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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Just Patty
+
+Author: Jean Webster
+
+Illustrator: C. M. Relyea
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21048]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUST PATTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I want a new room-mate"]
+
+
+
+
+Just Patty
+
+By
+Jean Webster
+
+          Author of
+          When Patty Went to College
+          Daddy Long Legs, Etc.
+
+          Illustrated by
+          C. M. Relyea
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+          Copyright, 1911, by
+          THE CENTURY CO.
+          Copyright, 1911, by THE
+          CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Published, October, 1911_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+MADE AT INNISFREE
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+          CHAPTER                                           PAGE
+
+             I REFORM                                          3
+
+            II THE ROMANTIC HISTORY OF CUTHBERT ST. JOHN      33
+
+           III THE VIRGIL STRIKE                              65
+
+            IV THE THIRD MAN FROM THE END                     99
+
+             V THE FLANNIGAN HONEYMOON                       119
+
+            VI THE SILVER BUCKLES                            149
+
+           VII "UNCLE BOBBY"                                 181
+
+          VIII THE SOCIETY OF ASSOCIATED SIRENS              199
+
+            IX THE REFORMATION OF KID MCCOY                  229
+
+             X ONIONS AND ORCHIDS                            247
+
+            XI THE LEMON PIE AND THE MONKEY-WRENCH           273
+
+           XII THE GYPSY TRAIL                               309
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+  "I want a new room-mate!"                             _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Patty just had time to snatch the box                        88
+
+  Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair   174
+
+  Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck   286
+
+
+
+
+Just Patty
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Reform
+
+
+"It's a shame!" said Priscilla.
+
+"It's an outrage!" said Conny.
+
+"It's an insult!" said Patty.
+
+"To separate us now after we've been together three years--"
+
+"And it isn't as though we were _awfully_ bad last year. Lots of girls
+had more demerits."
+
+"Only our badness was sort of conspicuous," Patty admitted.
+
+"But we were _very_ good the last three weeks," reminded Conny.
+
+"And you should see my new room-mate!" wailed Priscilla.
+
+"She can't be any worse than Irene McCullough."
+
+"She is!--Her father's a missionary, and she was brought up in China.
+Her name is Keren-happuch Hersey, after Job's youngest daughter. And
+she doesn't think it's funny!"
+
+"Irene," said Conny gloomily, "gained twenty pounds through the summer.
+She weighs--"
+
+"But you should see mine!" cried Patty, in exasperation. "Her name is
+Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale."
+
+"Keren studies every second; and expects me to walk on tiptoe so she can
+concentrate."
+
+"You should hear Mae Mertelle talk! She said her father was a financier,
+and wanted to know what mine was. I told her he was a reform judge, and
+that he spent his time putting financiers in prison. She says I'm an
+impertinent child," Patty grinned feebly.
+
+"How old is she?"
+
+"She's nineteen, and has been proposed to twice."
+
+"Mercy! Whatever made her choose St. Ursula's?"
+
+"Her father and mother ran away and got married when they were
+nineteen, and they're afraid she inherited the tendency. So they picked
+out a good, strict, church school. Mae doesn't know how she's ever going
+to fix her hair without a maid. She's awfully superstitious about
+moonstones. She never wears anything but silk stockings and she can't
+stand hash. I'll have to teach her how to make a bed. She always crosses
+on the White Star Line."
+
+Patty scattered these details at random. The others listened
+sympathetically, and added a few of their own troubles.
+
+"Irene weighs a hundred and fifty-nine pounds and six ounces, not
+counting her clothes," said Conny. "She brought two trunks _loaded_ with
+candy. She has it hidden all over the room. The last sound I hear at
+night, is Irene crunching chocolates--and the first sound in the
+morning. She never says anything; she simply chews. It's like rooming
+with a cow. And I have a sweet collection of neighbors! Kid McCoy's
+across the hall, and she makes more noise than half-a-dozen cowboys.
+There's a new French girl next door--you know, the pretty little one
+with the two black braids."
+
+"She looks rather desirable," said Patty.
+
+"She might be if she could talk, but she only knows about fifty words.
+Harriet Gladden's rooming with her, as limp and mournful as an oyster,
+and Evalina Smith's at the end of the corridor. You know what a
+_perfect_ idiot Evalina is."
+
+"Oh, it's beastly!" they agreed.
+
+"Lordy's to blame," said Conny. "The Dowager never would have separated
+us if she hadn't interfered."
+
+"And I've got her!" wailed Patty. "You two have Mam'selle and Waddams,
+and they're nice, sweet, unsuspicious lambs; but the girls in the East
+Wing simply can't sneeze but Lordy--"
+
+"Sh!" Conny warned. "Here she comes."
+
+The Latin teacher, in passing, paused on the threshold. Conny
+disentangled herself from the mixture of clothes and books and sofa
+cushions that littered the bed, and politely rose to her feet. Patty
+slid down from the white iron foot-rail, and Priscilla descended from
+the top of the trunk.
+
+"Ladies don't perch about on the furniture."
+
+"No, Miss Lord," they murmured in unison, gazing back from three pairs
+of wide, uplifted eyes. They knew, from gleeful past experience, that
+nothing so annoyed her as smiling acquiescence.
+
+Miss Lord's eyes critically studied the room. Patty was still in
+traveling dress.
+
+"Put on your uniform, Patty, and finish unpacking. The trunks go down
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"Yes, Miss Lord."
+
+"Priscilla and Constance, why aren't you out of doors with the other
+girls, enjoying this beautiful autumn weather?"
+
+"But we haven't seen Patty for such a long time, and now that we are
+separated--" commenced Conny, with a pathetic droop of her mouth.
+
+"I trust that your lessons will benefit by the change. You, Patty and
+Priscilla, are going to college, and should realize the necessity of
+being prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that you lay here depends
+your success for the next four years--for your whole lives, one might
+say. Patty is weak in mathematics and Priscilla in Latin. Constance
+_could_ improve her French. Let us see what you can do when you really
+try."
+
+She divided a curt nod between the three and withdrew.
+
+"We are happy in our work and we dearly love our teachers," chanted
+Patty, with ironical emphasis, as she rummaged out a blue skirt and
+middy blouse with "St. U." in gold upon the sleeve.
+
+While she was dressing, Priscilla and Conny set about transferring the
+contents of her trunk to her bureau, in whatever order the articles
+presented themselves--but with a carefully folded top layer. The
+overworked young teacher, who performed the ungrateful task of
+inspecting sixty-four bureaus and sixty-four closets every Saturday
+morning, was happily of an unsuspicious nature. She did not penetrate
+below the crust.
+
+"Lordy needn't make such a fuss over my standing," said Priscilla,
+frowning over an armful of clothes. "I passed everything except Latin."
+
+"Take care, Pris! You're walking on my new dancing dress," cried Patty,
+as her head emerged from the neck of the blouse.
+
+Priscilla automatically stepped off a mass of blue chiffon, and resumed
+her plaint.
+
+"If they think sticking me in with Job's youngest daughter is going to
+improve my prose composition--"
+
+"I simply _can't_ study till they take Irene McCullough out of my room,"
+Conny echoed. "She's just like a lump of sticky dough."
+
+"Wait till you get acquainted with Mae Mertelle!" Patty sat on the floor
+in the midst of the chaos, and gazed up at the other two with wide,
+solemn eyes. "She brought five evening gowns cut low, and all her shoes
+have French heels. And she _laces_--my dears! She just holds in her
+breath and pulls. But that isn't the worst." She lowered her voice to a
+confidential whisper. "She's got some red stuff in a bottle. She says
+it's for her finger nails, but I _saw_ her putting it on her face."
+
+"Oh!--not really?" in a horrified whisper from Conny and Priscilla.
+
+Patty shut her lips and nodded.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"Awful!" Conny shuddered.
+
+"I say, let's mutiny!" cried Priscilla. "Let's _make_ the Dowager give
+us back our old rooms in Paradise Alley."
+
+"But how?" inquired Patty, two parallel wrinkles appearing on her
+forehead.
+
+"Tell her that unless she does, we won't stay."
+
+"That would be sensible!" Patty jeered. "She'd ring the bell and order
+Martin to hitch up the hearse and drive us to the station for the
+six-thirty train. I should think you'd know by this time that you can't
+bluff the Dowager."
+
+"There's no use threatening," Conny agreed. "We must appeal to her
+feeling of--of--"
+
+"Affection," said Patty.
+
+Conny stretched out a hand and brought her up standing.
+
+"Come on, Patty, you're good at talking. We'll go down now while our
+courage is up.--Are your hands clean?"
+
+The three staunchly approached the door of Mrs. Trent's private study.
+
+"I'll use diplomacy," Patty whispered, as she turned the knob in
+response to the summons from within. "You people nod your heads at
+everything I say."
+
+Patty did use all the diplomacy at her command. Having dwelt touchingly
+upon their long friendship, and their sorrow at being separated, she
+passed lightly to the matter of their new room-mates.
+
+"They are doubtless very nice girls," she ended politely, "only, you
+see, Mrs. Trent, they don't match us; and it is extremely hard to
+concentrate one's mind upon lessons, unless one has a congenial
+room-mate."
+
+Patty's steady, serious gaze suggested that lessons were the end of her
+existence. A brief smile flitted over the Dowager's face, but the next
+instant she was grave again.
+
+"It is very necessary that we study this year," Patty added. "Priscilla
+and I are going to college, and we realize the necessity of being
+prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that we lay here, depends our
+success for the next four years--for our whole lives you might say."
+
+Conny jogged her elbow warningly. It was too patently a crib from Miss
+Lord.
+
+"And besides," Patty added hastily, "all my things are blue, and Mae has
+a purple screen and a yellow sofa cushion."
+
+"That is awkward," the Dowager admitted.
+
+"We are used to living in Paradise Al--I mean, the West Wing--and we
+shall--er--miss the sunsets."
+
+The Dowager allowed an anxious silence to follow, while she thoughtfully
+tapped the desk with her lorgnette. The three studied her face with
+speculative eyes. It was a mask they could not penetrate.
+
+"The present arrangement is more or less temporary," she commenced in
+equable tones. "I may find it expedient to make some changes, and I may
+not. We have an unusual number of new girls this year; and instead of
+putting them together, it has seemed wisest to mix them with the old
+girls. You three have been with us a long time. You know the traditions
+of the school. Therefore--" The Dowager smiled, a smile partially tinged
+with amusement--"I am sending you as missionaries among the newcomers. I
+wish you to make your influence felt."
+
+Patty straightened her back and stared.
+
+"Our influence?"
+
+"Your new room-mate," Mrs. Trent continued imperturbably, "is too
+grown-up for her years. She has lived in fashionable hotels, and under
+such conditions, it is inevitable that a girl should become somewhat
+affected. See if you cannot arouse in Mae an interest in girlish sports.
+
+"And you, Constance, are rooming with Irene McCullough. She is, as you
+know, an only child, and I fear has been a trifle spoiled. It would
+please me if you could waken her to a higher regard for the spiritual
+side of life, and less care for material things."
+
+"I--I'll try," Conny stammered, dazed at so suddenly finding herself
+cast in the unfamiliar rôle of moral reformer.
+
+"And you have next to you the little French girl, Aurelie Deraismes. I
+should be pleased, Constance, if you would assume an oversight of her
+school career. She can help you to a more idiomatic knowledge of
+French--and you can do the same for her in English.
+
+"You, Priscilla, are rooming with--" She adjusted her lorgnette and
+consulted a large chart.--"Ah, yes, Keren Hersey, a very unusual girl.
+You two will find many subjects of mutual interest. The daughter of a
+naval officer should have much in common with the daughter of a
+missionary. Keren bids fair to become an earnest student--almost, if
+such a thing were possible, too earnest. She has never had any girl
+companions, and knows nothing of the give and take of school life. She
+can teach you, Priscilla, to be more studious, and you can teach her to
+be more, shall I say, flexible?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Trent," Priscilla murmured.
+
+"And so," the Dowager finished, "I am sending you out in my place, as
+moral reformers. I want the older girls to set an example to the
+newcomers. I wish to have the real government of the school a strong,
+healthy Public Opinion. You three exert a great deal of influence. See
+what you can do in the directions I have indicated--and in others that
+may occur to you as you mix with your companions. I have watched you
+carefully for three years, and in your fundamental good sense, I have
+the greatest confidence."
+
+She nodded dismissal, and the three found themselves in the hall again.
+They looked at one another for a moment of blank silence.
+
+"Moral reformers!" Conny gasped.
+
+"I see through the Dowager," said Patty, "She thinks she's found a new
+method of managing us."
+
+"But I don't see that we're getting back to Paradise Alley," Priscilla
+complained.
+
+Patty's eyes suddenly brightened. She seized them each by an elbow and
+shoved them into the empty schoolroom.
+
+"We'll do it!"
+
+"Do what?" asked Conny.
+
+"Pitch right in and reform the school. If we just keep at
+it--steady--you'll see! We'll be back in Paradise Alley at the end of
+two weeks."
+
+"Um," said Priscilla, thoughtfully. "I believe we might."
+
+"We'll commence with Irene," said Conny, her mind eagerly jumping to
+details, "and make her lose that twenty pounds. That's what the Dowager
+meant when she said she wanted her less material."
+
+"We'll have her thin in no time," Patty nodded energetically. "And we'll
+give Mae Mertelle a dose of bubbling girlishness."
+
+"And Keren," interposed Priscilla, "we'll teach her to become frivolous
+and neglect her lessons."
+
+"But we won't just confine ourselves to those three," said Conny. "The
+Dowager said to make our influence felt over the whole school."
+
+"Oh, yes!" Patty agreed, rising to enthusiasm as she called the school
+roll. "Kid McCoy uses too much slang. We'll teach her manners. Rosalie
+doesn't like to study. We'll pour her _full_ of algebra and Latin.
+Harriet Gladden's a jelly fish, Mary Deskam's an awful little liar,
+Evalina Smith's a silly goose, Nancy Lee's a telltale--"
+
+"When you stop to think about it, there's something the matter with
+everybody," said Conny.
+
+"Except us," amended Priscilla.
+
+"Y--yes," Patty agreed in thoughtful retrospection, "I can't think of a
+thing the matter with us--I don't wonder they chose us to head the
+reform!"
+
+Conny slid to her feet, a bundle of energy.
+
+"Come on! We'll join our little playmates and begin the good
+work--Hooray for the great Reform Party!"
+
+They scrambled out of the open window, in a fashion foreign to the
+dictates of Thursday evening manner class. Crowds of girls in blue middy
+blouses were gathered in groups about the recreation ground. The three
+paused to reconnoiter.
+
+"There's Irene, still chewing." Conny nodded toward a comfortable bench
+set in the shade by the tennis courts.
+
+"Let's have a circus," Patty proposed. "We'll make Irene and Mae
+Mertelle roll hoops around the oval. That will kill 'em both with one
+stone--Irene will get thin, and Mae Mertelle girlish."
+
+Hoop-rolling was a speciality of St. Ursula's. The gymnasium instructor
+believed in teaching girls to run. Eleven times around the oval
+constituted a mile, and a mile of hoop-rolling freed one for the day
+from dumb-bells and Indian clubs. The three dived into the cellar, and
+returned with hoops as tall as themselves. Patty assumed command of the
+campaign and issued her orders.
+
+"Conny, you take a walk with Keren and shock her as much as possible; we
+must break her of being precise. And Pris, you take charge of Mae
+Mertelle. Don't let her put on any grown-up airs. If she tells you she's
+been proposed to twice, tell her you've been proposed to so many times
+that you've lost count. Keep her snubbed all the time. I'll be elephant
+trainer and start Irene running; she'll be a graceful gazelle by the
+time I finish."
+
+They parted on their several missions. St. Ursula's peace had ended. She
+was in the throes of reform.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Friday evening two weeks later, an unofficial faculty meeting was
+convened in the Dowager's study. "Lights-out" had rung five minutes
+before, and three harried teachers, relieved of duty for nine blessed
+hours while their little charges slept, were discussing their troubles
+with their chief.
+
+"But just what have they done?" inquired Mrs. Trent, in tones of
+judicial calm, as she vainly tried to stop the flood of interjections.
+
+"It is difficult to put one's finger on the precise facts," Miss
+Wadsworth quavered. "They have not broken any rules so far as I can
+discover, but they have--er--created an atmosphere--"
+
+"Every girl in my corridor," said Miss Lord, with compressed lips, "has
+come to me separately, and begged to have Patty moved back to the West
+Wing with Constance and Priscilla."
+
+"Patty! _Mon Dieu!_" Mademoiselle rolled a pair of speaking eyes to
+heaven. "The things that child thinks of! She is one little imp."
+
+"You remember," the Dowager addressed Miss Lord, "I said when you
+suggested separating them, that it was a very doubtful experiment.
+Together, they exhaust their effervescence on each other; separated--"
+
+"They exhaust the whole school!" cried Miss Wadsworth, on the verge of
+tears. "Of course they don't mean it, but their unfortunate
+dispositions--"
+
+"Don't mean it!" Miss Lord's eyes snapped. "Their heads are together
+planning fresh escapades every moment they are not in class."
+
+"But what have they done?" persisted Mrs. Trent.
+
+Miss Wadsworth hesitated a moment in an endeavor to choose examples from
+the wealth of material that presented itself.
+
+"I found Priscilla deliberately stirring up the contents of Keren's
+bureau drawers with a shinny stick, and when I asked what she was doing,
+she replied without the least embarrassment, that she was trying to
+teach Keren to be less exact; that Mrs. Trent had asked her to do it."
+
+"Um," mused the Dowager, "that was not my precise request, but no
+matter."
+
+"But the thing that has really troubled me the most," Miss Wadsworth
+spoke diffidently, "is a matter almost a blasphemy. Keren has a very
+religious turn of mind, but an unfortunate habit of saying her prayers
+out loud. One night, after a peculiarly trying day, she prayed that
+Priscilla might be forgiven for being so aggravating. Whereupon
+Priscilla knelt before her bed, and prayed that Keren might become less
+self-righteous and stubborn, and more ready to join in the sports of her
+playmates with generosity and openness of spirit. They carried
+on--well, really, one might almost call it a praying match."
+
+"Shocking!" cried Miss Lord.
+
+"And little Aurelie Deraismes--they have been drilling the child
+in--er--idiomatic English. The phrase that I overheard her repeating,
+seemed scarcely the expression that a lady would use."
+
+"What was it?" inquired the Dowager, with a slightly expectant note.
+
+"I'll be _gum-swizzled_!"
+
+Miss Wadsworth colored a deep pink. It was foreign to her nature even to
+repeat so doubtful an expression.
+
+The Dowager's lips twitched. It was a fact, deplored by her assistants,
+that her sense of humor frequently ran away with her sense of justice. A
+very naughty little girl, if she managed to be funny, might hope to
+escape; whereas an equally naughty little girl, who was not funny, paid
+the full penalty of her crime. Fortunately, however, the school at large
+had not discovered this vulnerable spot in the Dowager's armor.
+
+"Their influence," it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the
+school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room
+any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know what the trouble is, but--"
+
+"I know it!" said Mademoiselle. "The whole school laughs. It is touching
+the question of a _sweetch_."
+
+"Of what?" The Dowager cocked her head. Mademoiselle's English was at
+times difficult. She mixed her languages impartially.
+
+"A sweetch--some hair--to make pompadour. Last week when they have
+tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a
+beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and
+the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin--entirely ruin--and
+Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but
+since it will not wash, she has suggest to Mae that she color her own
+hair to match the sweetch, and Mae lose her temper and call names. Then
+Patty has pretend to cry, and she put the green hair on Mae's bed with
+a wreath of flowers around, and she hang a stocking on the door for
+crape, and invite the girls to come to the funeral, and everybody laugh
+at Mae."
+
+"It's just as well," said the Dowager, unmoved. "I do not wish to favor
+the wearing of false hair."
+
+"It's the principle of the thing," said Miss Lord.
+
+"And that poor Irene McCullough," Mademoiselle continued the tale, "she
+dissolves herself in tears. Those three insist that she make herself
+thin, and she has no wish to become thin."
+
+"They take away her butter-ball," corroborated Miss Wadsworth, "before
+she comes to the table; they make her go without dessert, and they do
+not allow her to eat sugar on her oatmeal. They keep her exercising
+every moment, and when she complains to me, they punish her."
+
+"I should think," the Dowager spoke with a touch of sarcasm, "that Irene
+were big enough to take care of herself."
+
+"She has three against her," reminded Miss Lord.
+
+"I called Patty to my room," said Miss Wadsworth, "and demanded an
+explanation. She told me that Mrs. Trent thought that Irene was too fat,
+and wished them to reduce her twenty pounds! Patty said that it was hard
+work, they were getting thin themselves, but they realized that they
+were seniors and must exert an influence over the school. I really think
+she was sincere. She talked very sweetly about moral responsibility, and
+the necessity of the older girls setting an example."
+
+"It is her impudence," said Miss Lord, "that is so exasperating."
+
+"That's--just Patty!" the Dowager laughed. "I must confess that I find
+all three of them amusing. It's good, healthy mischief and I wish there
+were more of it. They don't bribe the maids to mail letters, or smuggle
+in candy, or flirt with the soda-water clerk. They at least can be
+trusted."
+
+"Trusted!" gasped Miss Lord.
+
+"To break every minor rule with cheerful unconcern," nodded the
+Dowager, "but never to do the slightest thing dishonorable. They have
+kind hearts and the girls all love them--"
+
+A knock sounded on the door with startling suddenness, and before anyone
+could reply, the door burst open and Keren-happuch appeared on the
+threshold. She was clutching with one hand the folds of a brilliant
+Japanese kimono, the other she reserved for gestures. The kimono was
+sprinkled with fire-eating dragons as large as cats; and to the
+astonished spectators, Keren's flushed face and disheveled hair seemed
+to carry out the decorative scheme. The Dowager's private study was a
+sacred spot, reserved for interviews of formality; never had a pupil
+presented herself in such unceremonious garb.
+
+"Keren!" cried Miss Wadsworth. "What has happened?"
+
+"I want a new room-mate! I can't stand Priscilla any longer. She's been
+having a birthday party in my room--"
+
+"A birthday party?" Mrs. Trent turned questioningly to Miss Wadsworth.
+
+She nodded unhappily.
+
+"Yesterday was Priscilla's birthday, and she received a box from her
+aunt. This being Friday night, I gave her permission--"
+
+"Certainly." The Dowager turned to the tragic figure in the center of
+the floor. "It is Priscilla's room as much as yours and--"
+
+Keren plunged into a sea of words. The four leaned forward in a strained
+endeavor to pluck some sense from the torrent.
+
+"They used my bed for a table because it wasn't against the wall, and
+Patty tipped a pot of chocolate over in the middle of it. She said it
+was an accident--but she did it on purpose--I know she did! And because
+I objected, Priscilla said it wasn't polite to notice when a guest
+spilled anything, and she tipped a glass of current jelly on my pillow,
+to make Patty feel comfortable. That was the polite thing for a hostess
+to do, she said; they learned it last year in manner class. And the
+chocolate soaked right through, and Conny Wilder said it was fortunate I
+was thin, because I could sleep in a curve around it; if it had happened
+to Irene McCullough, she would have had to sleep in it, because she's
+so big she takes up the whole bed. And Priscilla said I could be
+thankful to-morrow's Saturday when we get clean sheets; it might have
+happened so that I would have had to sleep in that puddle of chocolate a
+whole week. And then the "Lights-out" rang, and they left me to clean
+up, and the housekeeper's gone to bed, and I can't get any fresh bed
+clothes, and I _won't_ sleep that way! I'm not used to sleeping in
+chocolaty sheets. I don't like America and I _hate_ girls."
+
+Tears were dripping from Keren's cheeks onto the fire-breathing dragons
+below. The Dowager, without comment, rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Katie," she said, as the maid on duty appeared at the door, "some fresh
+sheets for Miss Keren, please, and remake her bed. That will do for
+to-night, Keren. Get to sleep as quickly as possible, and don't talk.
+You mustn't disturb the other girls. We can see about changing
+room-mates to-morrow."
+
+Katie and the outraged dragons withdrew.
+
+A silence followed, while Miss Wadsworth and Mademoiselle exchanged
+glances of despair, and Miss Lord buckled on her war armor.
+
+"You see!" she said, with a suggestion of triumph, "when they get to the
+point of persecuting a poor little--"
+
+"In my experience of school life," said Mrs. Trent judicially, "it is a
+girl's own fault when she is persecuted. Their methods are crude, but to
+the point. Keren is a hopeless little prig--"
+
+"But at least you can't allow her to suffer--"
+
+"Oh, no, I shall do what I can toward peace. To-morrow morning, Keren
+can move in with Irene McCullough, and Patty and Conny and Priscilla go
+back to their old rooms in the West Wing. You, Mademoiselle, are
+somewhat inured--"
+
+"I do not mind them together. They are just--what you
+say?--exhilarating. It is when they are spread out that it is
+difficult."
+
+"You mean," Miss Lord stared--"that you are going to _reward_ their
+disgraceful conduct? It is exactly what they have been working for."
+
+"You must acknowledge," smiled the Dowager, "that they have worked hard.
+Perseverance deserves success."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, Patty and Conny and Priscilla, their arms running over
+with dresses and hats and sofa cushions, gaily two-stepped down the
+length of "Paradise Alley" while a relieved school assisted at the
+flitting. As they caught sight of Miss Lord hovering in the offing, they
+broke into the chorus of a popular school song:
+
+          "We like to go to chapel
+           And listen to the preachers,
+           We are happy in our work,
+           And we dearly love our teachers.
+              Daughters of Saint Ur-su-la!"
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The Romantic History of Cuthbert St. John
+
+
+"The Dowager" had a very sensible theory that boarding-school girls
+should be kept little girls, until their school life was over, and they
+stepped out, fresh and eager and spontaneous, to greet the grown-up
+world. Saint Ursula's was a cloister, in fact, as in name. The masculine
+half of the human species was not supposed to count.
+
+Sometimes a new girl was inclined to turn up her nose at the youthful
+pastimes that contented her companions. But in the end she would be
+drawn irresistibly into the current. She would learn to jump rope and
+roll hoops; to participate in paper chases 'cross country; to skate and
+coast and play hockey on winter afternoons, to enjoy molasses-candy
+pulls and popcorn around the big open fire on Saturday nights, or
+impromptu masquerades, when the school raided the trunks in the attic
+for costumes. After a few weeks' time, the most spoiled little worldling
+lost her consciousness of calls outside of "bounds," and surrendered to
+the spirit of the youthful sisterhood.
+
+But the girls in their teens answer readily to the call of ROMANCE. And
+occasionally, in the twilight hour between afternoon study and the
+dressing bell, as they gathered in the window-seat with faces to the
+western sky, the talk would turn to the future--particularly when
+Rosalie Patton was of the group. Pretty, dainty, inconsequential little
+Rosalie was preëminently fashioned for romance; it clung to her golden
+hair and looked from her eyes. She might be extremely hazy as to the
+difference between participles and supines, she might hesitate on her
+definition of a parallelopiped, but when the subject under discussion
+was one of sentiment, she spoke with conviction. For hers was no mere
+theoretical knowledge; it was gained by personal experience. Rosalie
+had been proposed to!
+
+She confided the details to her most intimate friends, and they confided
+them to their most intimate friends, until finally, the whole school
+knew the entire romantic history.
+
+Rosalie's preëminence in the field of sentiment was held entirely
+fitting. Priscilla might excel in basket-ball, Conny Wilder in
+dramatics, Keren Hersey in geometry and Patty Wyatt in--well, in
+impudence and audacity--but Rosalie was the recognized authority in
+matters of the heart; and until Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale came, nobody
+thought of questioning her position.
+
+Mae Mertelle spent an uncomfortable month shaking into place in the
+school life. The point in which she was accustomed to excel was
+_clothes_, but when she and her four trunks arrived, she found to her
+disgust that clothes were not useful at St. Ursula's. The school uniform
+reduced all to a dead level in the matter of fashion. There was another
+field, however, in which she might hope for supremacy. Her own
+sentimental history was vivid, compared to the colorless lives of most,
+and she proceeded to assert her claims.
+
+One Saturday evening in October, half-a-dozen girls were gathered in
+Rosalie's room, on piled-up sofa cushions, with the gas turned low and
+the light of the hunter's moon streaming through the window. They had
+been singing softly in a minor key, but gradually the singing turned to
+talk. The talk, in accordance with the moonlight and flying clouds, was
+in a sentimental vein; and it ended, naturally, with Rosalie's Great
+Experience. Between maidenly hesitations and many promptings she retold
+the story--the new girls had never heard it, and to the old girls it was
+always new.
+
+The stage setting had been perfect--a moonlit beach, and lapping waves
+and rustling pine trees. When Rosalie chanced to omit any detail, her
+hearers, already familiar with the story, eagerly supplied it.
+
+"And he held your hand all the time he was talking," Priscilla
+prompted.
+
+"Oh, Rosalie! Did he?" in a shocked chorus from the newcomers.
+
+"Y--yes. He just sort of took hold of it and forgot to let go, and I
+didn't like to remind him."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said he couldn't live without me."
+
+"And what did you say?"
+
+"I said I was awfully sorry, but he'd have to."
+
+"And then what happened?"
+
+"Nothing happened," she was obliged to confess. "I s'pose something
+might have happened if I'd accepted him, but you see, I didn't."
+
+"But you were very young at the time," suggested Evalina Smith. "Are you
+sure you knew your own mind?"
+
+Rosalie nodded with an air of melancholy regret.
+
+"Yes. I knew I couldn't ever love him, because, he--well, he had an
+awfully funny nose. It started to point in one direction, and then
+changed its mind and pointed in the other."
