Pat of Silver Bush Read Free Page B

sailor and had fought with sharks, and was reputed to have once eaten human flesh. He had sworn he would never rest on land. When he lay dying of measles…of all things for a dare-devil sailor to die of…he had wanted his brother Thomas to promise to take him out in a boat and bury him under the waters of the Gulf. But scandalized Thomas would do nothing of the sort and buried Dick in the family plot. As a result, whenever any kind of misfortune was going to fall on the Gardiners, Wild Dick used to rise and sit on the fence and sing his rake-helly songs until his sober, Godfearing kinsfolk had to come out of their graves and join him in the chorus. At least, this was one of Judy Plum’s most thrilling yarns. Pat never believed it but she wished she could. Weeping Willy’s grave was there, too…Nehemiah’s brother who, when he first came to P. E. Island and saw all the huge trees that had to be cleared away, had sat down and cried. It was never forgotten. Weeping Willy he was to his death and after, and no girl could be found willing to be Mrs. Weeping Willy. So he lived his eighty years out in sour old bachelorhood and…so Judy said…when good fortune was to befall his race Weeping Willy sat on his flat tombstone and wept. And Pat couldn’t believe that either. But she wished Weeping Willy could come back and see what was in the place of the lonely forest that had frightened him. If he could see Silver Bush now !
    Then there was the “mystery grave.” On the tombstone the inscription, “ To my own dear Emily and our little Lilian. ” Nothing more, not even a date. Who was Emily? Not one of the Gardiners, that was known. Perhaps some neighbor had asked the privilege of burying his dear dead near him in the Gardiner plot where she might have company in the lone new land. And how old was the little Lilian? Pat thought if any of the Silver Bush ghosts did “walk” she wished it might be Lilian. She wouldn’t be the least afraid of her.
    There were many children buried there…nobody knew how many because there was no stone for any of them. The Great-greats had horizontal slabs of red sandstone from the shore propped on four legs, over them, with all their names and virtues inscribed thereon. The grass grew about them thick and long and was never disturbed. On summer afternoons the sandstone slabs were always hot and Gentleman Tom loved to lie there, beautifully folded up in slumber. A paling fence, which Judy Plum whitewashed scrupulously every spring, surrounded the plot. And the apples that fell into the graveyard from overhanging boughs were never eaten. “It wudn’t be rispictful,” explained Judy. They were gathered up and given to the pigs. Pat could never understand why, if it wasn’t “rispictful” to eat those apples, it was any more “rispictful” to feed them to the pigs.
    She was very proud of the graveyard and very sorry the Gardiners had given up being buried there. It would be so nice, Pat thought, to be buried right at home, so to speak, where you could hear the voices of your own folks every day and all the nice sounds of home…nice sounds such as Pat could hear now through the little round window. The whir of the grindstone as father sharpened an axe under the sweet-apple-tree…a dog barking his head off somewhere over at Uncle Tom’s…the west wind rustling in the trembling poplar leaves…the saw-wheats calling in the silver bush—Judy said they were calling for rain…Judy’s big white gobbler lording it about the yard…Uncle Tom’s geese talking back and forth to the Silver Bush geese…the pigs squealing in their pens…even that was pleasant because they were Silver Bush pigs: the Thursday kitten mewing to be let into the granary…somebody laughing…Winnie, of course. What a pretty laugh Winnie had; and Joe whistling around the barns…Joe did whistle so