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

and expectation over it all. It would be the first “real” Christmas since she had become the virtual mistress of Silver Bush. The previous one Frank had had bronchitis, so he and Winnie couldn’t come, and the one before that Aunt Hazel’s family had measles and Hilary was not there for the first time in years, and it hadn’t been a Christmassy Christmas at all. But everything would be different this year. And Joe expected to be home for the first Christmas since he went away. Judy’s turkeys were fat as fat could be and there was to be a goose because dad liked goose and a couple of ducks because Uncle Tom liked ducks. As for the rest of the bill of fare, Pat was poring over cookbooks most of her spare time. Many and old were the cook-books of Silver Bush, full of clan recipes that had stood the test of time. Most of them had nice names linked up with all kinds of people who had invented the recipes…many of them people who were dead or in far lands. It gave Pat a thrill to thumb them over…Grandmother Selby’s jellied cabbage salad…Aunt Hazel’s ginger cookies…Cousin Miranda’s beef-steak pie…the Bay Shore pudding…Great-grandmother Gardiner’s fruit cake…Old Joe Pingle’s mince pie…Uncle Horace’s raisin gravy. Pat never could find out who Old Joe Pingle was. Nobody, not even Judy, seemed to know. But Uncle Horace had brought the recipe for raisin gravy home from his first voyage and told Judy he had killed a man for it…though nobody believed him.
    Judy was planning to get a new “dress-up dress” for the occasion. Her old one, a blue garment of very ancient vintage, was ralely a liddle old-fashioned.
    â€œAnd besides, Patsy dear, I’d be nading it if I took a run over to ould Ireland some av these long-come-shorts. I can’t be getting the thought out av me head iver since Cuddles put it in. Sure and if I wint I’d want to make a rale good apparance afore me ould frinds, not to spake av a visit to Castle McDermott. What wud ye think av a nice wine-color, Patsy? They tell me it’s rale fashionable, this fall. And mebbe sating as a bit av a change from silk.”
    Pat, although the thought of Judy going to Ireland, even if only for a visit, gave her a nasty sensation, entered heartily into the question of the new dress and went to town with Judy to help in the selection and bully the dressmaker into making it exactly as Judy wanted it. Uncle Tom was in town that day and they saw him dodging out of a jeweler’s shop, trying hastily to secrete a small, ornately wrapped parcel in his pocket before he encountered them. Not succeeding, he muttered something about having to see a man and shot down a side street.
    â€œUncle Tom is awfully mysterious about something these days,” said Pat. “What do you suppose he has been buying in that shop? I’m sure it couldn’t have been anything for Aunt Edith or Aunt Barbara.”
    â€œOh, oh, Patsy dear, I’m belaving yer Uncle Tom has a notion av getting married. I know the signs.”
    Pat experienced another disagreeable sensation. Change at Swallowfield was almost as bad as change at Silver Bush. Uncle Tom and the aunts had always lived there…always would. Pat couldn’t fit an Aunt Tom into the picture at all.
    â€œOh, Judy, I can’t think he would be so foolish. At his age! Why, he’s sixty!”
    â€œWid me own eyes, Patsy, I saw him rading a letter one day and stuffing it into his pocket like mad whin he caught me eye on him. And blushing! Whin a man av his age do be blushing there’s something quare in the wind. Do ye be minding back in the summer Cuddles telling us she was after mailing letters from him to a lady?”
    Pat sighed and put the disagreeable matter out of her mind. She wasn’t going to have the afternoon spoiled. There were many things to buy besides Judy’s satin dress. Pat loved