+
+Her hearers would have preferred that she had omitted this detail; but
+Rosalie was literal-minded and lacked the story-teller's instinct for
+suppression.
+
+"He asked if there wasn't any hope that I would change," she added
+pensively. "I told him that I could never love him enough to marry him,
+but that I would always respect him."
+
+"And then what did he say?"
+
+"He said he wouldn't commit suicide."
+
+A profound hush followed, while Rosalie gazed at the moon and the others
+gazed at Rosalie. With her gleaming hair and violet eyes, she was
+entirely their ideal of a storybook heroine. They did not think of
+envying her; they merely wondered and admired. She was crowned by
+natural right, Queen of Romance.
+
+Mae Van Arsdale, who had listened in silence to the recital, was the
+first to break the spell. She rose, fluffed up her hair, straightened
+her blouse, and politely suppressed a yawn.
+
+"Nonsense, Rosalie! You're a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing.--Good-night, children. I'm going to bed now."
+
+She sauntered toward the door, but paused on the threshold to drop the
+casual statement. "_I've_ been proposed to three times."
+
+A shocked gasp arose from the circle at this _lèse-majesté_. The
+disdainful condescension of a new girl was more than they could brook.
+
+"She's a horrid old thing, and I don't believe a word she says!"
+Priscilla declared stoutly, as she kissed poor crushed little Rosalie
+goodnight.
+
+This slight _contretemps_ marked the beginning of strained relations.
+Mae Mertelle gathered her own adherents, and Rosalie's special coterie
+of friends rallied to the standard of their queen. They intimated to
+Mae's followers that the quality of the romance was quite different in
+the two cases. Mae might be the heroine of any number of commonplace
+flirtations, but Rosalie was the victim of a _grande passion_. She was
+marked with an indelible scar that she would carry to the grave. In the
+heat of their allegiance, they overlooked the crookedness of the hero's
+nose and the avowed fact that Rosalie's own affections had not been
+engaged.
+
+But Mae's trump card had been withheld. Whispers presently spread about
+under the seal of confidence. She was hopelessly in love. It was not a
+matter of the past vacation, but of the burning present. Her room-mate
+wakened in the night to hear her sobbing to herself. She had no
+appetite--her whole table could testify to that. In the middle of
+dessert, even on ice-cream nights, she would forget to eat, and with her
+spoon half-raised, would sit staring into space. When reminded that she
+was at the table, she would start guiltily and hastily bolt the rest of
+the meal. Her enemies unkindly commented upon the fact that she always
+came to before the end, so she got as much as anybody else.
+
+The English classes at St. Ursula's were weekly drilled in the
+old-fashioned art of letter writing. The girls wrote letters home,
+minutely descriptive of school life. They addressed imaginary girl
+friends, and grandmothers and college brothers and baby sisters. They
+were learning the great secret of literary forcefulness--to suit their
+style to their audience. Ultimately, they arrived at the point of
+thanking imaginary young men for imaginary flowers. Mae listened to the
+somewhat stilted phraseology of these polite and proper notes with a
+supercilious smile. The class, covertly regarding her, thrilled anew.
+
+Gradually, the details of the romance spread abroad. The man was
+English--Mae had met him on the steamer--and some day when his elder
+brother died (the brother was suffering from an incurable malady that
+would carry him off in a few years) he would come into the title; though
+just what the title was, Mae had not specifically stated. But in any
+case, her father was a staunch American; he hated the English and he
+hated titles. No daughter of his should ever marry a foreigner. If she
+did, she would never receive a dollar from him. However, neither Mae nor
+Cuthbert cared about the money. Cuthbert had plenty of his own. His name
+was Cuthbert St. John. (Pronounced Sinjun.) He had four names in all,
+but those were the two he used the most. He was in England now, having
+been summoned by cable, owing to the critical condition of his brother's
+health, but the crisis was past, and Cuthbert would soon be returning.
+Then--Mae closed her lips in a straight line and stared defiantly into
+space. Her father should see!
+
+Before the throbbing reality of this romance, Rosalie's poor little
+history paled into nothing.
+
+Then the plot began to thicken. Studying the lists of incoming steamers,
+Mae announced to her room-mate that he had landed. He had given his word
+to her father not to write; but she knew that in some way she should
+hear. And sure enough! The following morning brought a nameless bunch of
+violets. There had been doubters before--but at this tangible proof of
+devotion, skepticism crumbled.
+
+Mae wore her violets to church on Sunday. The school mixed its responses
+in a shocking fashion--nobody pretended to follow the service; all eyes
+were fixed on Mae's upturned face and far-off smile. Patty Wyatt pointed
+out that Mae had taken special pains to seat herself in the light of a
+stained-glass window, and that occasionally the rapt eyes scanned the
+faces of her companions, to make sure that the effect was reaching
+across the footlights. But Patty's insinuation was indignantly
+repudiated by the school.
+
+Mae was at last triumphantly secure in the rôle of leading lady. Poor
+insipid Rosalie no longer had a speaking part.
+
+The affair ran on for several weeks, gathering momentum as it moved. In
+the European Travel Class that met on Monday nights, "English Country
+Seats" was the subject of one of the talks, illustrated by the
+stereopticon. As a stately, terraced mansion, with deer cropping grass
+in the foreground, was thrown upon the screen, Mae Mertelle suddenly
+grew faint. She vouchsafed no reason to the housekeeper who came with
+hot-water bottles and cologne; but later, she whispered to her room-mate
+that that was the house where he was born.
+
+Violets continued to arrive each Saturday, and Mae became more and more
+_distrait_. The annual basket-ball game with Highland Hall, a near-by
+school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year
+before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second
+time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued
+and scolded an apathetic team.
+
+"It's Mae Mertelle and her beastly violets!" she disgustedly grumbled to
+Patty. "She's taken all the fight out of them."
+
+The teachers, meanwhile, were uneasily aware that the atmosphere was
+overcharged. The girls stood about in groups, thrilling visibly when Mae
+Mertelle passed by. There was a moonlight atmosphere about the school
+that was not conducive to high marks in Latin prose composition. The
+matter finally became the subject of an anxious faculty meeting. There
+was no actual data at hand; it was all surmise, but the source of the
+trouble was evident. The school had been swept before by a wave of
+sentiment; it was as catching as the measles. The Dowager was inclined
+to think that the simplest method of clearing the atmosphere would be to
+pack Mae Mertelle and her four trunks back to the paternal fireside, and
+let her foolish mother deal with the case. Miss Lord was
+characteristically bent upon fighting it out. She would stop the
+nonsense by force. Mademoiselle, who was inclined to sentiment, feared
+that the poor child was really suffering. She thought sympathy and
+tact--But Miss Sallie's bluff common-sense won the day. If the sanity of
+Saint Ursula's demanded it, Mae Mertelle must go; but she thought, by
+the use of a little diplomacy, both St. Ursula's sanity and Mae Mertelle
+might be preserved. Leave the matter to her. She would use her own
+methods.
+
+Miss Sallie was the Dowager's daughter. She managed the practical end of
+the establishment--provided for the table, ruled the servants, and ran
+off, with the utmost ease, the two hundred acres of the school farm.
+Between the details of horseshoeing and haying and butter-making, she
+lent her abilities wherever they were needed. She never taught; but she
+disciplined. The school was noted for unusual punishments, and most of
+them originated in Miss Sallie's brain. Her title of "Dragonette" was
+bestowed in respectful admiration of her mental qualities.
+
+The next day was Tuesday, Miss Sallie's regular time for inspecting the
+farm. As she came downstairs after luncheon drawing on her driving
+gloves, she just escaped stepping on Conny Wilder and Patty Wyatt who,
+flat on their stomachs, were trying to poke out a golf ball from under
+the hat-rack.
+
+"Hello, girls!" was her cheerful greeting. "Wouldn't you like a little
+drive to the farm? Run and tell Miss Wadsworth that you are excused from
+afternoon study. You may stay away from Current Events this evening,
+and make it up."
+
+The two scrambled into hats and coats in excited delight. A visit to
+Round Hill Farm with Miss Sallie, was the greatest good that St.
+Ursula's had to offer. For Miss Sallie--out of bounds--was the funniest,
+most companionable person in the world. After an exhilarating five-mile
+drive through a brown and yellow October landscape, they spent a couple
+of hours romping over the farm, had milk and ginger cookies in Mrs.
+Spence's kitchen; and started back, wedged in between cabbages and eggs
+and butter. They chatted gaily on a dozen different themes--the
+Thanksgiving masquerade, a possible play, the coming game with Highland
+Hall, and the lamentable new rule that made them read the editorials in
+the daily papers. Finally, when conversation flagged for a moment, Miss
+Sallie dropped the casual inquiry:
+
+"By the way, girls, what _has_ got into Mae Van Arsdale? She droops
+about in corners and looks as dismal as a molting chicken."
+
+Patty and Conny exchanged a glance.
+
+"Of course," Miss Sallie continued cheerfully, "it's perfectly evident
+what the trouble is. I haven't been connected with a boarding-school for
+ten years for nothing. The little idiot is posing as the object of an
+unhappy affection. You know that I never favor talebearing, but, just as
+a matter of curiosity, is it the young man who passes the plate in
+church, or the one who sells ribbon in Marsh and Elkins's?"
+
+"Neither." Patty grinned. "It's an English nobleman."
+
+"What?" Miss Sallie stared.
+
+"And Mae's father hates English noblemen," Conny explained, "and has
+forbidden him ever to see her again."
+
+"Her heart is broken," said Patty sadly. "She's going into a decline."
+
+"And the violets?" inquired Miss Sallie.
+
+"He promised not to send her any letters, but violets weren't
+mentioned."
+
+"H'm, I see!" said Miss Sallie; and, after a moment of thought, "Girls,
+I am going to leave this matter in your hands. I want it stopped."
+
+"In our hands?"
+
+"The school can't be stirred up any longer; but the matter's too silly
+to warrant the teachers taking any notice of it. This is a thing that
+ought to be regulated by public opinion. Suppose you see what you can
+do--I will appoint you a committee to bring the school back to a solid
+basis of common sense. I know that I can trust you not to talk."
+
+"I don't exactly see what we can do," said Patty, dubiously.
+
+"You are usually not without resourcefulness," Miss Sallie returned with
+a flickering smile. "You may have a _carte blanche_ to choose your own
+methods."
+
+"And may we tell Priscilla?" Conny asked. "We must tell her because we
+three--"
+
+"Hunt together?" Miss Sallie nodded. "Tell Priscilla, and let it stop at
+that."
+
+The next afternoon, when Martin drove into the village to accomplish
+the daily errands, he dropped Patty and Priscilla at the florists,
+empowered by the school to purchase flowers for the rector's wife and
+new baby. They turned inside, their minds entirely occupied with the
+rival merits of red and white roses. They ordered their flowers,
+inscribed the card, and then waited aimlessly till Martin should return
+to pick them up. Passing down the counter, they came upon a
+bill-sticker, the topmost item being, "Violets every Saturday to Miss
+Mae Van Arsdale, St. Ursula's School."
+
+They stopped and stared for a thoughtful moment. The florist followed
+their gaze.
+
+"Do you happen to know the young lady who ordered them vi'lets?" he
+inquired. "She didn't leave any name, and I'd like to know if she wants
+me to keep on sending 'em. She only paid up to the first, and the price
+is going up."
+
+"No, I don't know who it was," said Patty, with well-assumed
+indifference. "What did she look like?"
+
+"She--she had on a blue coat," he suggested. As all sixty-four of the
+St. Ursula girls wore blue coats, his description was not helpful.
+
+"Oh," Patty prompted, "was she quite tall with a lot of yellow hair
+and--"
+
+"That's her!"
+
+He recognized the type with some assurance.
+
+"It's Mae herself!" Priscilla whispered excitedly.
+
+Patty nodded and commanded silence.
+
+"We'll tell her," she promised. "And by the way," she added to
+Priscilla, "I think it would be nice for us to send some flowers to Mae,
+from our--er--secret society. But I'm afraid the treasury is pretty low
+just now. They'll have to be cheaper than violets. What are your
+cheapest flowers?" she inquired of the man.
+
+"There's a kind of small sunflower that some people likes for
+decoration. 'Cut-and-come-again' they're called. I can give you a
+good-sized bunch for fifty cents. They make quite a show."
+
+"Just the thing! Send a bunch of sunflowers to Miss Van Arsdale with
+this card." Patty drew a blank card toward her, and in an upright back
+hand traced the inscription, "Your disconsolate C. St. J."
+
+She sealed it in an envelope, then regarded the florist sternly.
+
+"Are you a Mason?" she asked, her eye on the crescent in his buttonhole.
+
+"Y--yes," he acknowledged.
+
+"Then you understand the nature of an oath of secrecy? You are not to
+divulge to anyone the sender of these flowers. The tall young lady with
+the yellow hair will come in here and try to make you tell who sent
+them. You are not to remember. It may even have been a man. You don't
+know anything about it. This secret society at Saint Ursula's is so very
+much more secret than the Masonic Society, that it is even a secret that
+it exists. Do you understand?"
+
+"I--yes, ma'am," he grinned.
+
+"If it becomes known," she added darkly, "I shall not be responsible for
+your life."
+
+She and Priscilla each contributed a quarter for the flowers.
+
+"It's going to be expensive," Patty sighed. "I think we'll have to ask
+Miss Sallie for an extra allowance while this committee is in session."
+
+Mae was in her room, surrounded by an assemblage of her special
+followers, when the flowers arrived. She received the box in some
+bewilderment.
+
+"He's sending flowers on Wednesdays as well as Saturdays!" her room-mate
+cried. "He must be getting desperate."
+
+Mae opened the box amid an excited hush.
+
+"How perfectly lovely!" they cried in chorus, though with a slightly
+perfunctory undertone. They would have preferred crimson roses.
+
+Mae regarded the offering for a moment of stupefied amazement. She had
+been pretending so long, that by now she almost believed in Cuthbert
+herself. The circle was waiting, and she rallied her powers to meet this
+unexpected crisis.
+
+"I wonder what sunflowers mean?" she asked softly. "They must convey
+some message. Does anybody know the language of flowers?"
+
+Nobody did know the language of flowers; but they were relieved at the
+suggestion.
+
+"Here's a card!" Evalina Smith plucked it from among the bristling
+leaves.
+
+Mae made a motion to examine it in private, but she had been so generous
+with her confidences heretofore, that she was not allowed to withdraw
+them at this interesting point. They leaned over her shoulder and read
+it aloud.
+
+"'Your disconsolate C. St. J.'--Oh, Mae, think how he must be
+suffering!"
+
+"Poor man!"
+
+"He simply couldn't remain silent any longer."
+
+"He's the soul of honor," said Mae. "He wouldn't write a real letter
+because he promised not to, but I suppose--a little message like this--"
+
+Patty Wyatt passing the door, sauntered in. The card was exhibited in
+spite of a feeble protest from Mae.
+
+"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.
+
+This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held
+aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie's friend.
+
+The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae
+Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could
+not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
+Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy
+was of an inexpensive variety--Patty had discovered the ten-cent
+store--but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what
+the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid
+profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed
+sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels
+had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious promptitude. Miss
+Sallie was the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the
+outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most
+embarrassing moments to comply--always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded
+by an audience.
+
+Mae's Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days' time
+became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible
+as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the
+special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
+"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no
+avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert--and was bent upon eliciting all
+the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became
+one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw
+was the arrival of a complete edition--in paper--of Marie Corelli.
+
+"He--he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody's just trying to be
+funny."
+
+"You mustn't mind, Mae, because they aren't just the sort that an
+American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that
+Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. _Everybody_ reads
+Marie Corelli over there."
+
+The next Saturday, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping
+and the matinée. Among other errands, the art class visited a photograph
+dealer's, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty's interest in
+Giotto and his kind was not very keen, and she sauntered off on a tour
+of inspection. She happened upon a pile of actors and actresses, and her
+eye brightened as she singled out a large photograph of an unfamiliar
+leading man, with curling mustache and dimpled chin and large appealing
+eyes. He was dressed in hunting costume and conspicuously displayed a
+crop. The picture was the last word in Twentieth Century Romance. And,
+most perfect touch of all, it bore a London mark!
+
+Patty unobtrusively deflected the rest of the committee from a
+consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over
+the find.
+
+"It's perfect!" Conny sighed. "But it costs a dollar and fifty cents."
+
+"We'll have to go without soda water _forever_!" said Priscilla.
+
+"It is expensive," Patty agreed, "but--" as she restudied the liquid,
+appealing eyes--"I really think it's worth it."
+
+They each contributed fifty cents, and the picture was theirs.
+
+Patty wrote across the front, in the bold back hand that Mae had come to
+hate, a tender message in French, and signed the full name, "Cuthbert
+St. John." She had it wrapped in a plain envelope and requested the
+somewhat wondering clerk to mail it the following Wednesday morning, as
+it was an anniversary present and must not arrive before the day.
+
+The picture came on the five-o'clock delivery, and was handed to Mae as
+the girls trooped out from afternoon study. She received it in sulky
+silence and retired to her room. Half a dozen of her dearest friends
+followed at her heels; Mae had worked hard to gain a following, and now
+it couldn't be shaken off.
+
+"Open it, Mae quick!"
+
+"What do you s'pose it is?"
+
+"It can't be flowers or candy. He must be starting something new."
+
+"I don't care what it is!" Mae viciously tossed the parcel into the
+wastebasket.
+
+Irene McCullough fished it out and cut the string.
+
+"Oh, Mae, it's his photograph!" she squealed. "And he's per-fect-ly
+beau-ti-ful!"
+
+"Did you ever see such eyes!"
+
+"Does he curl his mustache, or it is natural?"
+
+"Why didn't you tell us he had a dimple in his chin?"
+
+"Does he always wear those clothes?"
+
+Mae was divided between curiosity and anger. She snatched the photograph
+away, cast one glance at the languishing brown eyes, and tumbled it,
+face downward, into a bureau drawer.
+
+"Don't ever mention his name to me again!" she commanded, as, with
+compressed lips, she commenced brushing her hair for dinner.
+
+On the next Friday afternoon--shopping day in the village--Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla dropped in at the florist's to pay a bill.
+
+"Two bunches of sunflowers, one dollar," the man had just announced in
+ringing tones from the rear of the store, when a step sounded behind
+them, and they faced about to find Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale, bent on a
+similar errand.
+
+"Oh!" said Mae, fiercely, "I might have known it was you three."
+
+She stared for a moment in silence, then she dropped into a rustic seat
+and buried her head on the counter. She had shed so many tears of late
+that they flowed automatically.
+
+"I suppose," she sobbed, "you'll tell the whole school, and everybody
+will laugh and--and--"
+
+The three regarded her with unbending mien. They were not to be moved by
+a few tears.
+
+"You said that Rosalie was a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing," Priscilla reminded her.
+
+"And at least he was a live man," said Patty, "even if he did have a
+crooked nose."
+
+"Do you still think she was a silly goose?" Conny inquired.
+
+"N--no!"
+
+"Don't you think you've been a great deal more silly?"
+
+"Y--yes."
+
+"And will you apologize to Rosalie?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"It will make quite a funny story," Patty ruminated, "the way we'll tell
+it."
+
+"I think you're perfectly horrid!"
+
+"Will you apologize to Rosalie?" Priscilla asked again.
+
+"Yes--if you'll promise not to tell."
+
+"We'll promise on one condition--you're to break your engagement to
+Cuthbert St. John, and never refer to it again."
+
+Cuthbert sailed for England on the _Oceanic_ the following Thursday; St.
+Ursula's plunged into a fever of basket-ball, and the atmosphere became
+bracingly free of Romance.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Virgil Strike
+
+
+"I'm tired of Woman's Rights on Friday afternoons," said Patty
+disgustedly. "I prefer soda water!"
+
+"This makes the third time they've taken away our holiday for the sake
+of a beastly lecture," Priscilla grumbled, as she peered over Patty's
+shoulder to read the notice on the bulletin board, in Miss Lord's
+perpendicular library hand.
+
+It informed the school that instead of the usual shopping expedition to
+the village, they would have the pleasure that afternoon of listening to
+a talk by Professor McVey of Columbia University. The subject would be
+the strike of the women laundry workers. Tea would be served in the
+drawing-room afterwards, with Mae Van Arsdale, Harriet Gladden, and
+Patty Wyatt as hostesses.
+
+"It's not my turn!" objected Patty, as she noted the latter item. "I was
+hostess two weeks ago."
+
+"That's because you wrote an essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie
+thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show
+him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only
+superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual
+problems of--"
+
+"And I did want to go shopping!" Patty mourned. "I need some new
+shoe-strings. I've been tying a knot in my old ones every day for a
+week."
+
+"Here she comes," whispered Priscilla. "Look happy or she'll make you
+translate the whole--Good morning, Miss Lord! We were just noticing
+about the lecture. It sounds extremely interesting."
+
+The two smiled a perfunctory greeting, and followed their teacher to the
+morning's Latin.
+
+Miss Lord was the one who struck the modern note at St. Ursula's. She
+believed in militant suffragism and unions and boycotts and strikes; and
+she labored hard to bring her little charges to her own advanced
+position. But it was against a heavy inertia that she worked. Her little
+charges didn't care a rap about receiving their rights, in the dim
+future of twenty-one; but they were very much concerned about losing a
+present half-holiday. On Friday afternoons, they were ordinarily allowed
+to draw checks on the school bank for their allowances, and march in a
+procession--a teacher forming the head and tail--to the village stores,
+where they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water
+and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly
+stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village
+and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of
+six days of bounds.
+
+But every cloud has its silver lining.
+
+Miss Lord preceded the Virgil recitation that morning by a discussion of
+the lecture to come. The laundry strike, she told them, marked an epoch
+in industrial history. It proved that women, as well as men, were
+capable of standing by each other. The solidarity of labor was a point
+she wished her girls to grasp. Her girls listened with grave attention;
+and by eagerly putting a question, whenever she showed signs of running
+down, they managed to stave off the Latin recitation for three quarters
+of an hour.
+
+The professor, a mild man with a Van Dyke beard, came and lectured
+exhaustively upon the relations of employer and employed. His audience
+listened with politely intelligent smiles, but with minds serenely
+occupied elsewhere. The great questions of Capital and Labor, were not
+half so important to them, as the fact of the lost afternoon, or the
+essays that must be written for to-morrow's English, or even that this
+was ice-cream night with dancing class to follow. But Patty, on the
+front seat, sat with wide, serious eyes fixed on the lecturer's face.
+She was absorbing his arguments--and storing them for use.
+
+Tea followed according to schedule. The three chosen ones received
+their guests with the facility of long-tried hostesses. The fact that
+their bearing was under inspection, with marks to follow, did not
+appreciably diminish their case. They were learning by the laboratory
+method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger
+world. Harriet and Mae presided at the tea table, while Patty engaged
+the personage in conversation. He commented later, to Miss Lord, upon
+the students' rare understanding in economic subjects.
+
+Miss Lord replied with some complaisance that she endeavored to have her
+girls think for themselves. Sociology was a field in which lessons could
+not be taught by rote. Each must work out her own conclusions, and act
+upon them.
+
+Ice-cream and dancing restored the balance of St. Ursula's, after the
+mental exertions of the afternoon. At half-past nine--the school did not
+retire until ten on dancing nights--Patty and Priscilla dropped their
+goodnight courtesy, murmured a polite "_Bon soir, Mam'selle_," and
+scampered upstairs, still very wide awake. Instead of preparing for bed
+with all dispatch, as well-conducted school girls should, they engaged
+themselves in practising the steps of their new Spanish dance down the
+length of the South Corridor. They brought up with a pirouette at
+Rosalie Patton's door.
+
+Rosalie, still in the pale blue fluffiness of her dancing frock, was
+sitting cross-legged on the couch, her yellow curls bent over the open
+pages of a Virgil, tears spattering with dreary regularity on the lines
+she was conning.
+
+The course of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by
+blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing,
+deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone
+teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably
+predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra
+feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed--when she ought to
+have been concentrating upon Latin grammar--of that happy future state
+in which smiles and kisses would take the place of gerunds and
+gerundives.
+
+"You silly little muff!" cried Patty. "Why on earth are you bothering
+with Latin on a Friday night?"
+
+She landed herself with a plump on Rosalie's right, and took away the
+book.
+
+"I have to," Rosalie sobbed. "I'd never finish if I didn't begin. I
+don't see any sense to it. I can't do eighty lines in two hours. Miss
+Lord always calls on me for the end, because she knows I won't know
+that."
+
+"Why don't you begin at the end and read backwards?" Patty practically
+suggested.
+
+"But that wouldn't be fair, and I can't do it so fast as the others. I
+work more than two hours every day, but I simply never get through. I
+know I shan't pass."
+
+"Eighty lines is a good deal," Patty agreed.
+
+"It's easy for you, because you know all the words, but--"
+
+"I worked more than two hours on mine yesterday," said Priscilla, "and I
+can't afford it either. I have to save some time for geometry."
+
+"_I just simply can't do it_," Rosalie wailed. "And she thinks I'm
+stupid because I don't keep up with Patty."
+
+Conny Wilder drifted in.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, viewing Rosalie's tear-streaked face.
+"Cry on the pillow, child. Don't spoil your dress."
+
+The Latin situation was explained.
+
+"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend
+every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She--"
+
+"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all,"
+sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled,
+"and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put
+them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."
+
+Patty emerged from a moment of revery.
+
+"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that
+something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord told us to apply it
+to our everyday problems."
+
+Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.
+
+"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in
+an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty
+lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn--particularly Rosalie.
+And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day
+by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or
+else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the
+solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each
+other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of
+the class to stand by Rosalie."
+
+"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.
+
+"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.
+
+"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.
+
+"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.
+
+"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.
+
+"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and
+apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.
+
+"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.
+
+"But what if she doesn't give in?"
+
+"We'll call out the Cicero and Cæsar classes in a sympathetic strike."
+
+"Hooray!" cried Conny.
+
+"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see
+the justice of it."
+
+"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly
+like the laundry workers--in the position of dependents, and the only
+way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If
+Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the
+whole class does, Lordie will _have_ to give in."
+
+"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.
+
+"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she
+had grasped some basic principles.
+
+"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run
+and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out
+Nancy Lee--she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here,
+Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody
+can sit down."
+
+Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.
+
+"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.
+
+"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."
+
+The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman,
+outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a
+working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the
+regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to
+read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved
+insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.
+
+The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly
+accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union
+had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution.
+Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her
+name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature,
+Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more
+feminine methods.
+
+Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who
+looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of
+St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene
+suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully
+refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny
+produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the
+chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates--and poor
+harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and
+dessert, sullenly added her signature.
+
+"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went
+to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired
+and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the
+Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the
+actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief
+address.
+
+"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last
+lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, _don't_ look so
+scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all
+the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs
+down now is a COWARD!"
+
+Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the
+fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy walking
+boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught
+the enemy's eye.
+
+"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask,
+Patty--?"
+
+"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't
+go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the
+effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically
+surveyed it.
+
+"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord
+acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."
+
+The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a
+visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they
+waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the
+sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead was virgin jungle.
+This was the point for the Union to declare itself; and the burden, true
+to her forebodings, fell upon poor trembling little Rosalie.
+
+She cast an imploring glance toward Patty's sternly waiting countenance,
+stammered, hesitated, and miserably plunged into a sight translation.
+Rosalie never had the slightest luck at sight translations; even after
+two hours of patient work with a dictionary, she was still extremely
+hesitant as to meanings. Now, she blindly forged ahead,--amid a profound
+hush--attributing to the Pious Æneas a most amazing set of actions. She
+finished; and the slaughter commenced. Miss Lord spent three minutes in
+obliterating Rosalie; then passed the lines to Irene McCullough.
+
+Irene drew a deep breath--she felt Conny encouragingly patting her on
+the back, while Patty and Priscilla, at either hand, jogged her elbow
+with insistent touch. She opened her mouth to declare the principles
+that had been foisted upon her over night; then she caught the cold
+gleam of Miss Lord's eye. Rosalie's sobs filled the room. And she fell.
+Irene was fairly good at Latin--her sight translation was at least
+intelligible. Miss Lord's comment was merely sarcastic, as she passed
+to Florence Hissop. By this time the panic had swept through the ranks.
+Florence would like to have been true to her pledged troth, but the
+instinct of self-preservation is strong. She improved on Irene's
+performance.
+
+"Take the next ten lines, Patty, and endeavor to extract a glimmering of
+sense. Please bear in mind that we are reading poetry."
+
+Patty raised her head and faced her superior in the manner of a
+Christian martyr.
+
+"I only prepared the first sixty lines, Miss Lord."
+
+"Why did you not finish the lesson that I gave out?" Miss Lord inquired
+sharply.
+
+"We have decided that eighty lines are more than we can do in a day. It
+takes too much time away from our other lessons. We are perfectly
+willing to do sixty lines, and do them thoroughly, but we can't consider
+any more."
+
+Miss Lord for a moment simply stared. Never had she known such a
+flagrant case of insubordination. And it was purely insubordination,
+for Patty was the most capable person in the class.
+
+"What do you mean?" she gasped at last.
+
+"We have formed a Virgil Union," Patty gravely explained. "You, Miss
+Lord, will appreciate the fairness of our demands better than any of the
+other teachers, because you believe in unions. Now, the girls in this
+class feel that they are overworked and underpa--er--that is, I mean the
+lessons are too long."
+
+Patty fetched a deep breath and started again.
