PAT OF SILVER BUSH & MISTRESS PAT (Complete Series). Люси Мод Монтгомери

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Chapter 11

      Dinner is Served

      Table of Contents

      1

      Pat had a bad Sunday of it.

      When she found that the old poplar had been cut down she mourned and would not be comforted.

      “Look, me jewel, what a pretty bit av scenery ye can see between the hin-house and the church barn,” entreated Judy. “That bit av the South river, ye cud niver see it from here afore. Sure and here’s yer Sunday raisins for ye. Be ating thim now and stop fretting after an ould tree that wud better av been down tin years ago.”

      Judy always gave every Silver Bush child a handful of raisins as a special treat for Sundays. Pat ate hers between sobs but it was not until evening that she would admit the newly revealed view was pretty. Then she sat at the round window and watched the silver loop of the river and another far blue hill, so far away that it must be on the very edge of the world. But still she missed the great, friendly, rustling greenness that had always filled that gap.

      “I’ll never see the kittens chasing each other up that tree again, Judy,” she mourned. “They had such fun … they’d run out on that big bough and drop to the henhouse roof. Oh, Judy, I didn’t think trees ever got old.”

      Monday morning she remembered that she had asked Jingle to dinner. Remembered it rather dubiously. Suppose he came in those awful trousers with part of one leg missing? She dared not, for fear of being teased, ask Judy to put anything extra on the table. But she was glad when she saw Judy putting on the silver knives and forks and the second best silver cream jug.

      “Why all this splendour?” demanded Joe.

      “Sure and isn’t Pat’s beau coming to dinner?” said Judy. “We must be after putting our best foot forward for the credit av the fam’ly.”

      “Judy!” cried Pat furiously. Neither then nor in the years to come could she endure having any one call Jingle her beau. “He isn’t my beau! I’m never going to have a beau.”

      “Niver’s a long day,” said Judy philosophically. “Ye’d better be shutting Snicklefritz up, Joe, for I understand the young man’s bringing his dog and we don’t want inny difference av opinion atween thim.”

      Presently Jingle and McGinty were discerned, hanging about the yard gate, too shy to venture further. Pat ran out to welcome him. To her relief he wore a rather shabby but quite respectable suit, with legs of equal length. He was bare-legged, to be sure, but what of that. All the boys in North Glen went barefooted in summer … although not when asked out to dinner, perhaps. Somebody had given his brown hair a terrible cut. His eyes were invisible behind blue glasses, he had a pale face and an overlong mouth. Certainly he was not handsome but Pat still liked him. Also McGinty, who now revealed himself as a very young dog just starting out to see life.

      “Doesn’t that stuffing smell good?” asked Pat, as she convoyed him into the kitchen. “And Judy’s made one of her applecakes for dessert. They’re delicious. Judy, this is Jingle … and McGinty.”

      The Silver Bush family accepted Jingle calmly … Judy had probably warned them all. Dad gravely asked him if he would have white or dark meat and mother asked him if he took cream and sugar. You could always depend on father and mother, Pat felt. Even Winnie was lovely and made him take a second helping of applecake. What a family!

      As for McGinty, Judy had set a big platter of meat and bones for him on the cellar hatch.

      “Go to it, Mister Dog,” she told him. “I’ll warrant it’s a long day since ye saw the like av that at Maria Gordon’s.”

      After dinner Jingle said shyly,

      “Listen … I saw some lovely rice lilies in our back field across the brook yesterday. Let’s go and get some.”

      Pat had always longed to explore the brook that ran between Silver Bush and the old Adams place for a field’s length and then branched across Adams territory. None of the Silver Bush children had ever been allowed to cross the boundary line. It was well known that old Mr. Adams wouldn’t “have young ones stravaging over his fields.”

      “Do you think your uncle will mind?” asked Pat.

      It turned out that neither uncle nor aunt was home. They had gone to spend Labour Day with friends.

      “What would you have done for dinner if you hadn’t come here?” exclaimed Pat.

      “Oh, they left out some bread and molasses for me,” said Jingle.

      Bread and molasses on a holiday! This was skim milk with a vengeance.

      “Mind ye don’t poison yerselves wid mushrooms,” warned Judy, handing them a bag of cinnamon buns. “I knew a b’y and girl onct as et a lot av toadstools in the woods by mistake.”

      “And I suppose they were never the same again?” said Joe teasingly.

      “They’ve been dead iver since, if that’s what ye mane be niver being the same agin,” retorted Judy in a huff.

      Once out of sight of the house Jingle’s shyness dropped away from him and Pat found him a delightful companion … so delightful that she had a horrible sense of disloyalty to Sid. She could only square matters by reminding herself that she was just terribly sorry for Jingle, who had no friends.

      It was Jingle who proposed that they should name the brook Jordan because it “rolled between.”

      “Between our farm and yours,” said Pat delightedly. Here was a pal who liked to name places just as she did.

      “And let’s build a bridge of stones over it, so that we can cross easy whenever we want to,” proposed Jingle, who evidently took it for granted that there would be plenty of crossing.

      That was fun; and when the bridge was made СКАЧАТЬ