girls in any generation had never been flirts but she would have liked Pat to show a little more interest in the young men who came and went at Silver Bush and took her to dances and pictures and corn-roasts and skating parties and moonlight snowshoe tramps. Pat had any number of “boyfriends” but friends were all they were or seemed likely to be. Judy was quite elated when Milton Taylor of South Glen began haunting Silver Bush and taking Pat out when she would go. But Pat would not go often enough to please Judy.
    â€œOh, oh, Patsy dear, he’ll have the finest farm in South Glen someday and the nice boy he is! It’s the affectionate husband he’d be making ye.”
    â€œâ€˜An affectionate husband,’” giggled Pat. “Oh, Judy, you’re so Victorian. Affectionate husbands are out of date. We like the cave men, don’t we, Cuddles?”
    Cuddles and Pat exchanged grins. In spite of the difference in their ages they were great chums and Pat had a dreadful habit of telling Cuddles all about her beaus, what they did and what they said. Pat had a nippy tongue when she chose and the youths in question would not have been exactly delighted if they could have overheard her.
    â€œBut don’t you intend to get married sometime, Pat?” Cuddles asked once.
    Pat shook her brown head impatiently.
    â€œOh…sometime perhaps…when I have to…but not for years and years. Why, Silver Bush couldn’t spare me.”
    â€œBut if Sid brings a wife in sometime…”
    â€œSid won’t do that,” cried Pat passionately. “I don’t believe Sid will ever marry. You know he was in love with Bets, Cuddles. I believe he will always be faithful to her memory.”
    â€œJudy says men aren’t like that. And everyone says May Binnie is making a dead set at him.”
    â€œSid will never marry May Binnie…that’s one thing I’m sure of,” said Pat. The very thought made her feel cold. She and May Binnie had always hated each other.
    Tillytuck was almost as much interested in Pat’s affairs as was Judy. Every young man who came to