+
+"Eighty lines a day doesn't leave us any time for recreation, so we have
+determined to join together and demand our rights. We occupy the
+position of skilled laborers. You can get all the girls you want for
+Cæsar and beginning Latin, but you can't find anybody but us to read
+Virgil. It's like the laundry trade. We are not just plain boilers and
+starchers; we are fancy ironers. If you want to have a Virgil class, you
+have _got_ to have us. You can't call in scab labor. Now, we aren't
+trying to take advantage because of our superior strength. We are
+perfectly willing to do an honest day's work, but we can't allow
+ourselves to be--er--to be--"
+
+Patty fumbled a moment for her word, but in the end she brought it out
+triumphantly.
+
+"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for
+you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of
+us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the
+others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against
+the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men.
+But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of
+Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will
+be obliged to go out on strike."
+
+Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.
+
+A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down
+in hopeless, abject terror before the storm. Miss Lord's icy sarcasm
+was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish
+ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely
+eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a
+CAUSE. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be
+saved--the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed,
+would fight and win.
+
+Miss Lord finally drew breath.
+
+"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she
+has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read
+them after luncheon."
+
+The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while
+Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to
+hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:
+
+"Scabs!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard
+the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered
+back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She
+had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at
+eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not
+quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the
+morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis
+the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause
+was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed
+until she learned the Latin--very well--she would leave her bones
+bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.
+
+An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle,
+to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry
+window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone
+slab of turkey.
+
+"Leave plate in wastebasket, Missy," he whispered hoarsely.
+
+Patty, for an instant, struggled with dignity and martyrdom, but hunger
+and a love of intrigue triumphed. She tiptoed over and received the
+offering. There was no knife or fork, but primitive methods suffice in a
+case of real starvation. She finished the turkey and buried the plate
+beneath a pile of algebra papers. It was Osaki's daily business to empty
+the wastebasket; the plate in due course would be restored to its shelf.
+
+A few moments later a scurrying footfall sounded at the door, and a
+little Junior A. darted to Patty's side. She cast a conspiratorial
+glance over her shoulder as she drew from a bulging blouse two buttered
+rolls.
+
+"Take 'em quick!" she panted. "I must hurry back, or they'll suspect. I
+asked to be excused to get a handkerchief. Keep up your courage. We
+won't let you starve. It's splendid!"
+
+She thrust the rolls into Patty's lap and vanished.
+
+Patty found it comforting to know that the school was with her. The
+attractions of martyrdom are enhanced by the knowledge of an audience.
+Also, the rolls were a grateful addition to the turkey; her five-hour
+appetite was still insistent. She finished one of them and was about to
+begin on the second, when furtive footfalls sounded behind her, and one
+of the maids slipped a paper plate over her shoulder.
+
+"Here's some fresh gingerbread, Miss Patty. Cook says--"
+
+The sound of a closing door startled her, and she scurried off like a
+detected thief.
+
+Patty placed her second roll in the wastebasket in company with the
+turkey plate, and was just starting on the gingerbread, when a
+scrambling sounded at the end window. A blue hat appeared momentarily
+over the sill, its owner boosted from below, and an unidentified hand
+sent an orange rolling down the center aisle. Patty hastily intercepted
+its course and dropped it into the wastebasket. Luncheon would be over
+momentarily, and a visit from Miss Lord was imminent. This influx of
+supplies was growing embarrassing.
+
+She heard the rising flood of talk as the girls poured from the
+dining-room. She knew that sympathetic groups were viewing her from the
+open doors behind. Judging from the ceaseless shuffle of footsteps, all
+Saint Ursula's had errands that led past the schoolroom door. Patty did
+not cast a glance behind, but with rigid shoulders stared into space.
+Presently a rattling sounded above her head. She raised startled eyes to
+a register set in the ceiling, and saw Irene McCullough's anxious face
+peering through the opening.
+
+"You can live for days on chocolates," came in a stage whisper. "I'm
+awfully sorry there's only half a pound; I ate the rest last night."
+
+The register was lifted out, and a box was swiftly lowered by a string.
+Irene was chief of the scabs.
+
+"Thank you, Irene," Patty returned in a haughty stage whisper. "I do not
+care to accept any--"
+
+Miss Lord's voice became audible in the hall.
+
+"I thought, young ladies, that afternoon recreation was to be spent out
+of doors?"
+
+Patty just had time to snatch the box and drop it in her lap, with an
+open essay book above, when Miss Lord advanced into the room. Patty's
+face assumed an air of suffering stoicism, as she stared ahead, in the
+profound hope that Irene would have sense enough to remove eight feet of
+dangling string. Miss Lord was followed by Osaki, carrying a tray with
+two slices of dry bread and a glass of water.
+
+"Have you finished your Latin, Patty?"
+
+"No, Miss Lord."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am going to do to-morrow's lesson in afternoon study hour."
+
+Patty's tone was respectful, but her meaning was clear. She emphasized
+slightly the word "to-morrow."
+
+"You will do the twenty lines immediately."
+
+A speaking silence from Patty.
+
+"Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Lord."
+
+"Well?" The monosyllable was sharp enough to cut.
+
+"I stand by my principles," said Patty. "I am not a scab."
+
+[Illustration: Patty just had time to snatch the box]
+
+"You may sit here until those twenty lines are finished."
+
+"Very well, Miss Lord."
+
+"I do not wish you to suffer. Here is bread and water."
+
+She motioned Osaki to set down the tray.
+
+Patty waved it aside.
+
+"I am not a convict," she said with dignity. "I refuse to eat until I am
+served properly at the dining-room table."
+
+A fleeting grin replaced for a moment Osaki's Oriental calm. Miss Lord
+set the bread on a neighboring desk, and the two withdrew.
+
+All through recreation and afternoon study, Patty sat at her desk, the
+plate of bread conspicuously untouched at her elbow. Then the
+five-o'clock bell rang, and the girls trooped out and dispersed on their
+various businesses. The hour between afternoon study and dressing bell,
+was the one hour of the day entirely their own. Patty could hear them
+romping up the back stairs, and racing through the corridors. Kid McCoy
+was conducting a pillow fight in Paradise Alley above her head. Groups
+passed the schoolroom window with happy calls and laughter. Pepper and
+Tabasco, the two riding horses, were saddled and brought out. She could
+see the girls taking turns in galloping around the oval, while Martin,
+as ringmaster, waved his whip and urged them on. Martin now was bent
+with rheumatism, but in his far-off reckless youth he had been a cowboy,
+and when he taught the girls to ride, it was with a disregard of broken
+bones that dismayed even the adventurous gymnasium teacher. Patty was
+his star pupil; she could stick on Red Pepper's back with nothing but a
+blanket to hold her. It was only very occasionally, when Martin was in a
+propitious mood, that the horses were saddled for mere public amusement.
+Patty's heart was sore as she watched Priscilla and Conny, her two
+dearest friends, disport themselves regardless of their incarcerated
+mate.
+
+It grew dusk; nobody came to furnish a light, and Patty sat in the
+semi-darkness, her head bent wearily on her arms. Finally she heard
+footsteps in the hall, and Miss Sallie entered and closed the door
+behind her. Patty braced herself anew; one needed keen wits to match the
+"Dragonette."
+
+Miss Sallie had been talking with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to
+think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her
+practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with
+business-like directness.
+
+"See here, Patty, what is the meaning of all this nonsense?"
+
+Patty raised reproachful eyes.
+
+"Nonsense, Miss Sallie?"
+
+"Yes, nonsense! Miss Lord says that you refused to learn the lesson that
+she assigned, and that you incited the rest of the girls to mutiny. You
+are one of the most able pupils in the class, and your failure to finish
+the lesson is nothing in the world but stubbornness. If it were Rosalie
+Patton now, there might be some sense in it."
+
+"I don't think you understand," said Patty gently.
+
+"It might be well for you to explain," suggested Miss Sallie.
+
+"I must stand by my principles."
+
+"By all means!" Miss Sallie affably agreed. "And what are your
+principles?"
+
+"To hold out for sixty lines of Virgil. It isn't because I _want_ to
+strike, Miss Sallie. It would be much easier for me to do the eighty
+lines, but that wouldn't be fair to Rosalie. The working day should not
+be gaged by the capacity of the strongest. Miss Lord will flunk Rosalie
+if the rest of us don't take care of her. Upon the solidarity of labor
+depends the welfare of the individual worker. It is the fight of the
+oppressed against the encroachments of--of--er--organized authority."
+
+"Um--I see!--I really begin to believe that you listened to that
+lecture, Patty."
+
+"Of course I listened," Patty nodded, "and I must say that I am awfully
+disappointed in Miss Lord. She _told_ us to apply our knowledge of
+sociology to the problems of our daily lives, and when we do, she backs
+down. But anyway, we intend to maintain the strike, until she is ready
+to meet our just demands. It isn't through selfish motives that I am
+acting, Miss Sallie. I should a lot rather have something to eat and go
+horseback riding. I am fighting for the cause of my suffering sisters."
+
+The ceiling above shook at the impact, as four of her suffering sisters
+came down on top of one another, while the walls resounded with their
+shrieks and laughter.
+
+Miss Sallie's lip twitched, but she controlled herself and spoke with
+serious gravity.
+
+"Very well, Patty, I am glad to know that this unprecedented behavior is
+caused by charitable motives. I am sure that when Miss Lord fully
+understands the case she will feel gratified. Suppose I act as
+intermediary and lay the matter before her? We may be able to arrive at
+an--er--compromise."
+
+The half hour that followed dinner was usually devoted to dancing in the
+big square hall, but to-night the girls were inclined to stand about in
+groups with furtive glances toward the schoolroom. A conference was
+going on inside. Miss Lord, the Dowager and the Dragonette had passed in
+and shut the door. Kid McCoy, returning from Paradise Alley, where she
+had been stretched on her stomach with her face to the register,
+reported that Patty had fainted through lack of food, that the Dowager
+had revived her with whiskey, and that she had come to, still cheering
+for the Union. Kid McCoy's statements, however, were apt to be touched
+by imagination. The school was divided in its opinion of Patty's course.
+The scabs were inclined to make light of her achievement, but Conny and
+Priscilla staunchly fanned enthusiasm.
+
+Finally, the schoolroom door opened, and the faculty emerged and passed
+into the Dowager's private study, while the dancing commenced with
+sudden fervor. No one to-day liked to be caught by Miss Lord whispering
+in a corner.
+
+Patty followed alone. Her face was pale, and there were weary circles
+about her eyes, but in them shone the light of victory.
+
+"Patty!"
+
+"Are you dead?"
+
+"How'd it come out?"
+
+"It was perfectly splendid!"
+
+"Was she furious?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"We arbitrated the question and have settled on a compromise," Patty
+replied with quiet dignity. "Hereafter the lesson will be seventy lines.
+The Virgil strike is declared off."
+
+They pressed about her eager for details, but she separated herself, and
+kept on toward the dining-room door. There was an aloofness about her,
+an air of having experienced the heights alone. She was not quite ready
+to rub shoulders with common humanity.
+
+The school settled itself to evening study, and Patty to her dinner.
+They could see her across the court, through the lighted window, as she
+sat in state at the end of a long table. Osaki on one side, tendered
+preserved strawberries, and Maggie on the other, frosted cakes. The
+rewards of martyrdom, in Patty's case, were solidly substantial.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Third Man from the End
+
+
+"Oh, Patty! Did you bring us some wedding cake?"
+
+"Did you have any adventures?"
+
+Conny and Priscilla, with the dexterity of practice, sprang upon the
+rear step of the hearse as it turned in at the school gate, and rolled
+up the curving drive to the porte-cochère. The "hearse" was the popular
+name for the black varnished wagonette which conveyed the pupils of St.
+Ursula's from church and station. It was planned to accommodate twenty.
+Patty and her suit-case, alone in the capacious interior, were jolting
+about like two tiny peas in a very big pod.
+
+"Adventures!" she called back excitedly. "_Wait till you hear!_"
+
+As they came to a stop, they were besieged by a crowd of blue-coated
+girls. It was afternoon recreation, and the whole school was abroad. The
+welcome that she received, would have led an onlooker to infer that
+Patty had been gone three months instead of three days. She and her two
+postilions descended, and Martin gathered up his reins.
+
+"Come on, youse! All who wants a ride to the stables," was his
+hospitable invitation.
+
+It inundated him with passengers. They crowded inside--twice as many as
+the hearse would hold--they swarmed over the driver's seat and the
+steps; and two equestriennes even perched themselves on the horses'
+backs.
+
+"What's the adventure?" demanded Conny and Priscilla in a breath, as the
+cavalcade rattled off.
+
+Patty waved her hand toward the suit-case.
+
+"There it is. Take it upstairs. I'll be with you as soon as I've
+reported."
+
+"But that isn't your suit-case."
+
+Patty shook her head mysteriously.
+
+"If you tried a thousand years you'd never guess who owns it."
+
+"Who?"
+
+Patty laughed.
+
+"Looks like a man's," said Conny.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Oh, Patty! Don't be so exasperating. Where'd you get it?"
+
+"Just a little souvenir that I picked up. I'll tell you as soon as I've
+interviewed the Dowager. Hurry, and slip in while Jelly isn't looking."
+
+They cast a quick glance over their shoulders toward the gymnasium
+instructor, who was arguing fat Irene McCullough into faster movements
+on the tennis court. Miss Jellings was insistent that "recreation"
+should be actively pursued out of doors. The two could easily have
+obtained permission to greet Patty's return inside; but it was the
+policy of the trio never to ask permission in minor matters. It wasted
+one's credit unnecessarily.
+
+Priscilla and Conny turned upstairs lugging the suit-case between them,
+while Patty approached the principal's study. Ten minutes later she
+joined her companions in Seven, Paradise Alley. They were sitting on the
+bed, their chins in their hands, studying the suit-case propped on a
+chair before them.
+
+"Well?" they inquired in a breath.
+
+"She says she's glad to see me back, and hopes I didn't eat too much
+wedding cake. If my lessons show any falling off--"
+
+"_Who_ owns it?"
+
+"The man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the
+funny songs third from the end on the right hand side."
+
+"Jermyn Hilliard, Junior?" Priscilla asked breathlessly.
+
+"Not really?" Conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh.
+
+"Truly and honest!" Patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on
+the end. "J. H., Jr."
+
+"It _is_ his!" cried Priscilla.
+
+"Where on earth did you get it, Patty?"
+
+"Is it locked?"
+
+"Yes," Patty nodded, "but my key will open it."
+
+"What's in it?"
+
+"Oh, a dress suit, and collars, and--and things."
+
+"Where'd you get it?"
+
+"Well," said Patty languidly, "it's a long story. I don't know that I
+have time before study hour--"
+
+"Oh, tell us, please. I think you're beastly!"
+
+"Well--the glee club was last Thursday night."
+
+They nodded impatiently at this useless piece of information.
+
+"And it was Friday morning that I left. As I was listening to the
+Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting
+credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that
+Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the
+station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we
+got in, it was _cram_ full of men. The entire Yale Glee Club was going
+to the station! There were so many of them that they were sitting in
+each other's laps. The whole top layer rose, and said perfectly gravely
+and politely: 'Madame, take my seat.'
+
+"Mam'selle was outraged. She said in French, which of course they all
+understood, that she thought American college boys had disgraceful
+manners; but I smiled a little--I couldn't help it, they were so funny.
+And then two of the bottom ones offered their seats, and we sat down.
+And you'll never believe it, but the third man from the end was sitting
+right next to me!"
+
+"Not really?"
+
+"Oh, Patty!"
+
+"Is he as good-looking near to, as he was on the stage?"
+
+"Better."
+
+"Are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked?"
+
+"They looked real but I couldn't examine them closely."
+
+"Of course they're real!" said Conny indignantly.
+
+"And what do you think?" Patty demanded. "They were going on my train.
+Did you ever hear of such a coincidence?"
+
+"What did Mam'selle think of that?"
+
+"She was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in
+charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt
+like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the
+smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me right
+into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite."
+
+"Patty!" they cried in shocked chorus. "You surely didn't speak to him?"
+
+"Of course not. I looked out of the window and pretended he wasn't
+there."
+
+"Oh!" Conny murmured disappointedly.
+
+"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.
+
+"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the
+automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't
+see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went
+straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my
+suit-case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack.
+That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to
+death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.
+
+"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very
+jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the
+time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't
+understand."
+
+Conny nodded feelingly.
+
+"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown
+people have horrid manners."
+
+"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought
+me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to
+obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time,
+what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."
+
+"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.
+
+"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for
+dinner, the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her
+head.
+
+"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with
+it?'
+
+"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And
+there it was, wide open!"
+
+Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back
+the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a
+box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles
+filling in the interstices.
+
+"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.
+
+"They belong to him," Conny murmured fervently.
+
+Patty nodded.
+
+"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He
+telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I
+didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't
+telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle Tom lives five miles from town, and there
+simply wasn't anything we could do that night."
+
+"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert,
+and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested
+Priscilla.
+
+"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.
+
+"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to
+fit."
+
+"I hope it looked all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon.
+I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."
+
+"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?"
+asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the
+dressmaker's.
+
+"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply
+wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me
+herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it--just like all my dancing
+dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash.
+I hated it anyway."
+
+"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until--"
+
+"Just wait till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of
+her dresses--one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to
+wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It
+was white crêpe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was
+long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came
+and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet,
+and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I
+looked perfectly beautiful--I did, honestly--you wouldn't have known me.
+I looked _at least_ twenty!
+
+"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out
+for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And
+he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as
+though I were flirting with my grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it
+isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a
+good time--if you're pretty."
+
+Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed
+her chronicle.
+
+"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table.
+Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the
+whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with
+the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the
+program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across
+from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper--the man next
+to me--said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life;
+that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."
+
+"But about the suit-case," they prompted. "Didn't you do anything more?"
+
+"Uncle Tom telephoned again in the morning, and the station agent said
+he'd got the party on the wire as had the young lady's case. And he was
+coming back here in two days, and I was to leave his suit-case with the
+baggage man at the station, and he would leave mine."
+
+"But you didn't leave it."
+
+"I came on the other road. I'm going to send it down."
+
+"And what did you wear at the wedding?"
+
+"Louise's clothes. It didn't matter a bit, my not matching the other
+bridesmaids, because I was maid of honor, and ought to dress differently
+anyway. I've been grown up for three days--and I just wish Miss Lord
+could have seen me with my hair on the top of my head talking to men!"
+
+"Did you tell the Dowager?"
+
+"Yes, I told her about getting the wrong suit-case; I didn't mention the
+fact that it belonged to the third man from the end."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's
+luggage; and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely. She
+telephoned to the baggage man that it was here, but she couldn't send
+Martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some
+eggs."
+
+Recreation was over, and the girls came trooping in to gather books and
+pads and pencils for the approaching study hour. Everyone who passed
+number Seven dropped in to hear the news. Each in turn received the
+story of the suit-case, and each in turn gasped anew at sight of the
+contents.
+
+"Doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish?" said Rosalie Patton,
+sniffing.
+
+"Oh, there's a button loose!" cried Florence Hissop, the careful
+housewife. "Where's some black silk, Patty?"
+
+She threaded a needle and secured the button. Then she daringly tried on
+the coat. Eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch.
+It was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present. Even
+Irene McCullough found it baggy.
+
+"He had awfully broad shoulders," said Rosalie, stroking the satin
+lining.
+
+They peered daintily at the other garments.
+
+"Oh!" squealed Mae Mertelle. "He wears blue silk suspenders."
+
+"And something else blue," chirped Edna Hartwell, peering over her
+shoulder. "They're pajamas!"
+
+"And to think of such a thing happening to Patty!" sighed Mae Mertelle.
+
+"Why not?" bristled Patty.
+
+"You're so young and so--er--"
+
+"Young!--Wait till you see me with my hair done up."
+
+"I wonder what the end will be?" asked Rosalie.
+
+"The end," said Mae unkindly, "will be that the baggage man will deliver
+the suit-case, and Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, will never know--"
+
+A maid appeared at the door.
+
+"If you please," she murmured, her amazed eyes on Irene who was still
+wearing the coat, "Mrs. Trent would like to have Miss Patty Wyatt come
+to the drawing-room, and I am to take the suit-case down. The gentleman
+is waiting."
+
+"Oh, Patty!" a gasp went around the room.
+
+"Do your hair up--quick!"
+
+Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head,
+while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and
+relocked the suit-case.
+
+They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a
+perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the
+drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by
+an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close,
+with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the
+walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man
+of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They
+gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty
+as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her
+that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head
+against the railing and laughed.
+
+"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale
+grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to
+make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't
+mind at all not having his dress-suit--never feels comfortable in it
+anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it
+on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study
+bell."
+
+Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a
+further detail:
+
+"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Flannigan Honeymoon
+
+
+The Murphy family, with a judicious eye to the buttered side of the
+bread, had adopted Saint Ursula as their patron saint. The
+family--consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy, eleven little Murphys
+and "Gramma" Flannigan--occupied a five-room cottage close to the gates
+of St. Ursula's school. They subsisted on the vicarious charity of
+sixty-four girls, and the intermittent labor of Murphy _père_, who, in
+his sober intervals, was a sufficiently efficient stone-cutter and
+mason.
+
+He had built the big entrance gates, and the long stone wall that
+enclosed the ten acres of "bounds." He had laid the foundation of the
+new west wing--known as Paradise Alley--and had constructed all the
+chimneys and driveways and tennis courts on the place. The school was a
+monument to his long and leisurely career.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, with an unusual display of foresight, had
+christened their first baby after the school. Ursula Murphy may not be a
+euphuistic combination, but the child was amply repaid for carrying such
+a name, by receiving the cast-off clothes of generations of St. Ursula
+girls. There was danger, for a time, that the poor little thing would be
+buried beneath a mountain of wearing apparel; but her parents
+providentially discovered a second-hand clothes man, who relieved her of
+a part of the burden.
+
+After Ursula, had come other little Murphys in regular succession; and
+it had grown to be one of the legendary privileges of the school to
+furnish the babies with names and baptismal presents. Mrs. Murphy was
+not entirely mercenary in her yearly request. She appreciated the
+artistic quality of the names that the girls provided. They had a
+distinction, that she herself, with her lack of literary training, would
+never have been able to give. The choosing of the names had come to be a
+matter involving politics almost as complicated as the election of the
+senior president. Different factions proposed different names;
+half-a-dozen tickets would be in the field, and the balloting was
+conducted with rousing speeches.
+
+There was one hampering restriction. Every baby must have a patron
+saint. Upon this point, the Murphys stood firm. However, by a careful
+study of early Christian martyrs, the girls had managed to unearth a
+list of recondite saints with fairly unusual and picturesque names.
+
+So far, the roll of the Murphy offspring read:
+
+Ursula Marie, Geraldine Sabina, Muriel Veronica and Lionel Ambrose
+(twins), Aileen Clotilda, John Drew Dominick, Delphine Olivia, Patrick
+(he had been born in the summer vacation, and the long-suffering priest
+had insisted that the boy be named for his father), Sidney Orlando
+Boniface, Richard Harding Gabriel, Yolanda Genevieve. This completed
+the list, until one morning early in December, Patrick Senior presented
+himself at the kitchen door, with the news that another name--a
+boy's--would be seasonable.
+
+The school immediately went into a committee of the whole. Several names
+had been put up, and the discussion was growing heated, when Patty Wyatt
+jumped to her feet with the proposal of "Cuthbert St. John." The
+suggestion was met with cheers; and Mae Van Arsdale indignantly left the
+room. The name was carried by unanimous vote.
+
+Cuthbert St. John Murphy was christened the following Sunday, and
+received a gold-lined porridge spoon in a green plush box.
+
+So delighted was the school at Patty's felicitous suggestion, that, by
+way of reward, they elected her chairman of the Christmas Carnival
+Committee. The Christmas Carnival was a charitable institution
+contemporaneous with the founding of the school. St. Ursula's scheme of
+education was broad; it involved growth in a wide variety of womanly
+virtues, and the greatest of these was charity. Not the modern,
+scientific, machine-made charity, but the comfortable, old-fashioned
+kind that leaves a pleasant glow of generosity in the heart of the
+giver. Every year at Christmastide a tree was decked, a supper laid, and
+the poor children of the neighborhood bidden to partake. The poor
+children were collected by the school girls, who drove about from house
+to house, in bob-sleighs or hay-wagons, according to the snow. The girls
+regarded it as the most diverting festival of the school year; and even
+the poor children, when they had overcome their first embarrassment,
+found it fairly diverting.
+
+The original scheme had been for each girl to have an individual
+protégé, that she might call upon the family and come into personal
+relations with a humbler class. She was to learn the special needs of
+her child, and give something really useful, such as stockings or
+trousers or flannel petticoats.
+
+It was an admirable scheme on paper, but in actual practice it fell
+down. St. Ursula's was situated in an affluent district given over to
+the estates of the idle rich, and the proletarian who clung to the
+skirts of these estates was amply provided with an opportunity to work.
+In the early days, when the school was small, there had been sufficient
+poor children to go round; but as St. Ursula's had grown, the poor
+seemed to have diminished, until now the school was confronted by an
+actual scarcity. But the Murphys, at least, they had always with them.
+They yearly offered thanks for this.
+
+Patty accepted her chairmanship and appointed sub-committees to do the
+actual work. For herself and Conny and Priscilla she reserved the
+privilege of choosing the recipients of St. Ursula's bounty. This
+entailed several exhilarating afternoons out of bounds. A walk abroad is
+as inspiring to the inmates of a prison as a trip through Europe to
+those at large. They spent the better part of a week canvassing the
+neighborhood, only to reveal the embarrassing fact that there were nine
+possible children, aside from the Murphy brood, and that none of these
+nine were from homes that one could conscientiously term poor. The
+children's sober industrious parents could well supply their temperate
+Christmas demands.
+
+"And there are only six Murphys the right age," Conny grumbled, as they
+turned homewards in the cold twilight of a wintry day, after an
+unprofitable two hours' tramp.
+
+"That makes about one child to every five girls," Priscilla nodded
+dismally.
+
+"Oh, this charity business makes me tired!" Patty burst out. "It's fun
+for the girls, and nothing else. The way we dole out stuff to perfectly
+nice people, is just plain insulting. If anybody poked a pink tarlatan
+stocking full of candy at me, and said it was because I'd been a good
+little girl, I'd throw it in their face."
+
+In moments of intensity, Patty's English was not above reproach.
+
+"Come on, Patty," Priscilla slipped a soothing hand through her arm,
+"we'll stop in at the Murphys' and count 'em over again. Maybe there's
+one we overlooked."
+
+"The twins are only fifteen," said Conny hopefully. "I think they'll
+do."
+
+"And Richard Harding's nearly four. He's old enough to enjoy a tree. The
+more Murphys we can get the better. They always love the things we
+give."
+
+"I know they do!" Patty growled. "We're teaching the whole lot of them
+to be blooming beggars--I shall be sorry I ever used any slang, if we
+can't put the money to better use than this."
+
+The funds for the carnival were yearly furnished by a tax on slang. St.
+Ursula demanded a fine of one cent for every instance of slang or bad
+grammar let fall in public. Of course, in the privacy of one's own room,
+in the bosom of one's chosen family, the rigor was relaxed. Your dearest
+friends did not report you--except in periods of estrangement. But your
+acquaintances and enemies and teachers did, and even, in moments of
+intense honorableness, you reported yourself. In any case, the slang
+fund grew. When the committee had opened the box this year, they found
+thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents.
+
+Patty allowed herself, after some slight protest, to be drawn to the
+door of the Murphy domicile. She was not in an affable mood, and a call
+upon the Murphys required a great deal of conversation. They found the
+family hilariously assembled in an over-crowded kitchen. The entire
+dozen children babbled at once, shriller and shriller, in a vain
+endeavor to drown each other out. A cabbage stew, in progress on the
+stove, filled the room with an odorous steam. Shoved into a corner of
+the hearth, was poor old Gramma Flannigan, surrounded by noisy, pushing
+youngsters, who showed her gray hairs but scant consideration. The girls
+admired the new baby, while Yolanda and Richard Harding crawled over
+their laps with sticky hands. Mrs. Murphy, meanwhile, discanted in a
+rich brogue upon the merits of "Coothbert St. Jawn" as a name. She liked
+it, she declared, as well as any in the list. It sure ought to bring
+luck to a child to carry the name of two saints. She thanked the young
+ladies kindly.
+
+Patty left Conny and Priscilla to carry off the social end of the call,
+while she squeezed herself onto the woodbox by Gramma Flannigan's chair.
+Mrs. Murphy's mother was a pathetic old body, with the winning speech
+and manners of Ireland a generation ago. Patty found her the most
+remunerative member of the household, so far as interest went. She
+always liked to get her started with stories of her girlhood, when she
+had been a lady's maid in Lord Stirling's castle in County Clare, and
+young Tammas Flannigan came and carried her off to America to help make
+his fortune. Tammas was now a bent old man with rheumatism, but in his
+keen blue eyes and Irish smile, Gramma still saw the lad who had courted
+her.
+
+"How's your husband this winter?" Patty asked, knowing that she was
+taking the shortest road to the old woman's heart.
+
+She shook her head with a tremulous smile.
+
+"I'm not hearin' for four days. Tammas ain't livin' with us no more."
+
+"It's a pity for you to be separated!" said Patty, with quick sympathy,
+not realizing on how sore a subject she was touching.
+
+The flood gates of the old woman's garrulity broke down.
+
+"With Ursuly an' Ger-r-aldine growin' oop an' havin' young min to wait
+on thim, 'twas needin' a parlor they was, an' they couldn't spare the
+room no longer for me'n Tammas. So they put me in the garret with the
+four gurrls, an' Tammas, he was sint oop the road to me son Tammas.
+Tammas's wife said as Tammas could sleep in the kitchen to pay for
+carryin' the wood an' watter, but she couldn't take us both because she
+takes boarders."
