The kitchen garden was just below the window, with Judy’s mysterious parsley bed in one corner, and beautiful orderly rows of onions and beans and peas. The well was beside the gate … the old-fashioned open well with a handle and roller and a long rope with a bucket at its end, which the Gardiners kept to please Judy who simply wouldn’t hear of any new-fangled pump being put in. Sure and the water would never be the same again. Pat was glad Judy wouldn’t let them change the old well. It was beautiful, with great ferns growing out all the way down its sides from the crevices of the stones that lined it, almost hiding from sight the deep clear water fifty feet below, which always mirrored a bit of blue sky and her own little face looking up at her from those always untroubled depths. Even in winter the ferns were there, long and green, and always the mirrored Patricia looked up at her from a world where tempests never blew. A big maple grew over the well … a maple that reached with green arms to the house, every year a little nearer.
Pat could see the orchard, too … a most extraordinary orchard with spruce trees and apple trees delightfully mixed up together … in the Old Part, at least. The New Part was trim and cultivated and not half so interesting. In the Old Part were trees that Great-grandfather Gardiner had planted and trees that had never been planted at all but just grew, with delightful little paths criss-crossing all over it. At the far end was a corner full of young spruces with a tiny sunny glade in the midst of them, where several beloved cats lay buried and where Pat went when she wanted to “think things out.” Things sometimes have to be thought out even at nearly seven.
2
At one side of the orchard was the graveyard. Yes, truly, a graveyard. Where Great-great-grandfather, Nehemiah Gardiner, who had come out to P. E. Island in 1780, was buried, and likewise his wife, Marie Bonnet, a French Huguenot lady. Great-grandfather, Thomas Gardiner, was there, too, with his Quaker bride, Jane Wilson. They had been buried there when the nearest graveyard was across the Island at Charlottetown, only to be reached by a bridle path through the woods. Jane Wilson was a demure little lady who always wore Quaker grey and a prim, plain cap. One of her caps was still in a box in the Silver Bush attic. She it was who had fought off the big black bear trying to get in at the window of their log cabin by pouring scalding hot mush on its face. Pat loved to hear Judy tell that story and describe how the bear had torn away through the stumps back of the cabin, pausing every once in so long for a frantic attempt to scrape the mush off its face. Those must have been exciting days in P. E. Island, when the woods were alive with bears and they would come and put their paws on the banking of the houses and look in at the windows. What a pity that could never happen now because there were no bears left! Pat always felt sorry for the last bear. How lonesome he must have been!
Great-uncle Richard was there … “Wild Dick Gardiner” who had been a 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 daredevil 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 scandalised 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, God-fearing 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 neighbour 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 sweetapple-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 beautifully and half the time didn’t know he was whistling. Hadn’t he once started to whistle in church? But that was a story for Judy Plum to tell. Judy, take her own word for it, had never been the same again.
The barns where Joe was whistling were near the orchard, with only the Whispering Lane that led to Uncle Tom’s between them. The little