+
+Patty cocked her head for a moment of silence, as she endeavored to
+pluck sense from this tangle of Tammases.
+
+"It's too bad!" she comforted, laying a sympathetic hand on the old
+woman's knee.
+
+Gramma Flannigan's eyes filled with the ready tears of old age.
+
+"I'm not complainin', for it's the way o' the world. The owld must step
+off, an' make room for the young. But it's lonely I am without him!
+We've lived together for forty-seven years, an' we know each other's
+ways."
+
+"But your son doesn't live very far away." Patty offered what solace she
+might. "You must see Thomas very often."
+
+"That an' I don't! You might as well have a husband dead, as a mile an'
+a half away an' laid oop with rheumatism."
+
+The clock pointed to a quarter of six, and the visitors rose. They had
+still to walk half a mile and dress before dinner.
+
+The old woman clung to Patty's hand at parting. She seemed to find more
+comfort in the little stray sympathy that Patty had offered, than in all
+her exuberant brood of grandchildren.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful to be old, and just sit around waiting to die?" Patty
+shuddered, as they faced the cold darkness outside.
+
+"Dreadful!" Conny cordially agreed. "Hurry up! Or we'll be late for
+dinner, and this is chicken night."
+
+They turned homeward at a jog trot that left little breath for speech;
+but Patty's mind was working as fast as her legs.
+
+"I've got a perfectly splendid idea," she panted as she turned in at the
+gate and trotted up the driveway toward the big lighted house that
+spread wide wings to receive them.
+
+"What?" they asked.
+
+The quick insistent clang of the gong floated out to meet them, and on
+the instant, hurrying figures flitted past the windows--the summons to
+meals brought a readier response than the summons to study.
+
+"I'll tell you after dinner. No time now," Patty returned as she peeled
+off her coat.
+
+They were unlacing their blouses as they clattered up the back stairs,
+and pulling them over their heads in the upper hall.
+
+"Go slow--please!" they implored of the down-going procession whose
+track they crossed. Dinner was the only meal which might be approached
+by the front stairs, which were carpeted instead of tinned.
+
+Their evening frocks were fortunately in one piece, and they dove into
+them with little ceremony. The three presented themselves flushed of
+cheek and somewhat rumpled as to hair, but properly gowned and
+apologetic, just as grace was ended. To be late for grace only meant one
+demerit; the first course came higher, and the second higher still.
+Punishment increased by geometrical progression.
+
+During the half hour's intermission before evening study, the three
+separated themselves from the dancers in the hall, and withdrew to a
+corner of the deserted schoolroom.
+
+Patty perched herself on a desk, and loudly stated her feelings.
+
+"I'm tired of having the Dowager get up at prayers, and make a speech
+about the beautiful Christmas spirit, and how sweet it is to make so
+many little children happy, when she knows perfectly well that it's
+just a lark for us. I'm chairman this year and I can do as I please.
+I've had enough of this fake charity; and I'm not going to have any
+Christmas tree!"
+
+"No Christmas tree?" Conny echoed blankly.
+
+"But what are you going to do with the thirty-seven dollars and
+eight-four cents?" asked Priscilla, the practical.
+
+"Listen!" Patty settled to her argument. "There aren't any children
+around here who need a blessed thing, but Gramma and Granpa Flannigan
+do. That poor old woman, who is just as nice as she can be, is crowded
+in with all those horrid, yelling, sticky little Murphys; and Granpa
+Flannigan is poked into Tammas Junior's kitchen, running errands for
+Tammas Junior's wife, who is a per-fect-ly _terrible_ woman. She throws
+kettles when she gets mad. Gramma worries all the time for fear he has
+rheumatism, and nobody to rub on liniment, or make him wear the right
+underclothes. They're exactly as fond of each other as any other
+husband and wife, and just because Ursula wants to have callers, I say
+it's a mean shame for them to be separated!"
+
+"It is too bad," Conny agreed impartially. "But I don't see that we can
+help it."
+
+"Why, yes! Instead of having a Christmas tree, we'll rent that empty
+little cottage down by the laurel walk, and mend the chimney--Patrick
+can do that for nothing--and put in new windows, and furnish it, and set
+them up in housekeeping."
+
+"Do you think we can do it for thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four
+cents?" Priscilla asked.
+
+"That's where the charity comes in! Every girl in school will go without
+her allowance for two weeks. Then we'll have more than a hundred
+dollars, and you can furnish a house perfectly beautifully for that. And
+it would be real charity to give up our allowances, because they are
+particularly useful at Christmas time."
+
+"But will the girls want to give their allowances?"
+
+"We'll fix it so they'll have to," said Patty. "We'll call a mass
+meeting and make a speech. Then everybody will file past and sign a
+paper. No one will dare refuse with the school looking on."
+
+Patty's fire kindled an answering flame in the other two.
+
+"It is a good idea!" Conny declared.
+
+"And it would be a lark, fixing the house," said Priscilla. "Almost as
+much fun as getting married ourselves."
+
+"Exactly," Patty nodded. "Those poor old things haven't had a chance to
+see each other alone for years. We'll give 'em a honeymoon all over
+again."
+
+Patty was outwardly occupied with geometry the next hour, but her mind
+was busy hemming sheets and towels and tablecloths. It being Thursday
+evening, the hour between eight and nine was occupied with "manners."
+The girls took turns in coming gracefully downstairs, entering the
+drawing-room, announced by Claire du Bois in the rôle of footman, and
+shaking hands with their hostesses--Conny Wilder, as dowager mama, and
+towering above her, as débutante daughter, Irene McCullough, the
+biggest girl in the school. The gymnasium teacher who assigned the
+rôles, had a sense of humor. An appropriate remark was expected from
+each guest, the weather being barred.
+
+"Mrs. Wilder!" Priscilla gushed, advancing with outstretched hand, "and
+dear little Irene! It doesn't seem possible that the child is actually
+grown. It was only yesterday that she was a mite of a thing toddling
+about--"
+
+Priscilla was shoved on by Patty.
+
+"Me dear Mrs. Wilder," she inquired in a brogue that would have put the
+Murphys to shame, "have ye heard the news that's goin' round? Mr. and
+Mrs. Tammas Flannigan have taken the Laurel Cottage for the season. They
+are thinkin' of startin' a salon. They will be at home ivery afternoon
+during recreation hour--and will serve limonade and gingerbread in
+summer, and soup and sandwiches in winter. Ye must take Irene to call on
+thim."
+
+The moment "manners" was over, the three withdrew to the seclusion of
+Patty's and Conny's room in Paradise Alley, and closed the door against
+callers. Between nine and nine-thirty was the fashionable calling hour
+at St. Ursula's. The time was supposed to be occupied in getting ready
+for bed, but if one were clever about undressing in the dark, one might
+devote the thirty minutes to social purposes.
+
+"Gone to sleep! Don't disturb us!" the placard read that they impaled
+upon the door, but the clatter of tongues inside belied the words.
+
+"Isn't my idea fine about the lemonade and soup?" Patty demanded.
+
+"The great thing about charity is not to make it charity. You must keep
+people self-supporting," Priscilla quoted from their last lesson in
+sociology.
+
+"We'll fix little tables under the apple tree in summer and in the
+parlor in winter," Patty planned, "and all the school girls and
+automobiles will stop for lemonade. We'll charge the girls five cents a
+glass and the automobiles ten."
+
+"And I say, let's make Patrick and Tammas each contribute a dollar a
+week toward their support," Conny proposed. "They must eat up a dollar's
+worth of potatoes as they are living now."
+
+They continued planning in whispers until long after "lights-out" had
+rung; and Priscilla, in a laudable desire to be inconspicuous, was
+obliged to crawl on hands and knees past Mademoiselle's open door,
+before she gained her own room at the end of the corridor.
+
+The moment recreation sounded the next afternoon, they obtained
+permission to be out of bounds, and set off at a brisk trot. It was
+their business-like intention to have all the statistics complete,
+before submitting the matter to the assembled school.
+
+"We'll first call on Patrick and Tammas and make 'em promise the
+dollar," said Patty.
+
+Patrick readily promised his dollar--Patrick was always strong in
+promises--and the girls proceeded gaily to Tammas Junior's. They found
+Granpa on the back doorstep anxiously wiping his feet; he was a
+tremulous reed that bowed before every blast of the daughter-in-law's
+tongue. Tammas Junior, after being taken aside and told the project,
+thought he could manage two dollars a week. An expression of relief
+momentarily took the hunted look from his eyes. He was clearly glad to
+rescue his father from the despotic rule of his wife.
+
+The girls turned away with their minds made up. It only remained to
+secure the cottage, coerce the school, and hem the sheets.
+
+"You go and price furniture and wall paper," Patty issued her orders,
+"while I see about the rent. We'll meet at the soda-water fountain."
+
+She found the real-estate man who owned the cottage established in an
+office over the bank; and by what she considered rare business ability,
+beat him down from nine dollars a month to seven. This stroke
+accomplished, she intimated her readiness for the lease.
+
+"A lease will not be necessary," he said. "A month to month verbal
+agreement will do for me."
+
+"I can't consider it without a lease," said Patty, firmly. "You might
+sell or something, and then we'd have to move out."
+
+The gentleman amusedly filled in the form, and signed as party of the
+first part. He passed the pen to Patty and indicated the space reserved
+for the signature of the party of the second part.
+
+"I must first consult my partners," she explained.
+
+"Oh, I see! Have them sign here, and then bring the lease back."
+
+"All of them?" she asked, dubiously scanning the somewhat cramped
+quarters. "I'm afraid there won't be room."
+
+"How many partners have you?"
+
+"Sixty-three."
+
+He stared momentarily, then as his eye fell on the embroidered "St. U."
+on Patty's coat sleeve, he threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" he apologized, "but I was a bit staggered for a
+moment. I am not used to doing business on such a large scale. In order
+to be legal," he gravely explained, "the paper will have to be signed by
+all the parties to the contract. If there is not enough room, you might
+paste on an er--"
+
+"Annex?" suggested Patty.
+
+"Exactly," he agreed and with grave politeness bowed her out.
+
+As the bell rang that indicated the end of study that evening, Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla jumped to their feet, and called a mass meeting of
+the school. The door was closed after the retreating Miss Jellings, and
+for half an hour the three made speeches separately and in unison. They
+were persuasive talkers and they carried the day. The allowance was
+voted with scarcely a dissenting voice, and the school filed past and
+signed the lease.
+
+For two weeks St. Ursula's was a busy place--and also Laurel Cottage.
+Bounds were practically enlarged to include it. The girls worked in
+gangs during every recreation hour. The cellar was whitewashed by a
+committee of four, who went in blue, and came out speckled like a
+plover's egg. Tammas Junior had volunteered for this job, but it was one
+the girls could not relinquish. They did allow him to kalsomine the
+ceilings and hang the wall paper; but they painted the floors and lower
+reaches of woodwork themselves. The evening's hour of recreation no
+longer found them dancing, but sitting in a solid phalanx on the stairs
+hemming sheets and tablecloths. The house was to be furnished with a
+completeness that poor Mrs. Flannigan, in all her married life, had
+never known before.
+
+When everything was finished, the day before the holidays, the school in
+a body wiped its feet on the door-mat and tiptoed through on a last
+visit of inspection. The cottage contained three rooms, with a cellar
+and woodshed besides. The wall paper and chintz hangings of the parlor
+were flaming pink peonies with a wealth of foliage--a touch of
+flamboyant for some tastes, but Granpa's and Gramma's eyes were failing,
+and they liked strong colors. Also, crafty questioning had elicited the
+fact that "pinies" were Gramma's favorite flower. The kitchen had
+turkey-red curtains with a cheerful strip of rag carpet and two
+comfortable easy chairs before the hearth. The cellar was generously
+stocked from the school farm--Miss Sallie's contribution--with potatoes
+and cabbages and carrots and onions, enough to make Irish stew for three
+months to come. The woodbin was filled, and even a five-gallon can of
+kerosene. Sixty-four pairs of eyes had scanned the rooms minutely to
+make sure that no essential was omitted.
+
+Both the Murphy and Flannigan households had been agog for days over the
+proposed flitting of the pair. Even Mrs. Tammas had volunteered to wash
+the windows of the new cottage, and for a week she had scarcely been
+cross. The old man was already wondering at life. When the time arrived,
+Mrs. Murphy secretly packed Gramma's belongings and dressed her in her
+best, under the pretext that she was to be taken in a carriage to a
+Christmas party to have supper with her husband. The old woman was in a
+happy flutter at the prospect. Granpa was prepared for the journey by
+the same simple strategy.
+
+Patty and Conny and Priscilla, as originators of the enterprise, had
+been appointed to install the old couple; but with tactful forbearance,
+they delegated the right to the son and daughter. They saw that the
+fires were burning, the lamps lighted, and the cat--there was even a
+cat--asleep on the hearth rug; then when the sound of carriage wheels in
+front told them that Martin had arrived with his passengers, they
+quietly slipped out the back way and jogged home to dinner through the
+snowy dusk.
+
+They were met by a babel of questions.
+
+"Was Gramma pleased with the parlor clock?"
+
+"Did she know what to do with the chaffing-dish?"
+
+"Were they disappointed at not having a feather bed?"
+
+"Did they like the cat, or would they rather have had a parrot?" (The
+school had been torn asunder on this important point.)
+
+At the dinner table that night--such of the school as was
+left--chattered only of Laurel Cottage. They were as excited over Gramma
+and Granpa's happiness, as over their own approaching holiday. All
+sixty-four were planning to drink tea, on the first day of their return,
+from Gramma's six cups.
+
+Toward nine o'clock, Patty and Priscilla, by a special dispensation that
+allowed late hours in vacation, received permission to accompany Conny
+and ten other dear friends to the station for the western express.
+Driving back alone in the "hearse," still bubbling with the hilarity of
+Christmas farewells, they passed the Laurel Cottage.
+
+"I believe they're still up!" said Priscilla. "Let's stop and wish 'em a
+Merry Christmas, just to make sure they like it."
+
+Martin was readily induced to halt; his discipline also was relaxed in
+vacation. They approached the door, but hesitated at sight of the
+picture revealed by the lighted window. To interrupt with the boisterous
+greetings of the season, seemed like rudely breaking in upon the
+seclusion of lovers. Only a glance was needed to tell them that the
+house-warming was successful. Gramma and Granpa were sitting before the
+fire in their comfortable red-cushioned rocking-chairs; the lamp shed a
+glow on their radiant faces, as they held each other's hands and smiled
+into the future.
+
+Patty and Priscilla tiptoed away and climbed back into the hearse, a
+touch sobered and thoughtful.
+
+"You know," Patty pondered, "they are just as contented as if they lived
+in a palace with a million dollars and an automobile! It's funny, isn't
+it, what a little thing makes some people happy?"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The Silver Buckles
+
+
+"To be cooped up for three weeks with the two stupidest girls in the
+school--"
+
+"Kid McCoy isn't so bad," said Conny consolingly.
+
+"She's a horrid little tomboy."
+
+"But you know she's entertaining, Patty."
+
+"She never says a word that isn't slang, and _I_ think she's the limit!"
+
+"Well, anyway, Harriet Gladden--"
+
+"Is perfectly dreadful and you know it. I would just as soon spend
+Christmas with a weeping angel on a tombstone."
+
+"She is pretty mournful," Priscilla agreed. "I've spent three
+Christmases with her. But anyway, you'll have fun. You can be late for
+meals whenever you want, and Nora lets you make candy on the kitchen
+stove."
+
+Patty sniffed disdainfully as she commenced the work of resettling her
+room, after the joyous upheaval of a Christmas packing. The other two
+assisted in silent sympathy. There was after all not much comfort to be
+offered. School in holiday time was a lonely substitute for home.
+Priscilla, whose father was a naval officer, and whose home was a
+peripatetic affair, had become inured to the experience; but this
+particular year, she was gaily setting out to visit cousins in New
+York--with three new dresses and two new hats! And Patty, whose home was
+a mere matter of two hours in a Pullman car, was to be left behind; for
+six-year old Thomas Wyatt had chosen this inopportune time to come down
+with scarlet fever. The case was of the lightest; Master Tommy was
+sitting up in bed and occupying himself with a box of lead soldiers. But
+the rest of the family were not so comfortable. Some were quarantined
+in, and the others out. Judge Wyatt had installed himself in a hotel and
+telegraphed the Dowager to keep Patty at St. Ursula's during the
+holidays. Poor Patty had been happily packing her trunk when the news
+arrived; and as she unpacked it, she distributed a few excusable tears
+through the bureau drawers.
+
+Ordinarily, a number remained for the holidays,--girls whose homes were
+in the West or South, or whose parents were traveling abroad or getting
+divorces--but this year the assortment was unusually meager. Patty was
+left alone in "Paradise Alley." Margarite McCoy, of Texas, was stranded
+at the end of the South Corridor, and Harriet Gladden of Nowhere, had a
+suite of eighteen rooms at her disposal in "Lark Lane." These and four
+teachers made up the household.
+
+Harriet Gladden had been five years straight at St. Ursula's--term time
+and vacations without a break. She came a lanky little girl of twelve,
+all legs and arms, and she was now a lanky big girl of seventeen, still
+all legs and arms. An invisible father, at intervals mentioned in the
+catalogue, mailed checks to Mrs. Trent; and beyond this made no sign.
+Poor Harriet was a mournful, silent, neglected child; entirely out of
+place in the effervescing life that went on around her.
+
+She never had any birthday boxes from home, never any Christmas
+presents, except those that came from the school. While the other girls
+were clamoring for mail, Harriet stood in the background silent and
+unexpectant. Miss Sallie picked out her clothes, and Miss Sallie's
+standards were utilitarian rather than æsthetic. Harriet, with no
+exception, was the worst dressed girl in the school. Even her school
+uniform, which was an exact twin of sixty-three other uniforms, hung
+upon her with the grace of a meal-bag. Miss Sallie, with provident
+foresight, always ordered them a size too large in order to allow her to
+grow and Harriet invariably wore them out, before she had established a
+fit.
+
+"What on earth becomes of Harriet Gladden during vacation?" Priscilla
+once wondered on the opening day.
+
+"They keep her on ice through the summer," was Patty's opinion, "and she
+never gets entirely thawed out."
+
+As a matter of fact this was, as nearly as possible, what they did do
+with her. Miss Sallie picked out a quiet, comfortable, healthy
+farmhouse, and installed Harriet in charge of the farmer's wife. By the
+end of three months she was so desperately lonely, that she looked
+forward with pleasurable excitement to the larger isolation of term
+time.
+
+Patty, one day, had overheard two of the teachers discussing Harriet,
+and her reported version had been picturesque.
+
+"Her father hasn't seen her for years and years. He just chucks her in
+here and pays the bills."
+
+"I don't wonder he doesn't want her at home!" said Priscilla.
+
+"There isn't any home. Her mother is divorced, and married again, and
+living in Paris. That was the reason Harriet couldn't go abroad with the
+school party last year. Her father was afraid that when she got to
+Paris, her mother would grab her--not that either of them really wants
+her, but they like to spite each other."
+
+Priscilla and Conny sat up interestedly. Here was a tragic intrigue,
+such as you expect to meet only in novels, going on under their very
+noses.
+
+"You girls who have had a happy home life, cannot imagine the loneliness
+of a childhood such as Harriet's," said Patty impressively.
+
+"It's dreadful!" Conny cried. "Her father must be a perfect _Beast_ not
+to take any notice of her."
+
+"Harriet has her mother's eyes," Patty explained. "Her father can't bear
+to look at her, because she reminds him of the happy past that is dead
+forever."
+
+"Did Miss Wadsworth say that?" they demanded in an interested chorus.
+
+"Not in exactly those words," Patty confessed. "I just gathered the
+outline."
+
+This story, with picturesque additions, lost no time in making the
+rounds of the school. Had Harriet chosen to play up to the romantic and
+melancholy rôle she was cast for, she might have attained popularity of
+a sort; but Harriet did not have the slightest trace of the histrionic
+in her make-up. She merely moped about, and continued to be heavy and
+uninteresting. Other more exciting matters demanded public attention;
+and Harriet and her blasted childhood were forgotten.
+
+Patty stood on the veranda waving good-by to the last hearseful of
+Christmas travelers, then turned indoors to face an empty three weeks.
+As she was listlessly preparing to mount the stairs, Maggie waylaid her
+with the message:
+
+"Mrs. Trent would like to speak to you in her private study, Miss
+Patty."
+
+Patty turned back, wondering for just which of her latest activities she
+was to be called to account. A visit to the Dowager's private study
+usually meant that a storm was brewing. She found the four left-behind
+teachers cosily gathered about the tea table, and to her surprise, was
+received with four affable smiles.
+
+"Sit down, Patty, and have some tea."
+
+The Dowager motioned her to a chair, while she mingled an inch of tea
+with three inches of hot water. Miss Sallie furnished a fringed napkin,
+Miss Jellings presented buttered toast, and Miss Wadsworth, salted
+almonds. Patty blinked dazedly and accepted the offerings. To be waited
+on by four teachers was an entirely new experience. Her spirits rose
+considerably as she mentally framed the story for Priscilla's and
+Conny's delectation. When she had ceased to wonder why she was being
+thus honored, the reason appeared.
+
+"I am sorry, Patty," said the Dowager, "that none of your special
+friends are to be here this year; but I am sure that you and Margarite
+and Harriet will get on very happily. Breakfast will be half an hour
+later than usual, and the rules about bounds will be somewhat
+relaxed--only of course we must always know where to find you. I shall
+try to plan a matinée party in the city, and Miss Sallie will take you
+to spend a day at the farm. The ice is strong enough now for you to
+skate, and Martin will get out the sleds for you to coast. You must be
+in the open air as much as possible; and I shall be very pleased if you
+and Margarite can interest Harriet in out-of-door sports. Speaking of
+Harriet--"
+
+The Dowager hesitated momentarily, and Patty's acute understanding
+realized that at last they were getting at the kernel of the interview.
+The tea and toast had been merely wrapping. She listened with a touch of
+suspicion, while the Dowager lowered her voice with an air of
+confidence.
+
+"Speaking of Harriet, I should like to enlist your sympathy, Patty. She
+is very sweet and genuine. A girl that anyone might be proud to have for
+a friend. But through an accident, such as sometimes happens in a
+crowded, busy, selfish community, she has been overlooked and left
+behind. Harriet has never seemed to adjust herself so readily as most
+girls; and I fear that the poor child is often very lonely. It would be
+highly gratifying to me if you would make an effort to be friendly with
+her. I am sure that she will meet your advances half way."
+
+Patty murmured a few polite phrases and retired to dress for dinner,
+stubbornly resolved to be as distant with Harriet as possible. Her
+friendship was not a commodity to be bought with tea and buttered toast.
+
+The three girls had dinner alone at a little candle-lit table set in a
+corner of the dining-room, while the four teachers occupied a
+conveniently distant table in the opposite corner.
+
+Patty commenced the meal by being as monosyllabic as possible; but it
+was not her natural attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal
+had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at
+Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the
+vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During
+term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax
+on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone to swell the
+public coffers.
+
+It was a relief to let dinner-table conversation flow where it listed;
+usually, with a teacher in attendance and the route marked out, there
+was a cramped formality about the meal. French conversation was supposed
+to occupy the first three courses five nights in the week, and every
+girl must contribute at least two remarks. It cannot be said that on
+French nights the dining-room was garrulous. Saturday night was devoted
+to a discussion (in English) of current events, gleaned from a study of
+the editorials in the morning paper. Nobody at St. Ursula's had much
+time for editorials, and even on an English Saturday conversation
+languished. But the school made up for it on Sunday. This day, being
+_festa_, they could talk about anything they chose; and sixty-four
+magpies chattering their utmost, would have been silence in comparison
+to St. Ursula's at dinner time on Sunday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The four days preceding Christmas passed with unexpected swiftness. A
+snow-storm marked the first, followed by three days of glistening
+sunshine. Martin got out the bobs, and the girls piled in and rode to
+the wood-lot for evergreens. There were many errands in the village, and
+the novelty of not always having a teacher at one's heels, proved in
+itself diverting.
+
+Patty found the two companions which circumstances had forced upon her
+unexpectedly companionable. They skated and coasted and had snow fights;
+and Harriet, to Patty's wide-eyed astonishment, assumed a very
+appreciable animation. On Christmas Eve they had been out with Martin
+delivering Christmas baskets to old time protégés of the school; and on
+the way home, through pure overflowing animal spirits, for a mile or
+more they had "caught on" the back of the bob, and then tumbled out and
+run and caught on again, until they finally dove head foremost into the
+big piled-up drift by the porte-cochère. They shook the snow from their
+clothes, like puppies from a pond, and laughing and excited trooped
+indoors. Harriet's cheeks were red from contact with the snow, her
+usually prim hair was a tangled mass about her face, her big dark eyes
+had lost their mournful look. They were merry, mischievous, girlish
+eyes. She was not merely pretty, but beautiful, in a wild, unusual
+gypsyish way that compelled attention.
+
+"I say," Patty whispered to Kid McCoy as they divested themselves of
+rubbers and leggins in the lower hall. "Look at Harriet! Isn't she
+pretty?"
+
+"Golly!" murmured the Kid. "If she knew enough to play up to her looks,
+she'd be the ravingest beauty in all the school."
+
+"Let's make her!" said Patty.
+
+At the top of the stairs they met Osaki with a hammer and chisel.
+
+"I open two box," he observed. "One Mees Margarite McCoy. One Mees Patty
+Wyatt."
+
+"Hooray!" cried the Kid, starting at a gallop for her room in the South
+Wing.
+
+A Christmas box to Kid McCoy meant a lavish wealth of new possessions
+out of all proportion to her desserts. She owned a bachelor guardian who
+was subject to fits of such erratic generosity that the Dowager had
+regularly to remind him that Margarite was but a school girl with simple
+tastes. Fortunately he always forgot this warning before the next
+Christmas--or else he knew Kid too well to believe it--and the boxes
+continued to come.
+
+Patty had also started without ceremony for Paradise Alley, when she
+became aware of deserted Harriet, slowly trailing down the dim length
+of Lark Lane. She ran back and grasped her by an elbow.
+
+"Come on, Harry! And help me open my box."
+
+Harriet's face flushed with sudden pleasure; it was the first time, in
+the five and a half years of her school career, that she had ever
+achieved the dignity of a nickname. She accompanied Patty with some
+degree of eagerness. The next best thing to receiving a Christmas box of
+your own, is to be present at the reception of a friend's.
+
+It was a big square wooden box, packed to the brim with smaller boxes
+and parcels tied with ribbon and holly, and tucked into every crevice
+funny surprises. You could picture, just from looking at it, the kind of
+home that it came from, filled with jokes and nonsense and love.
+
+"It's the first Christmas I've ever spent away from home," said Patty,
+with the suggestion of a quiver in her voice.
+
+But her momentary soberness did not last; the business of exploration
+was too absorbing to allow any divided emotion. Harriet sat on the edge
+of the bed and watched in silence, while Patty gaily strewed the floor
+with tissue paper and scarlet ribbon. She unpacked a wide assortment of
+gloves and books and trinkets, each with a message of love. Even the
+cook had baked a Christmas cake with a fancy top. And little Tommy, in
+wobbly uphill printing, had labeled an elephant filled with candy, "FOR
+DERE CISTER FROM TOM."
+
+Patty laughed happily as she plumped a chocolate into her mouth, and
+dropped the elephant into Harriet's lap.
+
+"Aren't they dears to go to such a lot of trouble? I tell you, it pays
+to stay away sometimes, they think such a lot more of you! This is from
+Mother," she added, as she pried off the cover of a big dressmaker's
+box, and lifted out a filmy dancing frock of pink crêpe.
+
+"Isn't it perfectly sweet?" she demanded, "and I didn't need it a bit!
+Don't you love to get things you don't need?"
+
+"I never do," said Harriet.
+
+Patty was already deep in another parcel.
+
+"From Daddy, with all the love in the world," she read. "Dear old Dad!
+What on earth do you s'pose it is? I hope Mother suggested something.
+He's a perfect idiot about choosing presents, unless--Oh!" she squealed.
+"Pink silk stockings and slippers to match; and look at those perfectly
+lovely buckles!"
+
+She offered for Harriet's inspection a pink satin slipper adorned with
+the daintiest of silver buckles, and with heels dizzily suggestive of
+France.
+
+"Isn't my father a lamb?" Patty gaily kissed her hand toward a
+dignified, judicial-looking portrait on the bureau. "Mother suggested
+the slippers, of course, but the buckles and French heels were his own
+idea. She likes me sensible, and he likes me frivolous."
+
+She was deep in the absorbing business of holding the pink frock before
+the glass to make sure that the color was becoming, when she was
+suddenly arrested by the sound of a sob, and she turned to see Harriet
+throw herself across the bed and clutch the pillow in a storm of
+weeping. Patty stared with wide-open eyes; she herself did not indulge
+in such emotional demonstrations, and she could not imagine any possible
+cause. She moved the pink satin slippers out of reach of Harriet's
+thrashing feet, gathered up the fallen elephant and scattered
+chocolates, and sat down to wait until the cataclysm should pass.
+
+"What's the matter?" she mildly inquired, when Harriet's sobs gave place
+to choking gasps.
+
+"My father never sent me any s-silver b-buckles."
+
+"He's way off in Mexico," said Patty, awkwardly groping for consolation.
+
+"He never sends me anything! He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't
+recognize me if he met me on the street."
+
+"Oh, yes, he would," Patty assured her with doubtful comfort. "You
+haven't changed a bit in four years."
+
+"And he wouldn't like me if he did know me. I'm not pretty, and my
+clothes are never nice, and--" Harriet was off again.
+
+Patty regarded her for a moment of thoughtful silence, then she decided
+on a new tack. She stretched out a hand and shook her vigorously.
+
+"For goodness' sake, stop crying! That's what's the matter with your
+father. No man can stand having tears dripped down his neck all the
+time."
+
+Harriet arrested her sobs to stare.
+
+"If you could see the way you look when you cry! Sort of streaked. Come
+here!" She took her by the shoulder and faced her before the mirror.
+"Did you ever see such a fright? And I was just thinking, before you
+began, about how pretty you looked. I was, honestly. You could be as
+pretty as any of the rest of us, if you'd only make up your mind--"
+
+"No, I couldn't! I'm just as ugly as I can be. Nobody likes me and--"
+
+"It's your own fault!" said Patty sharply. "If you were fat, like Irene
+McCullough, or if you didn't have any chin like Evalina Smith, there
+might be some reason, but there isn't anything on earth the matter with
+you, except that you're so _damp_! You cry all the time, and it gets
+tiresome to be forever sympathizing. I'm telling you the truth because
+I'm beginning to like you. There's never any use bothering to tell
+people the truth when you don't like them. The reason Conny and Pris and
+I get on so well together, is because we always tell each other the
+exact truth about our faults. Then we have a chance to correct
+them--that's what makes us so nice," she added modestly.
+
+Harriet sat with her mouth open, too surprised to cry.
+
+"And your clothes are awful," pursued Patty interestedly. "You ought not
+to let Miss Sallie pick 'em out. Miss Sallie's nice; I like her a lot,
+but she doesn't know any more than a rabbit about clothes; you can tell
+that by the way she dresses herself. And then, too, you'd be a lot nicer
+if you wouldn't be so stiff. If you'd just laugh the way the rest of us
+do--"
+
+"How can I laugh when I don't think things are funny? The jokes the
+girls make are awfully silly--"
+
+Speech was no longer possible, for Kid McCoy came stampeding down the
+corridor with as much racket as a cavalcade of horses. She was decked in
+a fur scarf and a necklace set with pearls, she wore a muff on her head,
+drum-major fashion; a lace handkerchief and a carved ivory fan protruded
+from the pocket of her blouse and a pink chiffon scarf floated from her
+shoulders; her wrist was adorned with an Oriental bracelet and she was
+lugging in her arms a silver-mounted Mexican saddle, of a type that
+might be suited to the plains of Texas, but never to the respectable
+country lanes adjacent to St. Ursula's.
+
+"Bully for Guardie!" she shouted as she descended upon them. "He's a
+daisy; he's a ducky; he's a lamb. Did you ever see such a perfectly
+corking saddle?"
+
+She plumped it over a chair, transformed the pink chiffon scarf into a
+bridle, and proceeded to mount and canter off.
+
+"Get up! Whoa! Hi, there! Clear the road."
+
+Harriet jumped aside to avoid being bumped, while Patty snatched her
+pink frock from the path of the runaway. They were shrieking with
+laughter, even Harriet, the tearful.
+
+"Now you see!" said Patty, suddenly interrupting her mirth. "It's
+perfectly easy to laugh if you just let yourself go. Kid isn't really
+funny. She's just as silly as she can be."
+
+Kid brought her horse to a stand.
+
+"Well I like that!"
+
+"Excuse me for telling the truth," said Patty politely, "I'm just using
+you for an illustration--Heavens! There's the bell!"
+
+She commenced unlacing her blouse with one hand, while she pushed her
+guests to the door with the other.
+
+"Hurry and dress, and come back to button me up. It would be a very
+delicate attention for us to be on time to-night. We've been late for
+every meal since vacation began."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girls spent Christmas morning coasting. They were on time for
+luncheon--and with appetites!
+
+The meal was half over when Osaki appeared with a telegram, which he
+handed to the Dowager. She read it with agitated surprise and passed it
+to Miss Sallie, who raised her eyebrows and handed it to Miss Wadsworth,
+who was thrown into a very visible flutter.
+
+"What on earth can it be?" Kid wondered.
+
+"Lordy's eloped, and they've got to hunt for a new Latin teacher," was
+Patty's interpretation.
+
+As the three girls left the table, the Dowager waylaid Harriet.
+
+"Step into my study a moment. A telegram has just come--"
+
+Patty and Kid climbed the stairs in wide-eyed wonder.
+
+"It can't be bad news, for Miss Sallie was smiling--" meditated Patty.
+"And I can't think of any good news that can be happening to Harriet."
+
+Ten minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and
+Harriet burst into Patty's room wild with excitement.
+
+"He's coming!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"My father."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Right now--this afternoon--He's been in New York on business, and is
+coming to see me for Christmas."
+
+"I'm so glad!" said Patty heartily. "Now, you see the reason he hasn't
+come before is because he has been away off in Mexico."
+
+Harriet shook her head, with a sudden drop in her animation.
+
+"I suppose he thinks he ought."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"It's so. He doesn't care for me--really. He likes girls to be jolly and
+pretty and clever like you."
+
+"Well, then--_be_ jolly and pretty and clever like me."
+
+Harriet's eyes sought the mirror, and filled with tears.
+
+"You're a perfect idiot!" said Patty, despairingly.
+
+"I'm an awful fright in my green dress," said Harriet.
+
+"Yes," Patty grudgingly conceded. "You are."
+
+"The skirt is too short, and the waist is too long."
+
+"And the sleeves are sort of queer," said Patty.
+
+Faced by these dispiriting facts, she felt her enthusiasm ebbing.
+
+"What time is he coming?" she asked.
+
+"Four o'clock."
+
+"That gives us two hours," Patty rallied her forces. "One can do an
+awful lot in two hours. If you were only nearer my size, you could wear
+my new pink dress--but I'm afraid--" She regarded Harriet's long legs
+dubiously. "I'll tell you!" she added, in a rush of generosity. "We'll
+take out the tucks and let down the hem."
+
+"Oh, Patty!" Harriet was tearfully afraid of spoiling the gown. But when
+Patty's zeal in any cause was roused, all other considerations were
+swept aside. The new frock was fetched from the closet, and the ripping
+began.
+
+"And you can wear Kid's new pearl necklace and pink scarf, and my silk
+stockings and slippers--if you can get 'em on--and I think Conny left a
+lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late to
+pack--and--Here's Kid now!"
+
+Miss McCoy's sympathies were enlisted and in fifteen minutes the task of
+transforming a remonstrating, excited, and occasionally tearful Harriet
+into the school beauty, was going gaily forward. Kid McCoy was supposed
+to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal
+feminine came triumphantly to the fore. She sat herself down, with
+Patty's manicure scissors, and for three-quarters of an hour
+painstakingly ripped out tucks.
+
+Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.
+
+"Don't strain it back so tight," she ordered. "It looks as though you'd
+done it with a monkey-wrench. Here! Give me the comb."
+
+She pushed Harriet into a chair, tied a towel about her neck, and
+accomplished the coifing by force.
+
+"How's that?" she demanded of Kid.
+
+"Bully!" Kid mumbled, her mouth full of pins.
+
+Harriet's hair was rippled loosely about her face, and tied with a pink
+ribbon bow. The ribbon belonged to Conny Wilder, and had heretofore
+figured as a belt; but individual property rights were forced to bow
+before the cause.
+
+The slippers and stockings did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly
+ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope
+of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit
+Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent leather
+pumps.
+
+"But after all," Patty reassured her, "it's better for you to wear
+black. Your feet would be sort of conspicuous in pink." She was still in
+her truthful mood. "I'll tell you!" she cried, "you can wear my silver
+buckles." And she commenced cruelly wrenching them from their pink
+chiffon setting.
+
+[Illustration: Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's
+hair.]
+
+"Patty! _Don't!_" Harriet gasped at the sacrilege.
+
+"They're just the last touch that your costume needs." Patty ruthlessly
+carried on the work of destruction. "When your father sees those
+buckles, he'll think you're _beautiful_!"
+
+For a feverish hour they worked. They clothed her triumphantly in all
+the grandeur that they could command. The entire corridor had
+contributed its quota, even to the lace-edged handkerchief with a
+hand-embroidered "H" that had been left behind in Hester Pringle's top
+drawer. The two turned her critically before the mirror, the pride of
+creation in their eyes. As Kid had truly presaged, she was the ravingest
+beauty in all the school.
+
+Irish Maggie appeared in the door.
+
+"Mr. Gladden is in the drawin'-room, Miss Harriet." She stopped and
+stared. "Sure, ye're that beautiful I didn't know ye!"
+
+Harriet went with a laugh--and a fighting light in her eyes.
+
+Patty and Kid restlessly set themselves to reducing the chaos that this
+sudden butterfly flight had caused in Paradise Alley--it is always
+dreary work setting things to rights, after the climax of an event has
+been reached.
+
+It was an hour later that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the
+hall, and Harriet ran in--danced in--her eyes were shining; she was a
+picture of youth and happiness and bubbling spirits.
+
+"Well?" cried Patty and Kid in a breath.
+
+She stretched out her wrist and displayed a gold-linked bracelet set
+with a tiny watch.
+
+"Look!" she cried, "he brought me that for Christmas. And I'm going to
+have all the dresses I want, and Miss Sallie isn't going to pick them
+out ever again. And he's going to stay for dinner to-night, and eat at
+the little table with us. And he's going to take us into town next
+Saturday for luncheon and the matinée, and the Dowager says we may go!"
+
+"Gee!" observed the Kid. "It paid for all the trouble we took."
+
+"And what do you think?" Harriet caught her breath in a little gasp.
+"_He likes me!_"
+
+"I knew those silver buckles would fetch him!" said Patty.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"Uncle Bobby"
+
+
+While St. Ursula's was still dallying with a belated
+morning-after-Christmas breakfast, the mail arrived, bringing among
+other matters, a letter for Patty from her mother. It contained cheering
+news as to Tommy's scarlet fever, and the expressed hope that school was
+not too lonely during the holidays; it ended with the statement that Mr.
+Robert Pendleton was going to be in the city on business, and had
+promised to run out to St. Ursula's to see her little daughter.
+
+The last item Patty read aloud to Harriet Gladden and Kid McCoy
+(christened Margarite). The three "left-behinds" were occupying a table
+together in a secluded corner of the dining-room.
+
+"Who's Mr. Robert Pendleton?" inquired Kid, looking up from her own
+letter.
+
+"He used to be my father's private secretary when I was a little girl. I
+always called him 'Uncle Bobby.'"
+
+Kid returned to her mail. She took no interest in the race of uncles,
+either real or fictitious. But Patty, being in a reminiscent mood,
+continued the conversation with Harriet, who had no mail to deflect her.
+
+"Then he went away and commenced practising for himself. It's been ages
+since I've seen him; but he was really awfully nice. He used to spend
+his entire time--when he wasn't writing Father's speeches--in getting me
+out of scrapes. I had a goat named Billy-Boy--"
+
+"Is he married?" asked Harriet.
+
+"N-no, I don't think so. I believe he had a disappointment in his youth,
+that broke his heart."
+
+"What fun!" cried Kid, reëmerging. "Is it still broken?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Patty.
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. He must be _quite_ old by now." (Her tone
+suggested that he was tottering on the brink of the grave.) "It has been
+seven years since I've seen him, and he was through college then."
+
+Kid dismissed the subject. Old men, even with broken hearts, contained
+no interest for her.
+
+That afternoon, as the three girls were gathered in Patty's room
+enjoying an indigestible four o'clock tea of milk and bread and butter
+(furnished by the school) and fruit cake and candy and olives and
+stuffed prunes, the expressman arrived with a belated consignment of
+Christmas gifts, among them a long narrow parcel addressed to Patty. She
+tore off the wrapping, to find a note and a white pasteboard box. She
+read the note aloud while the others looked over her shoulder. Patty
+always generously shared experiences with anyone who might be near.
+
+          "_My Dear Patty,--_
+
+          "Have you forgotten 'Uncle Bobby' who used to
+          stand between you and many well-deserved
+          spankings? I trust that you have grown into a VERY
+          GOOD GIRL now that you are old enough to go away
+          to school!
+
+          "I am coming to see for myself on Thursday
+          afternoon. In the meantime, please accept the
+          accompanying Christmas remembrance, with the hope
+          that you are having a happy holiday, in spite of
+          having to spend it away from home.
+
+          "Your old playfellow,
+                              "ROBERT PENDLETON."
+
+"What do you s'pose it is?" asked Patty, as she addressed herself to
+unknotting the gold cord on the box.
+
+"I hope it's either flowers or candy," Harriet returned. "Miss Sallie
+says it isn't proper to--"
+
+"Looks to me like American Beauty roses," suggested Kid McCoy.
+
+Patty beamed.
+
+"Isn't it a lark to be getting flowers from a _man_? I feel awfully
+grown up!"
+
+She lifted the cover, removed a mass of tissue paper, and revealed a
+blue-eyed, smiling doll.
+
+The three girls stared for a bewildered moment, then Patty slid to the
+floor, and buried her head in her arms against the bed and laughed.
+
+"It's got real hair!" said Harriet, gently lifting the doll from its bed
+of tissue paper, and entering upon a detailed inspection. "Its clothes
+come off, and it opens and shuts its eyes."
+
+"Whoop!" shouted Kid McCoy, as she snatched a shoe-horn from the bureau
+and commenced an Indian war dance.
+
+Patty checked her hysterics sufficiently to rescue her new treasure from
+the danger of being scalped. As she squeezed the doll in her arms, safe
+from harm's way, it opened its lips and emitted a grateful, "_Ma-ma!_"
+
+They laughed afresh. They laid on the floor and rolled in an ecstasy of
+mirth until they were weak and gasping. Could Uncle Bobby have witnessed
+the joy his gift brought to three marooned St. Ursulites, he would have
+indeed been gratified. They continued to laugh all that day and the
+following morning. By afternoon Patty had just recovered her
+self-control sufficiently to carry off with decent gravity Uncle Bobby's
+promised visit.
+
+As a usual thing, callers were discouraged at St. Ursula's. They must
+come from away, accredited with letters from the parents, and then must
+pass an alarming assemblage of chaperones. Miss Sallie remained in the
+drawing-room during the first half of the call (which could last an
+hour), but was then supposed to withdraw. But Miss Sallie was a social
+soul, and she frequently neglected to withdraw. The poor girl would sit
+silent in the corner, a smile upon her lips, mutiny in her heart, while
+Miss Sallie entertained the caller.
+
+But rules were somewhat relaxed in the holidays. On the day of Uncle
+Bobby's visit, by a fortuitous circumstance, Miss Sallie was five miles
+away, superintending a new incubator house at the school farm. The
+Dowager and Miss Wadsworth and Miss Jellings were scheduled for a
+reception in the village, and the other teachers were all away for the
+holidays. Patty was told to receive him herself, and to remember her
+manners, and let him do a little of the talking.
+
+This left her beautifully free to carry out the outrageous scheme that
+she had concocted over night. Harriet and Kid lent their delighted
+assistance, and the three spent the morning planning for her entrance in
+character. They successfully looted the "Baby Ward" where the fifteen
+little girls of the school occupied fifteen little white cots set in
+fifteen alcoves. A white, stiffly starched sailor suit was discovered,
+with a flaring blue linen collar, and a kilted skirt, that was
+shockingly short. Kid McCoy gleefully unearthed a pair of blue and white
+socks that exactly matched the dress, but they proved very much too
+small.
+
+"They wouldn't look well anyway," said Patty, philosophically, "I've got
+an awful scratch on one knee."
+
+Gymnasium slippers with spring heels reduced her five feet by an inch.
+She spent the early afternoon persuading her hair to hang in a row of
+curls, with a spanking blue bow over her left ear. When she was
+finished, she made as sweet a little girl as one would ever find romping
+in the park on a sunny morning.
+
+"What will you do if he kisses you?" inquired Kid McCoy.
+
+"I'll try not to laugh," said Patty.
+
+She occupied the fifteen minutes of waiting in a dress rehearsal. By the
+time Maggie arrived with the tidings that the visitor was below, she had
+her part letter-perfect. Kid and Harriet followed as far as the first
+landing, where they remained dangling over the banisters, while Patty
+shouldered her doll and descended to the drawing-room.
+
+She sidled bashfully into the door, dropped a courtesy, and extended a
+timid hand to the tall young gentleman who rose and advanced to meet
+her.
+
+"How do you do, Uncle Wobert?" she lisped.
+
+"Well, well! Is this little Patty?"
+
+He took her by the chin and turned up her face for a closer
+inspection--Mr. Pendleton was, mercifully, somewhat near-sighted. She
+smiled back sweetly, with wide, innocent, baby eyes.
+
+"You're getting to be a great big girl!" he pronounced with fatherly
+approval. "You reach almost to my shoulder."
+
+She settled herself far back in a deep leather chair, and sat primly
+upright, her feet sticking straight out in front, while she clasped the
+doll in her arms.
+
+"Sank you very much, Uncle Bobby, for my perfectly beautiful doll!"
+Patty imprinted a kiss upon the smiling bisque lips.
+
+Uncle Bobby watched with gratified approval. He liked this early
+manifestation of the motherly instinct.
+
+"And what are you going to name her?" he inquired.
+
+"I can't make up my mind." She raised anxious eyes to his.
+
+"How would Patty Junior do?"
+
+She repudiated the suggestion; and they finally determined upon Alice,
+after "Alice in Wonderland." This point happily disposed of, they
+settled themselves for conversation. He told her about a Christmas
+pantomime he had seen in London, with little girls and boys for actors.
+
+Patty listened, deeply interested.
+
+"I'll send you the fairy book that has the story of the play," he
+promised, "with colored pictures; and then you can read it for yourself.
+You know how to read, of course?" he added.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Patty, reproachfully. "I've known how to read a _long_
+time. I can read anyfing--if it has big print."
+
+"Well! You are coming on!" said Uncle Bobby.
+
+They fell to reminiscing, and the conversation turned to Billy-Boy.
+
+"Do you remember the time he chewed up his rope and came to church?"
+Patty dimpled at the recollection.
+
+"Jove! I'll never forget it!"
+
+"And usually Faver found an excuse for not going, but that Sunday Mover
+_made_ him, and when he saw Billy-Boy marching up the aisle, with a sort
+of dignified smile on his face--"
+
+Uncle Bobby threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"I thought the Judge would have a stroke of apoplexy!" he declared.
+
+"But the funniest thing," said Patty, "was to see you and Father trying
+to get him out! You pushed and Father pulled, and first Billy balked and
+then he butted."
+
+She suddenly realized that she had neglected to lisp, but Uncle Bobby
+was too taken up with the story to be conscious of any lapse. Patty
+inconspicuously reassumed her character.
+
+"And Faver scolded me because the rope broke--and it wasn't my fault at
+all!" she added with a pathetic quiver of the lips. "And the next day he
+had Billy-Boy shot."
+
+At the remembrance Patty drooped her head over the doll in her arms.
+Uncle Bobby hastily offered comfort.
+
+"Never mind, Patty! Maybe you'll have another goat some day."
+
+She shook her head, with the suggestion of a sob.
+
+"No, I never will! They don't let us keep goats here. And I loved
+Billy-Boy. I'm _awfully_ lonely without him."
+
+"There, there, Patty! You're too big a girl to cry." Uncle Bobby patted
+her curls, with kindly solicitude. "How would you like to go to the
+circus with me some day next week, and see all the animals?"
+
+Patty cheered up.
+
+"Will there be ele-phunts?" she asked.
+
+"There'll be several," he promised. "And lions and tigers and camels."
+
+"Oh, goody!" she clapped her hands and smiled through her tears. "I'd
+love to go. Sank you very, _very_ much."
+
+Half an hour later Patty rejoined her friends in Paradise Alley. She
+executed a few steps of the sailor's hornpipe with the doll as partner,
+then plumped herself onto the middle of the bed and laughingly regarded
+her two companions through over-hanging curls.
+
+"Tell us what he said," Kid implored. "We nearly pulled our necks out by
+the roots stretching over the banisters, but we couldn't hear a word."
+
+"Did he kiss you?" asked Harriet.
+
+"N-no." There was a touch of regret in her tone. "But he patted me on
+the head. He has a very sweet way with children. You'd think he'd had a
+course in kindergarten training."
+
+"What did you talk about?" insisted Kid, eagerly.
+
+Patty outlined the conversation.
+
+"And he's going to take me to the circus next Wednesday," she ended, "to
+see the elephunts!"
+
+"The Dowager will never let you go," objected Harriet.
+
+"Oh, yes, she will!" said Patty. "It's perfectly proper to go to the
+circus with your uncle--'specially in vacation. We've got it all
+planned. I'm to go into town with Waddy. I heard her say she had an
+appointment at the dentist's--and he'll be at the station with a
+hansom--"
+
+"More likely a baby carriage," Kid put in quickly.
+
+"Miss Wadsworth will never take you into town in _those_ clothes,"
+Harriet objected.
+
+Patty hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, while her dimples came
+and went.
+
+"I think," she said, "that the next time I'll give him an entirely
+different kind of a sensation."
+
+And she did.
+
+Anticipatory of the coming event, she sent her suit to the tailor's and
+had him lengthen the hem of the skirt two inches. She spent an entire
+morning retrimming her hat along more mature lines, and she purchased a
+veil--with spots! She also spent twenty-five cents for hairpins, and did
+up her hair on the top of her head. She wore Kid McCoy's Christmas furs
+and Harriet's bracelet watch; and, as she set off with a somewhat
+bewildered Miss Wadsworth, they assured her that she looked _old_.
+
+They reached the city a trifle late for Miss Wadsworth's appointment.
+Patty spied Mr. Pendleton across the waiting-room.
+
+"There's Uncle Robert!" she said; and to her intense satisfaction, Miss
+Wadsworth left her to accost him alone.
+
+She sauntered over in a very blasé fashion and held out her hand. The
+spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he did not
+recognize her.
+
+"Mr. Pendleton! How do you do?" Patty smiled cordially. "It's really
+awfully good of you to devote so much time to my entertainment. And so
+original of you to think of a circus! I haven't attended a circus for
+years. It's really refreshing after such a dose of Shakespeare and Ibsen
+as the theaters have been offering this winter."
+
+Mr. Pendleton offered a limp hand and hailed a hansom without comment.
+He leaned back in the corner and continued to stare for three silent
+minutes; then he threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"Good Lord, Patty! Do you mean to tell me that you've grown up?"
+
+Patty laughed too.
+
+"Well, Uncle Bobby, what do you think about it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dinner was half over that night before the two travelers returned. Patty
+dropped into her seat and unfolded her napkin, with the weary air of a
+society woman of many engagements.
+
+"What happened?" the other two clamored. "Tell us about it! Was the
+circus nice?"
+
+Patty nodded.
+
+"The circus was charming--and so were the elephants--and so was Uncle
+Bobby. We had tea afterwards; and he gave me a bunch of violets and a
+box of candy, instead of the fairy book. He said he wouldn't be called
+'Uncle Bobby' by anyone as old as me--that I'd got to drop the
+'Uncle'--It's funny, you know, but he really seems younger than he did
+seven years ago."
+
+Patty dimpled and cast a wary eye toward the faculty table across the
+room.
+
+"He says he has business quite often in this neighborhood."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The Society of Associated Sirens
+
+
+Conny had gone home to recuperate from a severe attack of pink-eye.
+Priscilla had gone to Porto Rico to spend two weeks with her father and
+the Atlantic Fleet. Patty, lonely and abandoned, was thrown upon the
+school for society; and Patty at large, was very likely to get into
+trouble.
+
+On the Saturday following the double departure, she, with Rosalie Patton
+and Mae Van Arsdale, made a trip into the city in charge of Miss
+Wadsworth, to accomplish some spring shopping. Patty and Rosalie each
+needed new hats--besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and
+petticoats--and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit.
+These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to
+relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy
+affords.
+
+But when they presented themselves at the theater, they were faced by
+the announcement that the star had met with an automobile accident on
+his way to the performance, and that he was too damaged to appear; money
+would be refunded at the box office. The girls still clamored for their
+matinée, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting
+substitute for Hamlet.
+
+Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and
+ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of
+character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal
+defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges
+elected to do.
+
+To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss
+Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself
+picked out a drama entitled "The Wizard of the Nile," under the
+impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.
+
+But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the
+original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French
+flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's
+Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the
+style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were
+enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at
+the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and
+very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to
+her shocking career of wickedness, she _smoked cigarettes_!
+
+Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried,
+breathless, horrified--fascinated; but the three girls were simply
+fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all
+the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up
+realms of adventure, undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's.
+The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.
+
+That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was
+becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English
+officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling two hands rise
+from the darkness and clutch her shoulders on the right and left. She
+sat upright with a very audible gasp, and demanded in unguardedly loud
+tones, "Who's that?"
+
+The two hands instantly covered her mouth.
+
+"Sh-h! Keep quiet! Haven't you any sense?"
+
+"Mademoiselle's door is wide open, and Lordy's visiting her."
+
+Rosalie perched on the right of the bed, and Mae Mertelle on the left.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Patty, crossly.
+
+"We've got a perfectly splendid idea," whispered Rosalie.
+
+"A secret society," echoed Mae Mertelle.
+
+"Let me alone!" growled Patty. "I want to go to sleep."
+
+She laid down again in the narrow space left by her visitors. They paid
+no attention to her inhospitality, but drawing their bath robes closer
+about them, settled down to talk. Patty, being comfortably inside and
+warm, while they shivered outside, was finally induced to lend a drowsy
+ear.
+
+"I've thought of a new society," said Mae Mertelle. She did not propose
+to share the honor of creation with Rosalie. "And it's going to be
+_really_ secret this time. I'm not going to let in the whole school.
+Only us three. And this society hasn't just a few silly secrets; it has
+an _aim_."
+
+"We're going to call it the Society of Associated Sirens," Rosalie
+eagerly broke in.
+
+"That _what_?" demanded Patty.
+
+Rosalie rolled off the sonorous syllables a second time.
+
+"The Sho-shiety of Ash-sho-she-ated Shi-rens," Patty mumbled sleepily.
+"It's too hard to say."
+
+"Oh, but we won't call it that in public. The name's a secret. We'll
+call it the S. A. S."
+
+"What's it for?"
+
+"You'll promise not to tell?" Mae asked guardedly.
+
+"No, of course I won't tell."
+
+"Not even Pris and Conny when they get back?"
+
+"We'll make them members," said Patty.
+
+"Well--perhaps--but this is the kind of society that's better small. And
+we three are the only ones who really ought to be members, because we
+saw the play. But anyhow; you must promise not to tell unless Rosalie
+and I give you permission. Do you promise that?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I promise. What's it for?"
+
+"We're going to become sirens," Mae whispered impressively. "We're going
+to be beautiful and fascinating and ruthless--"
+
+"Like Cleopatra," said Rosalie.
+
+"And avenge ourselves on Man," added Mae.
+
+"Avenge ourselves--what for?" inquired Patty, somewhat dazed.
+
+"Why--for--for breaking our hearts and destroying our faith in--"
+
+"My heart hasn't been broken."
+
+"Not yet," said Mae with a touch of impatience, "because you don't know
+any men, but you will know them some day, and then your heart will be
+broken. You ought to have your weapons ready."
+
+"In time of peace prepare for war," quoted Rosalie.
+
+"Do--you think it's quite ladylike to be a siren?" asked Patty
+dubiously.
+
+"It's _perfectly_ ladylike!" said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly
+be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who was a siren?"
+
+"N-no," Patty confessed. "I don't believe I have."
+
+"And look at Cleopatra," put in Rosalie. "I'm sure she was a lady."
+
+"All right!" Patty agreed. "What are we going to do?"
+
+"We're going to become beautiful and fascinating, with a fatal charm
+that ensnares every man who approaches."
+
+"Do you think we can?" There was some doubt in Patty's tone.
+
+"Mae's got a book," put in Rosalie eagerly, "about 'Beauty and Grace.'
+You soak your face in oatmeal and almond-oil and honey, and let your
+hair hang in the sun, and whiten your nose with lemon juice, and wear
+gloves at night, and--"
+
+"You really ought to have a bath of asses' milk," interrupted Mae.
+"Cleopatra had; but I'm afraid it will be impossible to get."
+
+"And you ought to learn to sing," added Rosalie, "and have some one song
+like the 'Lorelei!' that you always hum when you're about to ensnare a
+victim."
+
+The project was foreign to Patty's ordinary train of thought, but it did
+have an element of novelty and allurement. Neither Mae nor Rosalie were
+the partners she would naturally have chosen in any enterprise, but
+circumstances had thrown them together that day, and Patty was an
+obliging soul. Also, her natural common sense was wandering; she was
+still under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress.
+
+They discussed the new society for several minutes more, until they
+heard the murmur of Miss Lord's voice, bidding Mademoiselle goodnight.
+
+"There's Lordy!" Patty whispered warily. "I think you'd better to go to
+bed. We can plan the rest in the morning."
+
+"Yes, let's," said Rosalie, with a shiver. "I'm freezing!"
+
+"But we must first take the vow," insisted Mae Mertelle. "We ought
+really to do it at midnight--but maybe half-past ten will do as well.
+I've got it all planned. You two say it after me."
+
+They joined hands and whispered in turn:
+
+"I most solemnly promise to keep secret the name and object of this
+society; and if I break this oath, may I become freckled and bald and
+squint-eyed and pigeon-toed, now and forever more."
+
+The three members of the S. A. S. devoted their leisure during the next
+few days to a careful study of the work on Beauty; and painstakingly set
+about putting its precepts into practice. Some of these seemed
+perplexingly at variance. The hair, for example, was to be exposed to
+air and sunlight, but the face was not. They cleverly circumvented this
+difficulty however. The week's allowance went for chamois-skin. During
+every recreation hour, they retired to an airy knoll in the lower
+pasture, and sat in a patient row, with hair streaming in the wind, and
+faces protected by homemade masks.
+
+One afternoon, a little Junior A, wandering far afield in a game of
+hide-and-seek, came upon them unawares; and returned to the safe
+confines of the playground with frightened shrieks. Dark rumors began to
+float about the school as to the aim and scope of the new society.
+Suggestions ranged all the way from Indian squaws to Druid priestesses.
+
+They almost met with disaster while acquiring the ingredients of the
+oatmeal poultice. The oatmeal and lemon were comparatively easy; the
+cook supplied them without much fuss. But she stuck at the honey. There
+were jars and jars of strained honey in the storeroom; but the windows
+were barred, and the key was in the bottom of Nora's pocket. Confronted
+by the immediate necessity of becoming beautiful, they could not
+placidly sit down for five days, and wait for the weekly shopping trip
+to the village. Besides, with a teacher in attendance, there would be no
+possible chance of making the purchase. Honey was a contraband article,
+in the same class with candy and jam and pickles.
+
+They discussed the feasibility of filing through the iron gratings, or
+of chloroforming Nora and stealing the key, but in the end Patty
+accomplished the matter by the use of a little simple blarney. She
+dropped into the kitchen one afternoon with the plaintive admission that
+she was hungry. Nora hastened to supply a glass of milk and a piece of
+bread and butter, while Patty perched on a corner of the carving-table
+and settled herself for conversation. The girls were not supposed to
+visit the kitchen, but the law was never rigidly enforced. Nora was a
+social soul and she welcomed callers. Patty praised the apple dumplings
+of last night's dessert; progressed from that to a discussion of the
+engaging young plumber who at the moment claimed all of Nora's thoughts;
+then, by a natural transition, she passed to honey. Before she left, she
+had obtained Nora's promise to substitute it for marmalade the next
+morning at breakfast.
+
+The members of the S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and
+unobtrusively transferred a supply from their plates to their laps.
+
+But even so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to
+collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her
+pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same
+instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor.
+Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely
+found her napping. She plumped down on her knees in the midst of the
+puddle, and with widespread skirts, commenced frantically searching for
+an imaginary stick-pin.
+
+"Is it necessary for you to block up the entire hall?" was Miss Lord's
+only comment as she passed.
+
+The rug was happily reversible, and by the simple process of turning it
+over, Patty satisfactorily cleaned up the mess. The other two girls were
+generous, and shared their supply: so in the end she obtained her honey.
+
+For three wakeful nights they stuck to the poultice--though perhaps it
+would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite
+of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly.
+
+Miss Sallie, who represented St. Ursula's board of health, met Patty
+Wyatt in the hall one morning. She took her by the chin and turned her
+to the light. Patty squirmed embarrassedly.
+
+"My dear child! What is the matter with your face?"
+
+"I--I don't know--exactly. It seems sort of--of--dandruffy."
+
+"I should think it did! What have you been eating?"
+
+"Only what I get at meals," said Patty, relievedly telling the truth.
+
+"There's something the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie.
+"What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea for you."
+
+"Oh, Miss Sallie!" Patty earnestly remonstrated. "I don't need it,
+_really_. I'm sure I'll be all right." She had tried boneset tea before;
+it was the bitterest brew that was ever concocted.
+
+When Miss Sallie met Mae Van Arsdale suffering from the same complaint,
+and later still, Rosalie Patton, she commenced to be perturbed. The
+apple trees under her care at the farm had been afflicted that spring
+with San José scale, but she had hardly expected the disease to spread
+to the school girls. That afternoon she superintended an infusion of
+boneset, of gigantic proportions, and at bedtime a reluctant school
+formed in line and filed past Miss Sallie, who, ladle in hand, presided
+over the punch bowl. Each received a flowing cupful and drank it with
+what grace she might, until Patty's turn came. She disposed of hers in a
+blue china umbrella holder which stood in the hall behind Miss Sallie's
+back. The remainder of the line successfully followed her lead.
+
+Miss Sallie watched her little charges closely for the next few days;
+and sure enough, the scales disappeared. (The Associated Sirens had
+discarded poultices.) She was more than ever convinced of the efficacy
+of boneset.
+
+Shortly after the founding of the society, Mae Mertelle returned from a
+week-end visit to her home. (Her mother was ill and she had been sent
+for. Someone in Mae's family was conveniently ill a great deal of the
+time.) She brought with her three bracelets of linked scales
+representing a serpent swallowing his tail. S. A. S. in tiny letters was
+engraved between the emerald eyes.
+
+"They are perfectly sweet!" said Patty, with grateful appreciation. "But
+why a snake?"
+
+"It isn't a snake; it's a serpent," Mae explained. "To represent
+Cleopatra. She was the Serpent of the Nile. We'll be Serpents of the
+Hudson."
+
+With the appearance of the bracelets, curiosity in the S. A. S.
+increased, but unlike the other secret societies which had appeared from
+time to time, its _raison d'être_ remained a mystery. The school really
+commenced to believe that the society had a secret. Miss Lord, who had
+the reputation of being curious, stopped Patty one day as she was
+leaving the Virgil class, and admired the new bracelet.
+
+"And what may be the meaning of S. A. S.?" she inquired.
+
+"It's a secret society," said Patty.
+
+"Ah, a secret society!" Miss Lord smiled. "Then I suppose the name is a
+DEEP MYSTERY." She lowered her voice, as she said it, to sepulchral
+depths.
+
+There was something peculiarly irritating about Miss Lord's manner; it
+always suggested that she was amused by the vagaries of her little
+pupils. She did not possess Miss Sallie's happy faculty of meeting them
+on a level. Miss Lord peered down from above (through lorgnettes).
+
+"Of course the name is a secret," said Patty. "If that got out, it would
+give the whole thing away."
+
+"And what is the object of this famous society? Or is that too a
+secret?"
+
+"Why, yes, that is, I mustn't tell you exactly."
+
+Patty smiled up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that
+always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let her
+alone.
+
+"It's a sort of branch of the Sunshine Society," she added
+confidentially. "We're to--well--to smile on people, you know, and make
+them like us."
+
+"I see!" said Miss Lord, with an air of friendly understanding. "Then S.
+A. S. stands for 'Sunshine and Smiles?'"
+
+"Oh, please! You mustn't say it out loud," Patty lowered her voice and
+threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.
+
+"I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds," Miss Lord promised solemnly.
+
+"Thank you," said Patty. "It would be dreadful if it got out."
+
+"It is a very sweet, womanly society," Miss Lord added approvingly. "But
+you ought not to keep it all to yourselves. Can't you let me be an
+honorary member of the S. A. S.?"
+
+"Certainly, Miss Lord!" said Patty sweetly. "If you care to belong, we
+should _love_ to have you."
+
+"Lordy wants to be a Siren!" she announced to her two fellow members
+when she met them shortly in the gymnasium. The account of the interview
+was received with hilarity. Miss Lord was anything but the accepted type
+of siren.
+
+"I thought a few smiles might relieve the gloom of Latin class," Patty
+explained. "It amuses Lordy to think she's helping the children in their
+play; and it doesn't hurt the children."
+
+For a time the S. A. S. flourished with the natural health of youth, but
+as the novelty wore off, the business of becoming beautiful grew
+onerous. Mae and Rosalie continued to study the beauty book with dogged
+perseverance,--the subject lay along the line of their natural
+ambitions--but Patty felt other matters calling. Spring field sports had
+commenced, and the nearness of the annual match with Highland-Hall,
+crowded out her interest in cold cream and almond meal. She and Mae were
+not naturally _simpatica_, and in spite of Mae's insistence, Patty
+became an apathetic siren.
+
+One Saturday just after the spring recess, Patty received permission to
+lunch in town with "Uncle Bobby." He was an uncle by courtesy only, but
+Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by
+natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite
+proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the
+oldest and baldest of family friends.
+
+When the "hearse" returned from the station at dusk with Mademoiselle
+and the city contingent, Rosalie Patton was waiting the arrival on the
+porte-cochère. She separated Patty from the group and whispered in her
+ear.
+
+"The most awful thing has happened!"
+
+"What?" Patty demanded.
+
+"The S. A. S. All is discovered!"
+
+"Not really!" cried Patty, aghast.
+
+"Yes! Come in here."
+
+Rosalie drew her into the empty cloak-room and shut the door.
+
+"You mean--they've found out the name--and everything?" Patty demanded
+breathlessly.
+
+"Not quite everything, but they would have if it hadn't been for Lordy.
+She saved us for once."
+
+"Lordy saved us!" There was incredulity mixed with Patty's horror. "What
+do you mean?"
+
+"Well, yesterday, Mae went shopping in the village with Miss
+Wadsworth--and you know what kind of a chaperone Waddy makes." Patty
+nodded impatiently. "_Anybody_ could fool her. And Mae, right under her
+very nose, commenced a flirtation with the _Soda-Water Clerk_."
+
+"Oh!" said Patty hotly. "How perfectly horrid!"
+
+"She didn't care anything about it, really. She was just trying to put
+the principles of the S. A. S. into practice."
+
+"She might at least have picked out somebody decent!"
+
+"Well, he is quite decent. He's engaged to the girl at the underwear
+counter in Bloodgood's, and he didn't want to be flirted with a bit. But
+you know how persistent Mae Mertelle is, when she makes up her mind. The
+poor young man just couldn't help himself. He was so embarrassed that he
+didn't know what he was doing. He gave Hester Pringle half chocolate and
+half sarsaparilla, and she says it was a _perfectly awful_ combination.
+It made her feel so sick that she couldn't eat any dinner. And all this
+time Waddy just sat and smiled into space and saw nothing; but all the
+girls saw,--and _so did the drugstore man_!"
+
+"Oh!" said Patty breathlessly.
+
+"And this morning Miss Sallie went to the drugstore to get some potash
+for Harriet Gladden's sore throat, and he told her all about it."
+
+"What did Miss Sallie do?" Patty asked faintly.
+
+"Do! She came back with blood in her eye, and told the Dowager, and they
+called up Mae Mertelle and then--" Rosalie closed her eyes and
+shuddered.
+
+"Well," said Patty impatiently. "What happened?"
+
+"The Dowager was _perfectly outraged_! She told Mae that she had
+disgraced the school and that she would be expelled. And she wrote a
+telegram to Mae's father to come and take her away. And she asked Mae if
+she had anything to say for herself, and Mae said it wasn't her fault.
+That you and I were to blame just as much as she, because we were all in
+a society together, but that she couldn't tell about it because she'd
+sworn."
+
+"Beast!" said Patty.
+
+"So then they sent for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A.
+S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when
+she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything it
+knew, and I never did pretend to be a sphinx."
+
+"All right," said Patty, bracing herself for the shock. "What did they
+say when they heard?"
+
+"They didn't hear! I was just on the point of breaking my vows and
+telling all, when who should pop in but Lordy. And she was _perfectly
+splendid_! She said she knew all about the S. A. S. That it was a very
+admirable institution, and that she was a member herself! She said it
+was a branch of the Sunshine Society, and that Mae had never meant to
+flirt with the young man. She had just meant to smile and be kind to
+everybody she came in contact with, and he had taken advantage. And Mae
+said, yes, that was the way of it, and she shoved off all the blame on
+that poor innocent soda-water clerk."
+
+"Just like her," Patty nodded.
+
+"And now Mae is _perfectly furious_ with him for getting her into
+trouble. She says that he's a horrid little thing with a turn-up nose,
+and that she'll never drink another glass of soda-water as long as she
+stays in St. Ursula's."
+
+"And they're going to let her stay?"
+
+"Yes. The Dowager tore up the telegram. But she gave Mae ten demerits,
+and made her go without dessert for a week, and learn Thanatopsis by
+heart. And she can't _ever_ go shopping in the village any more. When
+she needs new hair ribbons or stockings or anything, she must send for
+them by some of the other girls."
+
+"And what's the Dowager going to do to us?"
+
+"Nothing at all--and if it hadn't been for Lordy, we'd all three have
+been expelled."
+
+"And I've always detested Lordy," said Patty contritely. "Isn't it
+dreadful? You simply can't keep enemies. Just as you think people are
+perfectly horrid, and begin to enjoy hating them, they all of a sudden
+turn out nice."
+
+"I hate Mae Mertelle," said Rosalie.
+
+"So do I!" Patty agreed cordially.
+
+"I'm going to leave her old society."
+
+"I'm already out." Patty glanced toward the mirror. "And I'm not
+freckled and I'm not squint-eyed."
+
+"What do you mean?" Rosalie stared; she had for the moment forgotten the
+dread nature of the oath.
+
+"I've told Uncle Bobby."
+
+"Oh, Patty! How could you?"
+
+"I--I--that is--" Patty appeared momentarily confused. "You see," she
+confessed, "I thought myself that it would be sort of interesting to
+practice on somebody, so I--I--just tried--"
+
+"And did he--"
+
+Patty shook her head.
+
+"It was awfully uphill work. He never helped a bit. And then he noticed
+my bracelet and wanted to know what S. A. S. meant. And before I knew
+it, I was telling him!"
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"First he roared; then he got awfully sober, and he gave me a long
+lecture--it was really very impressive--sort of like Sunday School, you
+know. And he took the bracelet away from me and put it in his pocket.
+He told me he'd send me something nicer."
+
+"What do you s'pose it will be?" asked Rosalie interestedly.
+
+"I hope it won't be a doll!"
+
+Two days later the morning mail brought a small parcel for Miss Patty
+Wyatt. She opened it under her desk in geometry class. Buried in
+jeweler's cotton she found a gold linked bracelet that fastened with a
+padlock in the shape of a heart. On the back of one of Uncle Bobby's
+cards was written:--
+
+"This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the
+key."
+
+Patty deflected Rosalie as she was turning into French and privately
+exhibited the bracelet with pride.
+
+Rosalie regarded it with sentimental interest.
+
+"What has he done with the key?" she wondered.
+
+"I s'pose," said Patty, "he's got it in his pocket."
+
+"How awfully romantic!"
+
+"It sounds sort of romantic," Patty agreed with the suggestion of a
+sigh. "But it isn't really. He's thirty years old, and beginning to be
+bald."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The Reformation of Kid McCoy
+
+
+Miss McCoy, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of
+St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She
+was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received--and retained--in
+a respectable-boarding-school.
+
+"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant
+bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to
+be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written
+reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was
+the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her;
+and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed
+expostulation of the ladies in charge.
+
+Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside
+the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous
+father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and
+losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk
+from a champagne glass. Her father had died--quite opportunely--while
+his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter
+to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next
+three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with
+"Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.
+
+The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference
+with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the
+East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any
+molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.
+
+Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all
+permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing
+master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an
+exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers
+on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him
+sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly
+in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had
+received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:
+
+"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"
+
+The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was
+beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had
+never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however,
+St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss
+McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation
+sometime.
+
+When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.
+
+Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate--- she wore her room-mates
+out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the
+essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in
+the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous
+mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was
+looking worn.
+
+Then the change came.
+
+Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of
+wide-eyed amazement.
+
+"What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a
+lady!"
+
+"A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been
+polishing her face.
+
+"A _lady_. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through
+the embroidery in her night gown."
+
+"What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.
+
+"She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."
+
+Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the
+folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and
+allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her
+shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the
+last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.
+
+"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in
+her voice.
+
+Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement
+and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an
+endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.
+
+"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate
+in Asia--or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a
+lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was
+sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her
+father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that
+kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little
+golden-haired daughter in England."
+
+"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie
+had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't
+haul her up sharp.
+
+"Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to
+India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a
+sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond--that was
+her name--to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond
+went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made
+it beautiful and homelike and comfortable--she wouldn't let him drink or
+smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past--"
+
+"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty
+glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy
+of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."
+
+"You've read it!" said Rosalie.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Patty.
+
+"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and
+were married--"
+
+"And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing
+on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a
+lonely heart?"
+
+"Um--yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.
+
+There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she
+knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.
+
+"It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy
+come in?"
+
+"Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest.
+"It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book,
+and I had the _awfulest_ time making her read it. She made fun of it at
+first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the
+resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."
+
+"Kid's story? What _are_ you talking about?" Patty was commencing to be
+interested.
+
+"Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book.
+Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen
+are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he
+needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a
+lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of
+his life."
+
+Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and
+regarded her with a touch of asperity.
+
+"I don't see anything so funny--I think it's very romantic."
+
+"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even
+pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can _stay_ one--"
+
+"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than
+that--you wait and see."
+
+And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of
+the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her
+deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were
+extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed
+week, and it did last.
+
+Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call
+her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat
+through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a
+sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a
+solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising
+scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of
+the school.
+
+They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe
+played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school
+saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting
+before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while
+Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives
+sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their
+shoulders, gathered by the open window.
+
+Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a
+rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The
+entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up
+the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer
+book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass
+atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.
+
+This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost
+beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a
+lady.
+
+Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming
+East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South
+Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held
+earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should
+behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They
+pondered a long time over whether or not she should kiss him, but
+Rosalie decided in the negative.
+
+"When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him
+that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past
+three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."
+
+"Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."
+
+It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school--in a
+body--flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They
+had rather hoped for a flannel shirt and boots and spurs, and, in any
+case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a
+frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick,
+and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear
+that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the
+plate in church.
+
+But the worst is still to tell.
+
+He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back
+to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence
+would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie
+was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride--a tall, fair, beautiful
+woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls
+after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful
+presence, sixty-four--no, sixty-three--of her auditors decided to grow
+up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed
+incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in
+an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never--she
+realized it perfectly--could she have competed in femininity with
+Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to
+practise from the cradle.
+
+They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school,
+Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie
+and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her
+shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."
+
+After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers
+gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the
+girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor
+followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a
+reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the
+town."
+
+The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss
+Lord came to investigate--and she came on her tiptoes.
+
+Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a
+short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted
+upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp,
+while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.
+
+"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above
+the uproar.
+
+"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."
+
+Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in
+the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was
+without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she
+managed to articulate:
+
+"Sunday evening in a Church school!"
+
+The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone.
+Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed
+possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour.
+"Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the
+darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from
+Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around
+her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her
+breath.
+
+"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie--she's a horrid, snooping old
+thing! What did she say?"
+
+"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart
+and take f-fifty demerits."
+
+"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll never work them off. She had no
+_right_ to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."
+
+"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself
+from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her
+sweet little daughter."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Onions and Orchids
+
+
+"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
+
+Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth
+time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the
+billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which had burst into blossom
+overnight.
+
+It was particularly necessary that she should finish her lessons with
+dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with
+Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the
+weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of
+half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs to
+dress, leaving the stay-at-homes to another hour of work.
+
+She started upstairs; but she did not get very far on the way. As she
+passed the open door that led to the back porch, she stepped outside to
+examine the cherry tree at close range; then she strolled the length of
+the pergola to see how the wistaria was coming on; from there, it was
+just a step to the lane, with its double row of pink-tipped apple trees.
+Before she knew it, Patty found herself sitting on the stone wall at the
+end of the lower pasture. Behind her lay the confines of St. Ursula's.
+Before her the World.
+
+She sat on the top of the wall, and dangled her feet out of bounds. The
+very most scandalous crime one could commit at St. Ursula's was to go
+out of bounds without permission. Patty sat and gazed at the forbidden
+land. She knew that she had no time to waste if she were to catch the
+hearse and the train and the dentist's chair. But still she sat and
+dreamed. Finally, far across the fields on the highroad, she spied the
+hearse bowling merrily to the station. Then it occurred to her that she
+had forgotten to report to Mademoiselle that she was going, and that
+Mademoiselle, accordingly, would not be missing her. At the school, of
+course, they would think that she had gone, and likewise would not be
+missing her. Without any premeditated iniquity, she was free!
+
+She sat a few moments longer to let the feeling penetrate. Then she slid
+over the wall and started--a joyous young mutineer, seeking adventure.
+Following the cheery course of the brook, she dipped into a tangled
+ravine and stretch of woodland, raced down a hillside and across a
+marshy meadow, leaping gaily from hummock to hummock--occasionally
+missing and going in. She laughed aloud at these misadventures, and
+waved her arms and romped with the wind. In addition to the delicious
+sense of feeling free, was added the delicious sense of feeling bad. The
+combination was intoxicating.
+
+And so, always following the stream, she came at last to another
+wood--not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The
+dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under
+the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under
+rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily
+pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious
+depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough
+to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It
+looked like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale.
+
+This second wood, however, was bordered by a solid stone wall, and on
+top of the wall, by four strands of barbed wire. Signs appeared at
+intervals--three were visible from where Patty stood--stating that these
+were private grounds, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the
+full extent of the law.
+
+Patty knew well to whom it belonged; she had often passed the front
+gates which faced on the other road. The estate was celebrated in the
+neighborhood, in the United States, for the matter of that. It comprised
+500 acres and belonged to a famous--or infamous--multi-millionaire. His
+name was Silas Weatherby, and he was the originator of a great many
+Wicked Corporations. He had beautiful conservatories full of tropical
+plants, a sunken Italian garden, an art collection and picture gallery.
+He was a crusty old codger always engaged in half-a-dozen lawsuits. He
+hated the newspapers, and the newspapers hated him. He was in
+particularly bad repute at St. Ursula's, because, in response to a
+politely couched note from the principal, asking that the art class
+might view his Botticelli and the botany class his orchids, he had
+ungraciously replied that he couldn't have a lot of school girls running
+over his place--if he let them come one year, he would have to let them
+come another, and he didn't wish to establish a precedent.
+
+Patty looked at the "No Trespassing" signs and the barbed wire, and she
+looked at the wood beyond. They couldn't do anything if they did catch
+her, she reasoned, except turn her out. People weren't jailed nowadays
+for taking a peaceable walk in other people's woods. Besides, the
+millionaire person was attending a directors' meeting in Chicago. This
+bit of neighborhood gossip she had gleaned that morning in her weekly
+perusal of the daily press--Saturday night at dinner they were supposed
+to talk on current topics, so Saturday morning they glanced at the
+headlines and an editorial. Since the family were not at home, why not
+drop in and inspect the Italian garden? The servants were doubtless more
+polite than the master.
+
+She selected a portion of the wall where the wire seemed slack, and
+wriggled under, stomach-wise, tearing only a small hole in the shoulder
+of her blouse. She played with the enchanted wood half an hour or so;
+then following a path, she quite suddenly left the wood behind, and
+popped out into a garden--not a flower garden, but a kitchen garden on
+an heroic scale. Neat plots of sprouting vegetables were bordered by
+currant bushes, and the whole was surrounded by a high brick wall,
+against which pear trees were trained in the English fashion.
+
+A gardener was engaged, with his back toward Patty, in setting out baby
+onions. She studied him dubiously, divided between a prompting to run,
+and a social instinct of friendliness. He was an extremely picturesque
+gardener, dressed in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, with a touch of
+red in his waistcoat, and a cardigan jacket and a cap on the side of his
+head. He did not look very affable; but he did look rheumatic--even if
+he chased her, she was sure that she could run faster than he. So she
+settled herself on his wheelbarrow and continued to watch him, while she
+pondered an opening remark.
+
+He glanced up suddenly and caught sight of her. The surprise nearly
+tipped him over.
+
+"Good morning!" said Patty pleasantly.
+
+"Ugh!" grunted the man. "What are you doing there?"
+
+"Watching you plant onions."
+
+This struck Patty as a self-evident truth, but she was perfectly willing
+to state it.
+
+He grunted again as he straightened his back and took a step toward her.
+
+"Where'd you come from?" he demanded gruffly.
+
+"Over there." Patty waved her hand largely to westward.
+
+"Humph!" he remarked. "You belong to that school--Saint Something or
+Other?"
+
+She acknowledged it. Saint Ursula's monogram was emblazoned large upon
+her sleeve.
+
+"Do they know you're out?"
+
+"No," she returned candidly, "I don't believe they do. I am quite sure
+of it in fact. They think I've gone to the dentist's with Mam'selle, and
+she thinks I'm at school. So it leaves me entirely at leisure. I thought
+I'd come over and see what Mr. Weatherby's Italian garden looks like.
+I'm interested in Italian gardens."
+
+"Well I'll be--!" He commenced, and came a trifle nearer and stared
+again. "Did you happen to see any 'No Trespassing' signs as you came
+through?"
+
+"Mercy, yes! The whole place is peppered with 'em."
+
+"They don't seem to have impressed you much."
+
+"Oh, I never pay any attention to 'No Trespassing' signs," said Patty
+easily. "You'd never get anywhere in this world if you let _them_ bother
+you."
+
+The man unexpectedly chuckled.
+
+"I don't believe you would!" he agreed. "I've never let them bother me,"
+he added meditatively.
+
+"Can't I help you plant your onions?" Patty asked politely. It struck
+her that this might be the quickest route to the Italian garden.
+
+"Why, yes, thank you!"
+
+He accepted her offer with unexpected cordiality, and gravely explained
+the mode of work. The onions were very tiny, and they must be set
+right-side up with great care; because it is very difficult for an
+embryonic onion to turn itself over after it has once got started in the
+wrong direction.
+
+Patty grasped the business very readily, and followed along in the next
+row three feet behind him. It turned out sociable work; by the end of
+fifteen minutes they were quite old friends. The talk ranged far--over
+philosophy and life and morals. He had a very decided opinion on every
+subject--she put him down as Scotch--he seemed a well-informed old
+fellow though, and he read the papers. Patty had also read the paper
+that morning. She discoursed at some length upon whether or not
+corporations should be subject to state control. She stoutly agreed with
+her editor that they should. He maintained that they were like any other
+private property, and that it was nobody's damned business how they
+managed themselves.
+
+"A penny, please," said Patty, holding out her hand.
+
+"A penny?--what for?"
+
+"That 'damn.' Every time you use slang or bad grammar you have to drop a
+penny in the charity box. 'Damn' is much worse than slang; it's
+swearing. I ought to charge you five cents, but since this is the first
+offense, I'll let you off with one."
+
+He handed over his penny, and Patty gravely pocketed it.
+
+"What sort of things do you learn in that school?" he inquired with a
+show of curiosity.
+
+She obligingly furnished a sample:
+
+"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
+
+"You will find that useful," he commented with the suggestion of a
+twinkle in his eye.
+
+"Very," she agreed--"on examination day."
+
+After half an hour, onion-planting grew to be wearying work; but Patty
+was bound to be game, and stick to her job as long as he did. Finally,
+however, the last onion was in, and the gardener rose and viewed the
+neat rows with some satisfaction.
+
+"That will do for to-day," he declared; "we've earned a rest."
+
+They sat down, Patty on the wheelbarrow, the man on an upturned tub.
+
+"How do you like working for Mr. Weatherby?" she inquired. "Is he as bad
+as the papers make out?"
+
+The gardener chuckled slightly as he lighted his pipe.
+
+"Well," he said judiciously, "he's always been very decent to me, but I
+don't know as his enemies have any cause to love him."
+
+"I think he's horrid!" said Patty.
+
+"Why?" asked the man with a slight air of challenge. He was quite
+willing to run his master down himself, but he would not permit an
+outsider to do it.
+
+"He's so terribly stingy with his old conservatories. The Dowager--I
+mean Mrs. Trent, the principal, you know--wrote and asked him to let the
+botany class see his orchids, and he was just as rude as he could be!"
+
+"I'm sure he didn't mean it," the man apologized.
+
+"Oh, yes, he did!" maintained Patty. "He said he couldn't have a lot of
+school girls running through and breaking down his vines--as if we would
+do such a thing! We have perfectly beautiful manners. We learn 'em every
+Thursday night."
+
+"Maybe he was a little rude," he agreed. "But you see, he hasn't had
+your advantages, Miss. He didn't learn his manners in a young ladies'
+boarding-school."
+
+"He didn't learn them anywhere," Patty shrugged.
+
+The gardener took a long pull at his pipe and studied the horizon with
+narrowed eyes.
+
+"It isn't quite fair to judge him the way you would other people," he
+said slowly. "He's had a good deal of trouble in his life; and now he's
+old, and I dare say pretty lonely sometimes. All the world's against
+him--when people are decent, he knows it's because they're after
+something. Your teacher, now, is polite when she wants to see his
+conservatories, but I'll bet she believes he's an old thief!"
+
+"Isn't he?" asked Patty.
+
+The man grinned slightly.
+
+"He has his moments of honesty like the rest of us."
+
+"Perhaps," Patty grudgingly conceded, "he may not be so bad when you
+know him. It's often the way. Now, there was Lordy, our Latin teacher. I
+used to despise her; and then--in the hour of trial--she came up to the
+scratch, and was _per-fect-ly bully_!"
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"A penny."
+
+Patty handed him back his own.
+
+"She kept me from getting expelled--she did, really. I've never been
+able to hate her since. And you know, I miss it dreadfully. It's sort of
+fun having an enemy."
+
+"I've had a good many," he nodded, "and I've always managed to enjoy
+them."
+
+"And probably they're really quite nice?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, yes," he agreed, "the worst criminals are often very pleasant
+people when you see their right side."
+
+"Yes, that's true," said Patty. "It's mainly chance that makes people
+bad--I know it is in my own case. This morning for instance, I got up
+with every intention of learning my geometry and going to the
+dentist's--and yet--here I am! And so," she pointed a moral, "you always
+ought to be kind to criminals and remember that under different
+circumstances you might have been in jail yourself."
+
+"That thought," he acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I--we--that
+is," he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby
+believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who
+are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a
+cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer in charge of the
+orchids."
+
+"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a
+murderer."
+
+"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."
+
+"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.
+
+"A good many years--and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air
+of challenge.
+
+"I hope he appreciates you?"
+
+"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."
+
+He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.
+
+"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian
+garden?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."
+
+"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."
+
+"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"
+
+"It's tiresome work--good for my character."
+
+"Oh!" Patty laughed.
+
+"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me,
+I stop and think how my own back ached."
+
+"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced
+approvingly.
+
+"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.
+
+The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and
+fountains and clipped yew trees.
+
+"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.
+
+"And who is she?"
+
+"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year,
+because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most
+plants--at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and
+Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van
+Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay
+in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the
+city and gives them to Keren."
+
+"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for
+the rest to help?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends
+can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes
+back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or
+Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears
+eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."
+
+"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I
+could help?"
+
+Patty glanced about tentatively.
+
+"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't
+got in her book."
+
+"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay
+a visit to the orchid house."
+
+They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the
+conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely
+forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock
+in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St.
+Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before--and
+that she was in a starving condition.
+
+"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"
+
+"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"
+
+"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."
+
+"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he
+suggested.
+
+"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.
+
+She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she
+cared little who furnished it.
+
+"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter
+and--er--cookies. Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four
+o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without
+being missed."
+
+"You just wait in the pavilion, and I'll see what the gardener's cottage
+can supply us."
+
+He was back in fifteen minutes, chuckling as he lugged a big hamper.
+
+"We'll have a picnic," he proposed.
+
+"Oh, let's!" said Patty joyously. She did not mind eating with him in
+the least, for he had washed his hands, and appeared quite clean.
+
+She helped him unpack the hamper and set the table in the little
+pavilion beside the fountain. He had lettuce sandwiches, a pat of
+cottage cheese, a jug of milk, orange marmalade, sugar cookies, and
+gingerbread hot from the oven.
+
+"What a perfectly bully spread!" she cried.
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"Another penny!"
+
+Patty peered into an empty pocket.
+
+"You'll have to charge it. I've used up all my ready money."
+
+The spring sun was warm, the fountain was splashing, the wind was
+sprinkling the pavilion floor with white magnolia petals. Patty helped
+herself to marmalade with a happy sigh of contentment.
+
+"The most fun in the world is to run away from the things you ought to
+do," she pronounced.
+
+He acknowledged this immoral truth with a laugh.
+
+"I suppose you ought to be working?" she asked.
+
+"There are one or two little matters that might be the better for my
+attention."
+
+"And aren't you glad you're not doing them?"
+
+"Bully glad!"
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"Give it back."
+
+The cent returned to her pocket, and the meal progressed gaily. Patty
+was in an elated frame of mind, and Patty's elation was catching.
+Escaping from bounds, trespassing on a private estate, planting onions,
+and picnicking in the Italian garden with the head gardener--she had
+never had such a dizzying whirl of adventures. The head gardener also
+seemed to enjoy the sensation of offering sanctuary to a runaway school
+girl. Their appreciation of the lark was mutual.
+
+As Patty, with painstaking honesty, was dividing the last of the
+gingerbread into two exact halves, she was startled by the sound of a
+footstep on the gravel path behind; and there walked into their party a
+groom--a crimson-faced, gaping young man who stood mechanically bobbing
+his head. Patty stared back a touch apprehensively. She hoped that she
+hadn't got her friend into trouble. It was very possibly against the
+rules for gardeners to entertain runaway school girls in the Italian
+garden. The groom continued to stare and to duck his head, and her
+companion rose and faced him.
+
+"Well?" he inquired with a note of sharpness. "What do you want?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but this telegram come, and Richard says it might be
+important, sir, and he says for me to find you, sir."
+
+He received the telegram, ran his eyes over it, scribbled an answer on
+the back with a gold pencil which he extracted from his pocket, and
+dismissed the man with a curt nod. The envelope had fluttered to the
+table and lay there face up. Patty inadvertently glanced at the address,
+and as the truth flashed across her, she hid her head against the back
+of the stone seat in a gale of laughter. Her companion looked
+momentarily sheepish, then he too laughed.
+
+"You have enjoyed the privilege of telling me exactly how rude you think
+I am. Not even the reporters always allow themselves that pleasure."
+
+"Oh, but that was before I knew you! I think now that you have perfectly
+beautiful manners."
+
+He bowed his thanks.
+
+"I shall endeavor to have better in the future. It will be my pleasure
+to put my greenhouses at the disposal of the young ladies of St.
+Ursula's some afternoon soon."
+
+"Really?" she smiled. "That's awfully nice of you!"
+
+They repacked the hamper and divided the crumbs among the goldfish in
+the fountain.
+
+"And now," he inquired, "which will you visit first--the picture gallery
+or the orchids?"
+
+Patty emerged from the orchid house at four o'clock, her arms filled
+with an unprecedented collection for Conny's book. The big yellow
+four-in-hand coach was standing outside the stable being washed. She
+examined it interestedly.
+
+"Should you like to have me drive you home on that?"
+
+"Oh, I'd love it!" Patty dimpled. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't be wise,"
+she added on second thought. "No, I am sure it wouldn't be wise," she
+firmly turned her back. Her eyes fell on the road, and an apprehensive
+light sprang to her face.
+
+"There's the hearse!"
+
+"The hearse?"
+
+"Yes, the school wagonette. I think I'd better be going."
+
+He accompanied her back, through the vegetable garden and the enchanted
+wood, and held her flowers while she crawled under the fence, tearing a
+hole in the other shoulder of her blouse.
+
+They shook hands through the barbed wire.
+
+"I've enjoyed both the onions and the orchids," said Patty politely,
+"and particularly the gingerbread. And if I ever have any convict
+friends in need of employment, I may send them to you?"
+
+"Do so," he urged. "I will find them a job here."
+
+She started off, then turned to wave good-by to him.
+
+"I've had a perfectly bully time!"
+
+"A penny!" he called.
+
+Patty laughed and ran.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The Lemon Pie and the Monkey-Wrench
+
+
+Evalina Smith was a morbid young person who loved to dabble in the
+supernatural. Her taste in literature was for Edgar A. Poe. In religion
+she inclined toward spiritualism. Her favorite amusement was to gather a
+few shuddering friends about her, turn out the gas, and tell ghost
+stories. She had an extensive repertoire of ghoulish incidents, that
+were not fiction but the actual experience of people she knew. She had
+even had one or two spiritual adventures herself; and she would set
+forth the details with wide eyes and lowered voice, while her auditors
+held one another's hands and shivered. The circle in which Evalina
+moved had not much sense of humor.
+
+One Saturday evening St. Ursula's School was in an unusually social
+mood. Evalina was holding a ghost party in her room in the East Wing;
+Nancy Lee had invited her ten dearest friends to a birthday spread in
+Center; the European History class was celebrating the completion of the
+Thirty-Years War by a molasses-candy pull in the kitchen; and Kid McCoy
+was conducting a potato race down the length of the South Corridor--the
+entrance fee a postage stamp, the prize sealed up in a large bandbox and
+warranted to be worth a quarter.
+
+Patty, who was popular, had been invited to all four of the functions.
+She had declined Nancy's spread, because Mae Van Arsdale, her particular
+enemy, was invited; but had accepted the other invitations, and was
+busily spending the evening as an itinerant guest.
+
+She carried her potato, insecurely balanced on a teaspoon, over one
+table and under another, through a hoop suspended from the ceiling, and
+deposited it in the wastebasket at the end of the corridor, in exactly
+two minutes and forty-seven seconds. (Kid McCoy had a stop-watch.) This
+was far ahead of anyone else's record, and Patty lingered hopefully a
+few minutes in the neighborhood of the bandbox; but a fresh inrush of
+entries postponed the bestowal of the prize, so she left the judges to
+settle the question at their leisure, and drifted on to Evalina's room.
+
+She found it dark, except for the fitful blue flare of alcohol and salt
+burning in a fudge pan. The guests were squatting about on sofa
+cushions, looking decidedly spotty in the unbecoming light. Patty
+silently dropped down on a vacant cushion, and lent polite attention to
+Evalina, who at the moment held the floor.
+
+"Well, you know, I had a very remarkable experience myself last summer.
+Happening to visit a spiritualist camp, I attended a materializing
+séance."
+
+"What's that?" asked Rosalie Patton.
+
+"A séance in which spirits appear to mediums in the material form they
+occupied during life," Evalina condescendingly explained. Rosalie was
+merely an invited guest. She did not belong to the inner cult.
+
+"Oh!" said Rosalie, vaguely enlightened.
+
+"I didn't really expect anything to happen," Evalina continued, "and I
+was just thinking how foolish I was to have wasted that dollar, when the
+medium shut her eyes and commenced to tremble. She said she saw the
+spirit of a beautiful young girl who had passed over five years before.
+The girl was dressed in white and her clothes were dripping wet, and she
+carried in her hand a monkey-wrench."
+
+"A monkey-wrench!" cried Patty. "What on earth--"
+
+"I don't know any more than you do," said Evalina impatiently. "I'm just
+telling what happened. The Medium couldn't get her full name, but she
+said her first name commenced with 'S.' And instantly, it came over me
+that it was my Cousin Susan who fell into a well and was drowned. I
+hadn't thought of her for years, but the description answered perfectly.
+And I asked the medium, and after a little, she said yes, it was Susan,
+and that she had come to send me a warning."
+
+Evalina allowed an impressive pause to follow, while her auditors leaned
+forward in strained attention.
+
+"A warning!" breathed Florence Hissop.
+
+"Yes. She told me never to eat lemon pie."
+
+Patty choked with sudden laughter. Evalina cast her a look and went on.
+
+"The medium shivered again and came out of the trance, and she couldn't
+remember a thing she had said! When I told her about the monkey-wrench
+and the lemon pie, she was just as much puzzled as I was. She said that
+the messages that came from the spirit world were often inexplicable;
+though they might seem to deal with trivial things, yet in reality they
+contained a deep and hidden truth. Probably some day I would have an
+enemy who would try to poison me with lemon pie, and I must never, on
+_any_ account, taste it again."
+
+"And haven't you?" Patty asked.
+
+"Never," said Evalina sadly.
+
+Patty composed her features into an expression of scientific inquiry.
+
+"Do you think the medium told the truth?"
+
+"I've never had any cause to doubt it."
+
+"Then you really believe in ghosts?"
+
+"In spirits?" Evalina amended gently. "Many strange things happen that
+cannot be explained in any other manner."
+
+"What would you do if her spirit should appear to you? Would you be
+scared?"
+
+"Certainly not!" said Evalina, with dignity. "I was very fond of Cousin
+Susan. I have no cause to fear her spirit."
+
+The smell of boiling molasses penetrated from below; Patty excused
+herself and turned toward the kitchen. The spiritual heights on which
+Evalina dwelt, she found a trifle too rare for ordinary breathing.
+
+The candy was on the point of being poured into pans.
+
+"Here, Patty!" Priscilla ordered, "you haven't done any work. Run down
+to the storeroom and get some butter to keep our hands from sticking."
+
+Patty obligingly accompanied the cook to the cellar, with not a thought
+in the world beyond butter. On a shelf in the storeroom stood
+to-morrow's dessert--a row of fifteen lemon pies, with neatly decorated
+tops of white meringue. As Patty looked at them, she was suddenly
+assailed by a wicked temptation; she struggled with it for a moment of
+sanity, but in the end she fell. While Nora's head was bent over the
+butter tub, Patty opened the window and deftly plumped a pie through the
+iron grating onto the ledge without. By the time Nora raised her head,
+the window was shut again, and Patty was innocently translating the
+label on a bottle of olive oil.
+
+As they pulled their candy in a secluded corner of the kitchen, Patty
+hilariously confided her plan to Conny and Priscilla. Conny was always
+game for whatever mischief was afoot, but Priscilla sometimes needed
+urging. She was--most inconveniently--beginning to develop a moral
+nature, and the other two, who as yet were comfortably un-moral,
+occasionally found her difficult to coerce.
+
+Priscilla finally lent a grudging consent, while Conny enthusiastically
+volunteered to acquire a monkey-wrench. Being captain of sports, she
+could manage the matter better than Patty. On a flying visit to the
+stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the
+tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of
+her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it
+away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to
+Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great
+deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the
+pie--slightly damaged as to its meringue top, but still distinctly
+recognizable as lemon--were safely cached under Patty's bed to await
+their part in the night's adventure.
+
+"Lights-out" as usual, rang at nine-thirty, but it rang to deaf ears. A
+spirit of restless festivity was abroad. The little girls in the "Baby
+Ward" larked about the halls in a pillow fight, until they were sternly
+ordered to bed by the Dowager herself. It was close to ten o'clock when
+the candy-pullers washed their sticky hands and turned upstairs.
+
+Patty found a delegation of potato racers waiting with the news that she
+had won the prize. An interested crowd gathered to watch her open the
+box; it contained a tin funeral wreath that had been displayed that
+winter in the window of the village undertaker--Kid had bought it cheap,
+owing to fly specks that would not rub off. The wreath was hoisted on
+the end of a shinny stick and marched through the corridor to the tune
+of "John Brown's Body," while Mademoiselle ineffectually wrung her hands
+and begged for quiet.
+
+"_Mes chères enfantes_--it is ten o'clock. _Soyez tranquilles._
+Patty--_Mon Dieu_--How you are bad! Margarite McCoy, you do not listen
+to me? _Nous verrons!_ Go to your room, dis in-stant! You do not belong
+in my hall. Children! I implore. Go to bed--all--_tout de suite_!"
+
+The procession cheered and marched on, until Miss Lord descended from
+the East and commanded silence. Miss Lord when incensed was effectual.
+The peace of conquest settled for a time over Paradise Alley, and she
+returned to her own camp. But a fresh hub-bub broke out, when it was
+discovered that someone had sprinkled granulated sugar, in liberal
+quantities, through every bed in the Alley. Patty and Conny would have
+been suspected, had their own sheets not yielded a plentiful harvest. It
+was another half hour before the beds were remade, and the school
+finally composed to sleep.
+
+When the teacher on duty had made her last rounds, and everything was
+quiet, Patty turned back the covers of her bed and cautiously stepped to
+the floor. She was still fully clothed, except that she had changed her
+shoes for softer soled bedroom slippers, better fitted for nocturnal
+adventures. Priscilla and Conny joined her. Fortunately a full moon
+shone high in the sky, and they needed no artificial light. Aided by her
+two assistants, Patty draped the sheets of her bed about her into two
+voluminous wings, and fastened them securely with safety pins. A pillow
+slip was pulled over her head and the corners tied into ears. They
+hesitated a moment with scissors suspended.
+
+"Hurry up and cut a nose," Patty whispered. "I'm smothering!"
+
+"It seems sort of too bad to spoil a perfectly good pillow slip," said
+Priscilla, with a slight access of conscience.
+
+"I'll drop some money in the missionary box," Patty promised.
+
+The nose and eyes were cut; a grinning mouth and devilishly curved
+eyebrows were added with burnt cork. The pillow slip was tied firmly
+about her neck to allow no chance of slipping, the ears waved
+lopsidedly; she was the most amazing specter that ever left a
+respectable grave.
+
+These preparations had occupied some time. It was already ten minutes of
+twelve.
+
+"I'll wait till the stroke of midnight," said Patty. "Then I'll flutter
+into Evalina's room, and wave my wings, and whisper, 'Come!' The
+monkey-wrench and the pie, I'll leave on the foot of her bed, so she'll
+know she wasn't dreaming."
+
+"What if she screams?" asked Priscilla.
+
+"She won't scream. She loves ghosts--especially Cousin Susan. She said
+to-night she'd be glad to meet her."
+
+"But what if she does scream?" persisted Priscilla.
+
+"Oh, that's easy! I'll dash back and pop into bed. Before anybody wakes,
+I'll be sound asleep."
+
+They made a reconnoitering excursion into the empty corridors to make
+sure that all was quiet. Only regular breathing issued from open doors.
+Evalina fortunately lived in a single, but unfortunately, it was at the
+extreme end of the East Wing in the opposite corner of the building from
+Patty's own domicile. Conny and Priscilla, in bedroom slippers and
+kimonos, tiptoed after Patty as she took her flight down the length of
+the Alley. She sailed back and forth and waved her wings in the
+moonlight that streamed through the skylight in the central hall. The
+two spectators clung together and shivered delightedly. In spite of
+having been behind the scenes and assisted at the make-up, they received
+a distinct sensation--what it would be to one suddenly wakened from
+sleep, to a believer in ghosts, they were a bit apprehensive to
+consider. At the entrance to the East Wing, they handed Patty her pie
+and monkey-wrench, and retreated to their own neighborhood. In case of
+an uproar, they did not wish to be discovered too far from home.
+
+Patty flitted on down the corridor, past yawning doors, into Evalina's
+room, where she took up a central position in a patch of moonlight. A
+few sepulchral "Comes!" brought no response. Evalina was a sound
+sleeper.
+
+Patty shook the foot of the bed. The sleeper stirred slightly but slept
+on. This was annoying. The ghost had no mind to make noise enough to
+disturb the neighbors. She laid the pie and the monkey-wrench on the
+counterpane, and shook the bed again, with the insistence of an
+earthquake. As she was endeavoring to resume her properties, Evalina
+sat up and clutched the bed clothes about her neck with a frenzied jerk.
+Patty just had time to save the pie--the monkey-wrench went to the floor
+with a crash; and the crash, to Patty's startled senses, was echoed and
+intensified from far down the hall. She had no chance to wave her wings
+or murmur, "Come." Evalina did not wait for her cue. She opened her
+mouth as wide as it would open, and emitted shriek after shriek of such
+ear-splitting intensity, that Patty, for a moment, was too aghast to
+move. Then, still hugging the pie in her arms, she turned and ran.
+
+[Illustration: Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her
+neck]
+
+To her consternation the cries were answered ahead. The whole house
+seemed to be awake and shrieking. She could hear doors banging and
+frightened voices demanding the cause of the tumult. She was making a
+quick dash for her own room, trusting to the confusion and darkness to
+make good her escape, when Miss Lord, gaily attired in a flowered
+bath-robe, appeared at the end of the corridor. Patty was headed
+straight for her arms. With a gasp of terror, she turned back toward
+the shrieking Evalina.
+
+She realized by now that she was in a trap.
+
+A narrow passage led from the East Wing to the servants' quarters. She
+dived into this. If she could reach the back stairs it would mean
+safety. She pushed the door open a crack, and to her horror, was
+confronted by a worse uproar. The servants' quarters were in a state of
+panic. She saw Maggie dashing past, wrapped in a pink striped blanket,
+while above the general confusion rose Norah's rich brogue:
+
+"Help! Murther! I seen a bur-r-gu-lar!"
+
+She shut the door and shrank back into the passage. Behind her Evalina
+was still hysterically wailing:
+
+"I saw a ghost! I saw a ghost!"
+
+Before her the cry of "Burglars!" was growing louder.
+
+Utterly bewildered at this double demonstration, Patty flattened herself
+against the wall in the friendly darkness of the passage, while she
+soulfully thanked Heaven that the proposed electric lights had not yet
+been installed. A dozen voices were calling for matches, but no one
+seemed to find any. She pantingly tugged at the pillowcase fastened
+about her neck; but Conny had tied it firmly with a white hair ribbon,
+and the knot was behind. In any case, even if she could remove her
+masquerade, she was lost if they found her; for she was still wearing
+the white dress of the evening, and not even Patty's imagination could
+compass an excuse for that at twelve o'clock at night.
+
+The search was growing nearer; she caught the glimmer of a light ahead.
+At any moment they might open the door of the passage. The linen closet
+was the only refuge at hand--and that was very temporary. She felt for
+the door handle and slipped inside. If she could find a pile of sheets,
+she might dive to the bottom and hope to escape notice, being mostly
+sheet herself. But it was Saturday, and all the linen had gone down. A
+long, slippery, inclined chute connected the room with the laundry in
+the basement two floors below. Steps were already audible in the
+passage. She heard Miss Lord's voice say:
+
+"Bring a light! We'll search the linen closet."
+
+Patty did not hesitate. In imagination she could already feel the
+pressure of Miss Lord's grasp upon her shoulder. A broken neck was
+preferable.
+
+Still hugging the lemon pie--in all her excitement she had clasped it
+firmly--she climbed into the chute, stretched her feet out straight in
+front, and pushed off. For two breathless seconds she dashed through
+space, then her feet hit the trap door at the bottom, and she shot into
+the laundry.
+
+One instant earlier, the door from the kitchen stairs had cautiously
+opened, and a man had darted into the laundry. He had just had time to
+cast a glance of boundless relief about the empty, moonlit room, when
+Patty and the pie catapulted against him. They went down together in a
+whirl of waving wings. Patty being on top picked herself up first. She
+still clutched her pie--at least what was left of it; the white meringue
+was spread over the man's hair and face; but the lemon part was still
+intact. The man sat up dazedly, rubbed the meringue from his eyes, cast
+one look at his assailant, and staggered to his feet. He flattened
+himself against the wall with arms thrown wide for support.
+
+"Holy gee!" he choked. "What in hell uv I got into?"
+
+Patty excused his language, as he did not appear to know that he was
+addressing a lady. He seemed to be laboring under the impression that
+she was the devil.
+
+Her pillow slip by now was very much askew; one ear pointed northward,
+the other southeast, and she could only see out of one eye. It was very
+hot inside and she was gasping for breath. For a palpitating moment they
+merely stared and panted. Then Patty's mind began to work.
+
+"I suppose," she suggested, "you are the burglar they are screaming
+about?"
+
+The man leaned back limply and stared, his wide, frightened eyes
+shining through a fringe of meringue.
+
+"I," said Patty, completing the introduction, "am the ghost."
+
+He muttered something under his breath. She could not make out whether
+he was praying or swearing.
+
+"Don't be afraid," she added kindly. "I won't hurt you."
+
+"Is it a bloomin' insane asylum?"
+
+"Just a girl's school."
+
+"Gosh!" he observed.
+
+"Hush!" said Patty. "They're coming this way now!"
+
+The sound of running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while
+bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former
+tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost
+regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual
+danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied
+his face as it showed through the interstices of the meringue. He had
+honest blue eyes and yellow curls. She suddenly stretched out a hand
+and grasped him by an elbow.
+
+"Quick! They'll be here in a minute. I know a place to hide. Come with
+me."
+
+She pushed him unresisting down a passage and into a storeroom, boarded
+off from the main cellar, where the scenery of the dramatic society was
+kept.
+
+"Get down on your hands and knees and follow me," she ordered, as she
+stooped low and dived behind a pile of canvas.
+
+The man crawled after. They emerged at the farther end into a small
+recess behind some canvas trees. Patty sat on a stump and offered a
+wooden rock to her companion.
+
+"They'll never think of looking here," she whispered. "Martin's too fat
+to crawl through."
+
+A small barred window let in some faint moonlight and they had an
+opportunity to study each other more at leisure. The man did not yet
+seem comfortable in Patty's presence; he was occupying the farthest
+possible corner of his rock. Presently he rubbed his coat sleeve over
+his head and looked long and earnestly at the meringue. He was
+evidently at a loss to identify the substance; in the rush of events he
+had taken no note of the pie.
+
+Patty brought her one eye to bear down upon him.
+
+"I'm simply melting!" she whispered. "Do you think you could untie that
+knot?"
+
+She bent her head and presented the back of her neck.
+
+The man by now was partially reassured as to the humanness of his
+companion, and he obediently worked at the knot but with hands that
+trembled. At last it came loose, and Patty with a sigh of relief emerged
+into the open. Her hair was somewhat tousled and her face was streaked
+with burnt cork, but her blue eyes were as honest as his own. The sight
+reassured him.
+
+"Gee!" he muttered in a wave of relief.
+
+"Keep still!" Patty warned.
+
+The hunt was growing nearer. There was the sound of tramping feet in the
+laundry and they could hear the men talking.
+
+"A ghost and a burglar!" said Martin, in fine scorn. "That's a likely
+combination, ain't it now?"
+
+They made an obligatory and superficial search through the coal cellar.
+Martin jocularly inquiring:
+
+"Did ye look in the furnace, Mike? Here Osaki, me lad, ye're small. Take
+a crawl oop the poipes and see if the ghost ain't hidin' there."
+
+They opened the door of the property-room and glanced inside. The
+burglar ducked his head and held his breath, while Patty struggled with
+an ill-timed desire to giggle. Martin was in a facetious mood. He
+whistled in the manner of calling a dog.
+
+"Here, Ghostie! Here, Burgie! Come here, old fellow!"
+
+They banged the door shut and their footsteps receded. Patty was rocking
+back and forth in a species of hysterics, stuffing the corner of the
+sheet into her mouth to keep from laughing audibly. The burglar's teeth
+were chattering.
+
+"Lord!" he breathed. "It may be funny for you, Miss. But it means the
+penitentiary for me."
+
+Patty interrupted her hysterics and regarded him with disgust.
+
+"It would mean expulsion for me, or at least something awfully
+unpleasant. But that's no reason for going all to pieces. You're a nice
+sort of a burglar! Brace up and be a sport!"
+
+He mopped his brow and removed another portion of icing.
+
+"You must be an awful amateur to break into a house like this," she said
+contemptuously. "Don't you know the silver's plated?"
+
+"I didn't know nuthin' about it," he said sullenly. "I see the window
+open over the shed roof and I clum up. I was hungry and was lookin' for
+somethin' to eat. I ain't had nothin' since yesterday mornin'."
+
+Patty reached to the floor beside her.
+
+"Have some pie."
+
+The man ducked aside as it was poked at him.
+
+"W-what's that?" he gasped.
+
+He was as nervous as a mouse in a cage.
+
+"Lemon pie. It looks a little messy but it's all right. The only thing
+the matter with it is that it has lost its meringue top. That's mostly
+on your head. The rest of it is spread over me and the laundry floor and
+Evalina Smith's bed and the clothes chute."
+
+"Oh!" he murmured in evident relief, as he rubbed his hand over his hair
+for the fourth time. "I was wonderin' what the blame stuff was."
+
+"But the lemon's all here," she urged. "You'd better eat it. It's quite
+nourishing, I believe."
+
+He accepted the pie and fell to eating it with an eagerness that carried
+out the truth of his assertion as to yesterday's breakfast.
+
+Patty watched him, her natural curiosity struggling with her acquired
+politeness. The curiosity triumphed.
+
+"Do you mind telling me how you came to be a burglar? You make such a
+remarkably bad one, that I should think you would have chosen almost any
+other profession."
+
+He told his story between bites. To one more experienced in police
+records, it might have sounded a trifle fishy, but he had an honest face
+and blue eyes, and it never entered her head to doubt him. The burglar
+commenced it sullenly; no one had ever believed him yet and he wasn't
+expecting her to. He would like to have invented something a little more
+plausible, but he lacked the imagination to tell a convincing lie. So,
+as usual, he lamely told the truth.
+
+Patty listened with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by
+lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but
+she managed to get the gist of it.
+
+By rights he was a gardener. In the last place where he worked he used
+to sleep in the attic, because the gentleman he was away a lot, and the
+lady she was afraid not to have a man in the house. And a gas-fitter,
+that he had always thought was his friend, give him some beer one night
+and got him drunk, and took away the key of the back door. And while he
+(the gardener) was sound asleep on the children's sand pile under the
+apple tree in the back yard, the gas-fitter entered the house and stole
+an overcoat and a silver coffee-pot and a box of cigars and a bottle of
+whisky and two umbrellas. And they proved it on him (the gardener) and
+he was sent up for two years. And when he come out, no one wouldn't give
+him no work.
+
+"An' ye can't make me believe," he added bitterly, "that that beer
+wasn't doped!"
+
+"Oh, but it was terrible of you to get drunk!" said Patty, shocked.
+
+"'Twas an accident," he insisted.
+
+"If you are _sure_ that you'll never do it again," she said, "I'll get
+you a job. But you must promise, on your word of honor as a gentleman.
+You know I couldn't recommend a drunkard."
+
+The man grinned feebly.
+
+"I guess ye'll not be findin' anybody that will be wantin' a jailbird."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will! I know exactly the man. He's a friend of mine, and he
+likes jailbirds. He realizes that it's only luck that made him a
+millionaire instead of a convict. He always gives a man a chance to
+start again. He used to have a murderer in charge of his greenhouses,
+and a cattle thief to milk the cows. I'm sure he'll like you. Come with
+me, and I'll write you a letter of introduction."
+
+Patty gathered her sheets about her and prepared to crawl out.
+
+"What are ye doin'?" he demanded quickly. "Y' aren't goin' to hand me
+over?"
+
+"Is it likely?" She regarded him with scorn. "How could I hand you over,
+without handing myself over at the same time?"
+
+The logic of this appealed to him, and he followed meekly on hands and
+knees. She approached the laundry door and listened warily; the search
+had withdrawn to other quarters. She led the way along a passage and up
+a flight of stairs and slipped into the deserted kindergarten room.
+
+"We're safe here," she whispered. "They've already searched it."
+
+She cast about for writing materials. No ink was to be found, but she
+discovered a red crayon pencil, and tore a sheet of paper from a copy
+book. "Honesty is the best policy," was inscribed in flowing characters
+at the top.
+
+She hesitated with her crayon poised.
+
+"If I get you a nice job in charge of onions and orchids and things,
+will you promise never again to drink any beer?"
+
+"Sure," he agreed, but without much enthusiasm.
+
+There was a light of uneasiness in his eye. Nothing in his past
+experience tallied with to-night's adventure; and he suspected an
+ambush.
+
+"Because," said Patty, "it would be awfully embarrassing for me if you
+did get drunk. I should never dare recommend another burglar."
+
+She wrote her note on the window ledge, by moonlight, and read it aloud:
+
+          "_Dear Mr. Weatherby_,--
+
+          "Do you remember the conversation we had the day I
+          ran away and dropped into your onion garden? You
+          said you thought criminals were often quite as
+          good as the rest of us, and that you would find a
+          job for any convict friend I might present. This
+          is to introduce a burglar of my acquaintance who
+          would like to secure a position as gardener. He
+          was trained to be a gardener and much prefers it
+          to burglaring, but finds it difficult to find a
+          place because he has been in prison. He is
+          faithful, honest and industrious, and promises to
+          be sober. I shall appreciate any favor you may
+          show him.
+
+                                "Sincerely yours,
+                                             "PATTY WYATT."
+
+          "P. S.--Please excuse this red crayon. I am
+          writing at midnight, by moonlight in the
+          kindergarten room, and the ink's all locked up.
+          The burglar will explain the circumstances, which
+          are too complicated to write.
+
+                                      "Yours ever,
+                                               "P. W."
+
+She enclosed her note in a large manila envelope that had contained
+weaving mats, and addressed it to Silas Weatherby, Esq. The man received
+it gingerly. He seemed to think that it might go off.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Patty. "Are you afraid of it?"
+
+"Ye're sure," he asked suspiciously, "that Silas Weatherby ain't a
+cop?"
+
+"He's a railroad president."
+
+"Oh!" The burglar looked relieved.
+
+Patty unlocked the window, then paused for a final moral lecture.
+
+"I am giving you a chance to begin again. If you are game, and present
+this letter, you'll get a job. If you're a coward, and don't dare
+present it, you can keep on being a burglar for the rest of your life
+for all I care--and a mighty poor one you'll make!"
+
+She opened the window and waved her hand invitingly toward the outside
+world.
+
+"Good-by, Miss," he said.
+
+"Good-by," said Patty cordially. "And good luck!"
+
+He paused, half in, half out, for a last reassurance.
+
+"Ye're sure it's on the straight, Miss? Y' ain't pitchin' me no curve?"
+
+"It's on the straight." She pledged her word. "I ain't pitchin' you no
+curve."
+
+Patty crept upstairs the back way, and by a wide detour avoided the
+excited crowd still gathered in the East Wing. A fresh hub-bub had
+arisen, for Evalina Smith had found a monkey-wrench on the floor of her
+room. It was shown to the scoffing Martin as visible proof that the
+burglar had been there.
+
+"An it's me own wrench!" he cried in wide-eyed amazement. "Now, what do
+ye think of his nerve?"
+
+Patty hurriedly undressed and tumbled into a kimono. Sleepily rubbing
+her eyes, she joined the assemblage in the hall.
+
+"What's happened?" she asked, blinking at the lights. "Has there been a
+fire?"
+
+A chorus of laughter greeted the question.
+
+"It's a burglar!" said Conny, exhibiting the wrench.
+
+"Oh, _why_ didn't you wake me?" Patty wailed. "I've wanted all my life
+to see a burglar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two weeks later, a groom arrived on horseback with a polite note for the
+Dowager.
+
+Mr. Weatherby presented his compliments to Mrs. Trent, and desired the
+pleasure of showing the young ladies of the Senior class through his
+art gallery on Friday next at four o'clock.
+
+The Dowager was at a loss to account for this gratuitous courtesy on the
+part of her hitherto unneighborly neighbor. After a moment of
+deliberation, she decided to meet him half way; and the groom rode back
+with an equally polite acceptance.
+
+On Friday next, as the school hearse turned in at the gates of Weatherby
+Hall, the owner stood on the portico waiting to welcome his guests. If
+there were a shade more _empressement_ in his greeting to Patty than to
+her companions, the Dowager did not notice it.
+
+He made an exceptionally attentive host. In person he conducted them
+through the gallery and pointed out the famous Botticelli. Tea was
+served at little tables set on the western terrace. Each girl found a
+gardenia at her plate and a silver bonbonnière with the St. Ursula
+monogram on the cover. After tea their host suggested a visit to the
+Italian garden. As they strolled through the paths, Patty found herself
+walking beside him and the Dowager. His conversation was addressed to
+Mrs. Trent, but an occasional amused glance was directed toward Patty.
+They turned a corner behind a marble pavilion, and came upon a fountain
+and a gardener man, intent upon a border of maiden-hair ferns.
+
+"I have a very remarkable new Swedish gardener," Mr. Weatherby casually
+remarked to the Dowager. "The man is a genius at making plants grow. He
+came highly recommended. Oscar!" he called. "Bring the ladies some of
+those tulips."
+
+The man dropped his watering-can, and approached, hat in hand. He was a
+golden-haired, blue-eyed young chap with an honest smile. He presented
+his flowers, first to the elder lady and then to Patty. As he caught her
+interested gaze, a light of comprehension suddenly leaped to his eyes.
+Her costume and make-up to-day were so very dissimilar to those which
+she had assumed on the occasion of their first meeting, that recognition
+on his part had not been instantaneous.
+
+Patty fell back a step to receive her flowers and the others strolled
+on.
+
+"I have to thank ye, Miss," he said gratefully, "for the finest job I
+ever had. It's all right!"
+
+"You know now," Patty laughed, "that I didn't pitch you no curves?"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+The Gypsy Trail
+
+
+"Heels together. Hips firm, one, two, three, four--Irene McCullough!
+_Will_ you keep your shoulders back and your stomach in? How many times
+must I tell you to stand straight? That's better! We'll start again.
+One, two, three, four."
+
+The exercise droned on. Some twenty of the week's delinquents were
+working off demerits. It was uncongenial work for a sunny Saturday. The
+twenty pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head--across ropes and
+rings and parallel bars--toward the green tree tops and the blue sky;
+and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.
+
+Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her
+orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty
+waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium
+suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any
+of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined.
+No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter
+discipline.
+
+"One, two, three, four--Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It
+isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class
+when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when
+nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order,
+"Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt.
+Break ranks."
+
+With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.
+
+"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as
+they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.
+
+"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"
+
+"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent
+insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"
+
+"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same.
+She's so--so sort of _spirited_, you know--like a skittish horse."
+
+"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the
+upper hand of Jelly once, and _just make her toe the mark_!"
+
+"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into
+your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."
+
+"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky
+mixture in the wash bowl.
+
+The fancy-dress lawn fête, which St. Ursula's School held on the last
+Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon
+the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village
+photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space
+for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven
+down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the
+trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery
+dressing-room.
+
+Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing
+at the school. They had gone as Gypsies--not comic opera Gypsies, but
+real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the
+room with their costumes for a week before the fête.) Patty wore one
+brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf.
+Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped.
+Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were
+the last word in realism.
+
+They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and
+hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a
+worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back
+stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings,
+clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never
+held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary
+indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.
+
+"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."
+
+She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet
+petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.
+
+"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the
+tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."
+
+"You impudent little ragamuffins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the
+shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your
+faces?"
+
+"Washed 'em in black coffee."
+
+Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.
+
+"You're a disgrace to the school!" she pronounced. "Don't let any
+policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."
+
+"Patty! Conny!--Hurry up. The hearse is starting."
+
+Priscilla appeared in the doorway and waved her gridiron frantically.
+Priscilla, late about finding a costume, at the last moment had
+blasphemously gone as St. Laurence, draped in a sheet, with the kitchen
+broiler under her arm.
+
+"We're coming! Tell him to wait." Patty dashed out.
+
+"Don't you want a coat?" Conny shrieked after her.
+
+"No--come on--we don't need coats."
+
+The two raced down the drive after the wagonette--Martin never waited
+for laggards; he let them run and catch up. They sprang onto the rear
+step; and half-a-dozen outstretched hands hauled them in, head first.
+
+They found the photographer's waiting-room a scene of the maddest
+confusion. When sixty excited people occupy the normal space of twelve,
+the effect is not restful.
+
+"Did anyone bring a button-hook?"
+
+"Lend me some powder."
+
+"That's _my_ safety-pin!"
+
+"Where'd you put the burnt cork?"
+
+"Is my hair a perfect sight?"
+
+"Fasten me up--please!"
+
+"Does my petticoat show?"
+
+Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.
+
+"I say, let's get out of this--I'm simply roasting!"
+
+St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the
+vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a
+shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.
+
+"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying
+on a conversation.
+
+"What?" asked the others, with interest.
+
+"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the
+electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about
+all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the
+Christmas vacation. They used to go walking together--and without any
+chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful
+fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss
+Jellings treated that man--it was _per-fect-ly dreadful_! The way she
+jumps on Irene McCullough is _nothing_ to the way she jumped on him."
+
+"_He_ doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said
+Conny simply.
+
+"He doesn't stand it any more."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Well, I--sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the
+Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly
+and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any
+attention to them at first--I'd just got to the place where the
+detective says, 'Is that the mark of a _human_ hand?'--but pretty soon
+they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort
+of embarrassed about interrupting."
+
+"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her
+apologies.
+
+"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something,
+and she wouldn't listen to a word he said--she was _perfectly horrid_.
+You know,--the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I
+don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on
+Saturday for extra gymnasium.'--Well, they kept that up for fifteen
+minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat
+and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back--_I've_ never
+seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever
+since."
+
+"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.
+
+"Yes, she _can_," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see
+that man come back, and show her her place!"
+
+The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day
+commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller
+groups disentangled themselves and posed separately, while those who
+were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others
+laugh.
+
+"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly
+be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And
+will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep
+your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count
+three. One, two, three--thank you very much!"
+
+He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.
+
+It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and
+her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground
+of superior numbers, and they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies
+politely stood aside.
+
+Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's--each playing
+the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins--made up the group. It was to be
+a symbolical picture, Keren explained.
+
+When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to
+catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front.
+It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety;
+she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with
+white basting thread.
+
+Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and
+tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with
+appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but
+these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering
+on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was
+about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle
+slung from three sticks--when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding
+quiet that had settled on the place.
+
+"Where is everybody?"
+
+She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided
+between consternation and laughter.
+
+"Patty! The hearse has gone!--And the street-car people are waiting on
+the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."
+
+"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three
+sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer,
+who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."
+
+"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us
+in the car in these clothes."
+
+"She'll have to," said Patty simply. "She can't leave us on the corner."
+
+They clattered downstairs, but wavered an instant in the friendly
+darkness of the doorway; there was no time, however, for maidenly
+hesitations, and taking their courage in both hands, they plunged into
+the Saturday afternoon crowd that thronged Main Street.
+
+"Oh, Mama! Quick! Look at the Gypsies," a little boy squealed as the two
+pushed past.
+
+"Heavens!" Conny whispered. "I feel like a circus parade."
+
+"Hurry!" Patty panted, taking her by the hand and beginning to run. "The
+car's stopped and they're getting in--Wait! Wait!" She frenziedly waved
+the tambourine above her head.
+
+An express wagon at the crossing blocked their progress. The last of the
+Eleven Thousand Virgins climbed aboard, without once glancing over her
+shoulder; and the car, unheeding, clanged away, and became a yellow spot
+in the distance. The two Gypsies stood on the corner and stared at one
+another in blank interrogation.
+
+"I haven't a cent--have you?"
+
+"Not one."
+
+"How are we going to get home?"
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+Patty felt her elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew
+Dominick Murphy, a protégé of the school, and an intimate acquaintance
+of her own, regarding her with impish delight.
+
+"Hey, youse! Give us a song and dance."
+
+"At least our friends don't recognize us," said Conny, drawing what
+comfort she could from her incognito.
+
+Quite a crowd had gathered by now, and it was rapidly growing larger.
+Pedestrians had to make a detour into the street in order to get past.
+
+"It wouldn't take us long," said Patty, a spark of mischief breaking
+through the blankness of her face, "to earn money enough for a
+carriage--you thump the tambourine and I'll dance the sailor's
+hornpipe."
+
+"Patty! Behave yourself." Conny for once brought a dampening supply of
+common sense to bear on her companion. "We're going to graduate in
+another week. For goodness' sake, _don't_ let's get expelled first."
+
+She grasped her by the elbow and shoved her insistently down a side
+street. John Drew Murphy and his friends followed for several blocks,
+but having gazed their fill, and perceiving that the Gypsies had no
+entertainment to offer, they gradually dropped away.
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" asked Conny when they had finally shaken off
+the last of the small boys.
+
+"I s'pose we could walk."
+
+"Walk!" Conny exhibited her flapping sole. "You don't expect me to walk
+three miles in that shoe?"
+
+"Very well," said Patty. "What _shall_ we do?"
+
+"We might go back to the photographer's and borrow some car-fare."
+
+"No! I'm not going to parade myself the length of Main Street again with
+_that_ hole in my stocking."
+
+"Very well," Conny shrugged. "Think of something."
+
+"I suppose we could go to the livery stable and--"
+
+"It's on the other side of town--I can't flap all that distance. Every
+time I take a step, I have to lift my foot ten inches high."
+
+"Very well." It was Patty's turn to shrug. "Perhaps you can think of
+something better?"
+
+"I think the simplest way would be to take a car, and ask the conductor
+to charge it to us."
+
+"Yes--and explain for the benefit of all the passengers that we belong
+at St. Ursula's School? It would be all over town by night, and the
+Dowager would be furious."
+
+"Very well--what shall we do?"
+
+They were standing at the moment before a comfortable frame house with
+three children romping on the veranda. The children left off their play
+to come to the top of the steps and stare.
+
+"Come on!" Patty urged. "We'll sing the 'Gypsy Trail.'" (This was the
+latest song that had swept the school.) "I'll play an accompaniment on
+the tambourine, and you can flap your sole. Maybe they'll give us ten
+cents. It would be a beautiful lark to earn our car-fare home--I'm
+_sure_ it's worth ten cents to hear me sing."
+
+Conny glanced up and down the deserted street. No policeman was in
+sight. She grudgingly allowed herself to be drawn up the walk, and the
+music began. The children applauded loudly; and the two were just
+congratulating themselves on a very credible performance, when the door
+opened and a woman appeared--a first cousin to Miss Lord.
+
+"Stop that noise immediately! There's somebody sick inside."
+
+The tone also was reminiscent of Latin. They turned and ran as fast as
+Conny's flapping sole would take her. When they had put three good
+blocks between themselves and the Latin woman, they dropped down on a
+friendly stepping-stone, and leaned against each other's shoulders and
+laughed.
+
+A man rounded the corner of the house before them, pushing a mowing
+machine.
+
+"Here, you!" he ordered. "Move on."
+
+They got up, meekly, and moved on several blocks further. They were
+going in exactly the opposite direction from St. Ursula's school, but
+they couldn't seem to hit on anything else to do, so they kept on moving
+mechanically. They had arrived in the outskirts of the village by now,
+and they presently found themselves face to face with a tall chimney
+and a group of low buildings set in a wide enclosure--the water-works
+and electric plant.
+
+A light of hope dawned in Patty's eyes.
+
+"I'll tell you! We'll go and ask Mr. Gilroy to take us home in his
+automobile."
+
+"Do you know him?" Conny asked dubiously. She had received so many
+affronts that she was growing timid.
+
+"Yes! I know him _intimately_. He was under foot every minute during the
+Christmas vacation. We had a snow fight one day. Come on! He'll love to
+run us out. It will give him an excuse to make up with Jelly."
+
+They passed up a narrow tarred walk toward the brick building labeled
+"Office." Four clerks and a typewriter girl in the outer office
+interrupted their work to laugh as the two apparitions appeared in the
+door. The young man nearest them whirled his chair around in order to
+get a better view.
+
+"Hello, girls!" he said with cheerful familiarity. "Where'd you spring
+from?"
+
+The typewriter, meanwhile, was making audible comments upon the
+discrepancies in Patty's hosiery.
+
+Patty's face flushed darkly under the coffee.
+
+"We have called to see Mr. Gilroy," she said with dignity.
+
+"This is Mr. Gilroy's busy day," the young man grinned. "Wouldn't you
+rather talk to me?"
+
+Patty drew herself up haughtily.
+
+"Please tell Mr. Gilroy--_at once_--that we are waiting to speak to
+him."
+
+"Certainly! I _beg_ your pardon." The young man sprang to his feet with
+an air of elaborate politeness. "Will you kindly give me your cards?"
+
+"I don't happen to have a card with me to-day. Just say that two ladies
+wish to speak with him."
+
+"Ah, yes. One moment, please--Won't you be seated?"
+
+He offered his own chair to Patty, and bringing forward another,
+presented it to Conny with a Chesterfieldian bow. The clerks tittered
+delightedly at this bit of comedy acting, but the Gypsies did not
+condescend to think it funny. They accepted the chairs with a frigid,
+"Thank you," and sat stiffly upright staring at the wastebasket in their
+most distant society manner. While the deferential young man was
+conveying the message to the private office of his chief, public comment
+advanced from Patty's stockings to Conny's shoes. He returned presently,
+and with unruffled politeness invited them please to step this way. He
+ushered them in with a bow.
+
+Mr. Gilroy was writing, and it was a second before he glanced up. His
+eyes widened with astonishment--the clerk had delivered the message
+verbatim. He leaned back in his chair and studied the ladies from head
+to foot, then emitted a curt:
+
+"Well?"
+
+There was not a trace of recognition in his glance.
+
+Patty's only intention had been to announce their identity, and invite
+him to deliver them at St. Ursula's door, but Patty was incapable of
+approaching any matter by the direct route when a labyrinth was also
+available. She drew a deep breath, and to Conny's consternation, plunged
+into the labyrinth.
+
+"You Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy?" she dropped a curtsy. "I come find-a you."
+
+"So I see," said Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, dryly. "And now that you've
+found me, what do you want?"
+
+"I want tell-a your fortune," Patty glibly dropped into the lingo she
+and Conny had practised on the school the night before. "You cross-a my
+hand with silver--I tell-a your fortune."
+
+This was no situation of Conny's choosing, but she was always staunchly
+game.
+
+"Nice-a fortune," she backed Patty up. "Tall young lady. Ver'
+beautiful."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!"
+
+Mr. Gilroy leaned back in his chair and regarded them severely, but with
+a gleam of amusement flickering through.
+
+"Where did you get my name?" he demanded.
+
+Patty waved her hand airily toward the open window and the distant
+horizon--as it showed between the coal sheds and the dynamo building.
+
+"Gypsy peoples, dey learn signs," she explained lucidly. "Sky, wind,
+clouds--all talk--but you no understand. I get message for you--Mr.
+Laurence K. Gilroy--and we come from long-a way off to tell-a your
+fortune." With a pathetic little gesture, she indicated their damaged
+foot gear. "Ver' tired. We travel far."
+
+Mr. Gilroy put his hand in his pocket and produced two silver half
+dollars.
+
+"Here's your money. Now be honest! What sort of a bunco game is this?
+And where in thunder did you get my name?"
+
+They pocketed the money, dropped two more curtsies, and evaded
+inconvenient questions.
+
+"We tell-a your fortune," said Conny, with business-like directness. She
+brought out the pack of cards, plumped herself cross-legged on the
+floor, and dealt them out in a wide circle. Patty seized the gentleman's
+hand in her two coffee-stained little paws, and turned it palm up for
+inspection. He made an embarrassed effort to draw away, but she clung
+with the tenacious grip of a monkey.
+
+"I see a lady!" she announced with promptitude.
+
+"Tall young lady--brown eyes, yellow hair, ver' beautiful," Conny echoed
+from the floor, as she leaned forward and intently studied the queen of
+hearts.
+
+"But she make-a you lot of trouble," Patty added, frowning over a
+blister on his hand. "I see li'l' quarrel."
+
+Mr. Gilroy's eyes narrowed. In spite of himself, he commenced to be
+interested.
+
+"You like-a her very much," pronounced Conny from below.
+
+"But you never see her any more," chimed in Patty.
+"One--two--three--four months, you no see her, no spik with her." She
+looked up into his startled eyes. "_But you think about her every day!_"
+
+He made a quick movement of withdrawal, and Patty hastily added a
+further detail.
+
+"Dat tall young lady, she ver' unhappy too. She no laugh no more like
+she used."
+
+He arrested the movement and waited with a touch of anxious curiosity to
+hear what was coming next.
+
+"She feel ver' bad--ver' cross, ver' unhappy. She thinks always 'bout
+that li'l' quarrel. Four months she sit and wait--but you never come
+back."
+
+Mr. Gilroy rose abruptly and strode to the window.
+
+His unexpected visitors had dropped from the sky at the psychological
+moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his
+desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English,
+were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, and make
+another plea for justice? St. Ursula's vacation was at hand; in a few
+days more she would be gone--and very possibly she would never come
+back. The world at large was full of men, and Miss Jellings had a taking
+way.
+
+Conny continued serenely to study her cards.
+
+"One--More--Chance!" She spoke with the authority of a Grecian sibyl.
+"You try again, you win. No try, you lose."
+
+Patty leaned over Conny's shoulder, eager to supply a salutary bit of
+advice.
+
+"Dat tall young lady too much--" she hesitated a moment for fitting
+expression--"too much head in air. Too _bossy_. You make-a her mind?
+Understand?"
+
+Conny, gazing at the round-faced, chubby Jack of Diamonds, had received
+a new idea.
+
+"I see 'nother man," she murmured. "Red hair and--and--_fat_. Not too
+good-looking but--"
+
+"_Very dangerous!_" interpolated Patty. "You have no time to waste. He
+comes soon."
+
+Now, they had fabricated this detail out of nothing in the world but
+pure fancy and the Jack of Diamonds, but as it happened, they had
+touched an open wound. It was an exact description of a certain rich
+young man in the neighboring city, who loaded Miss Jellings with favors,
+and whom Mr. Gilroy detested from the bottom of his soul. All that
+afternoon, mixed in with his promptings and hesitations and travail of
+spirit, had loomed large, the fair, plump features of his fancied rival.
+Mr. Gilroy was a common-sense young business man, as free as most from
+superstition; but when a man's in love he is open to omens.
+
+He stared fixedly about the familiar office and out at the coal sheds
+and dynamo, to make sure that he was still on solid earth. His gaze came
+back to his visitors from the sky in absolute, anxious, pleading
+bewilderment.
+
+They were studying the cards again in a frowning endeavor to wrest a few
+further items from their overtaxed imaginations. Patty felt that she had
+already given him fifty cents' worth, and was wondering how to bring the
+interview to a graceful end. She realized that they had carried the
+farce too impertinently far, ever to be able to announce their identity
+and suggest a ride home. The only course now, was to preserve their
+incognito, make good their escape, and get back as best they could--at
+least they had a dollar to aid in the journey!
+
+She glanced up, mentally framing a peroration.
+
+"I see good-a fortune," she commenced, "if--"
+
+Her glance passed him to the open window, and her heart missed a beat.
+Mrs. Trent and Miss Sarah Trent, come to complain about the new electric
+lights, were serenely descending from their carriage, not twenty feet
+away.
+
+Patty's hand clutched Conny's shoulder in a spasmodic grasp.
+
+"Sallie and the Dowager!" she hissed in her ear. "Follow me!"
+
+With a sweep of her hand, Patty scrambled the cards together and rose.
+There would be no chance to escape by the door; the Dowager's voice was
+already audible in the outer office.
+
+"Goo' by!" said Patty, springing to the window. "Gypsies call. We must
+go."
+
+She scrambled over the sill and dropped eight feet to the ground. Conny
+followed. They were both able pupils of Miss Jellings.
+
+Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, open-mouthed, stood staring at the spot where
+they had been. The next instant, he was bowing courteously to the
+principals of St. Ursula's, and striving hard to concentrate a dazed
+mind upon the short-circuit in the West Wing.
+
+Patty and Conny left the car--and a number of interested passengers--at
+the corner before they reached the school. Circumnavigating the wall,
+until they were opposite the stables, they approached the house modestly
+by the back way. They had the good fortune to encounter no one more
+dangerous than the cook (who gave them some gingerbread) and they
+ultimately reached their home in Paradise Alley none the worse for the
+adventure--and ninety cents to the good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the long, light evenings came, St. Ursula's no longer filled in the
+interim between dinner and evening study with indoor dancing, but
+romped about on the lawn outside. To-night, being Saturday, there was no
+evening study to call them in, and everybody was abroad. The school year
+was almost over, the long vacation was at hand--the girls were as full
+of bubbling spirits as sixty-four young lambs. Games of blindman's-buff,
+and pussy-wants-a-corner, and cross-tag were all in progress at once. A
+band of singers on the gymnasium steps was drowning out a smaller band
+on the porte-cochère; half-a-dozen hoop-rollers were trotting around the
+oval, and scattered groups of strollers, meeting in the narrow paths,
+were hailing each other with cheerful calls.
+
+Patty and Conny and Priscilla, washed and dressed and chastened, were
+wandering arm in arm through the summer twilight, talking--a trifle
+soberly--of the long-looked-forward-to future that was now so
+oppressively close upon them.
+
+"You know," Patty spoke with a sort of frightened gulp--"in another week
+we'll be _grown-up_!"
+
+They stopped and silently looked back toward the gay crowd romping on
+the lawn, toward the big brooding house, that through four tempestuous,
+hilarious, care-free years had sheltered them so kindly. Grown-upness
+seemed a barren state. They longed to stretch out their hands and clutch
+the childhood that they had squandered with so little thought.
+
+"Oh, it's horrible!" Conny breathed with sudden fierceness. "_I want to
+stay young!_"
+
+In this unsocial mood, they refused an offered game of hare-and-hounds,
+and evading the singers on the gymnasium steps--the song was the "Gypsy
+Trail"--they sauntered on down the pergola to the lane, sprinkled with
+fallen apple blossoms. At the end of the lane, they came suddenly upon
+two other solitary strollers, and stopped short with a gasp of
+unbelieving wonder.
+
+"It's Jelly!" Conny whispered.
+
+"And Mr. Gilroy," Patty echoed.
+
+"Shall we run?" asked Conny, in a panic.
+
+"No," said Patty, "pretend not to notice him at all."
+
+The three advanced with eyes discreetly bent upon the ground, but Miss
+Jellings greeted them gaily as she passed. There was an intangible,
+excited, happy thrill about her manner--something _electric_, Patty
+said.
+
+"Hello, you bad little Gypsies!"
+
+It was a peculiarly infelicitous salutation, but she was smilingly
+unconscious of any slip.
+
+"_Gypsies?_"
+
+Mr. Gilroy repeated the word, and his benumbed faculties began to work.
+He stopped and scanned the trio closely. They were clothed in dainty
+muslin, three as sweet young girls as one would ever meet. But Patty and
+Conny, even in the failing light, were still noticeably brunette--it
+takes boiling water to get out coffee stain.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He drew a deep breath of enlightenment, while many emotions struggled
+for supremacy in his face. Conny dropped her gaze embarrassedly to the
+ground; Patty threw back her head and faced him. He and she eyed each
+other for a silent instant. In that glance, each asked the other not to
+tell--and each mutely promised.
+
+The breeze brought the chorus of the "Gypsy Trail"; and as they
+sauntered on, Miss Jellings fell softly to humming the words in tune
+with the distant singers:
+
+          "And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
+           Ever the wide world over.
+           Ever the wide world over, lass,
+           Ever the trail held true
+           Over the world and under the world
+           And back at the last to you.
+               Follow the Romany patteran--"
+
+The words died away in the shadows.
+
+Conny and Patty and Priscilla stood hand in hand and looked after them.
+
+"The school has lost Jelly!" Patty said, "and I'm afraid that we're to
+blame, Con, dear."
+
+"I'm glad of it!" Conny spoke with feeling. "She's much too nice to
+spend her whole life telling Irene McCullough to stand up straight and
+keep her stomach held in."
+
+"Anyway," Patty added, "he has no right to be angry, because--without
+us--he never would have dared."
+
+They kept on across the meadow till they came to the pasture bars, where
+they leaned in a row with their heads tipped back, scanning the
+darkening sky. Miss Jellings's mood was somehow catching; the little
+contretemps had stirred them strangely. They felt the thrill of the
+untried future, with Romance waiting around the corner.
+
+"You know," Conny broke silence after a long pause--"I think, after all,
+maybe it will be sort of interesting."
+
+"What?" asked Priscilla.
+
+She stretched out her arm in a wide gesture that comprised the night.
+
+"Oh, everything!"
+
+Priscilla nodded understandingly, and presently added with an air of
+challenge:
+
+"I've changed my mind. I don't believe I'll go to college."
+
+"Not go to college!" Patty echoed blankly. "Why not?"
+
+"I think--I'll get married instead."
+
+"Oh!" Patty laughed softly. "_I_ am going to do both!"
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 21, "chose" changed to "choose" (endeavor to choose)
+
+Page 35, "Cony" changed to "Conny" (Conny Wilder in dramatics)
+
+Page 36, "Rosaile" changed to "Rosalie" (When Rosalie chanced)
+
+Page 76, "or" changed to "of" (majority of the)
+
+Page 85, "exhanced" changed to "enhanced" (are enhanced by)
+
+Page 86, "skurried" changed to "scurried" (she scurried off)
+
+Page 92, "Sally" changed to "Sallie" ( Miss Sallie affably)
+
+Page 107, "Connie" changed to "Conny" (Conny murmured fervently)
+
+Page 109, "wail" changed to "wait" (Just wait till)
+
+Page 152, "esthetic" changed to "æsthetic" (rather than æsthetic)
+
+Page 206, "same" changed to "some" (There was some)
+
+Page 230, "or" changed to "of" (quiet confines of)
+
+Page 247, "cheery" changed to "cherry" (of the cherry tree)
+
+Page 320, "freindly" changed to "friendly" (the friendly darkness)
+
+Page 329, "airly" changed to "airily" (her hand airily)
+
+Page 330, "sings" changed to "signs" (dey learn signs)
+
+Page 338, "tempestous" changed to "tempestuous" (through four
+tempestuous)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
+
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diff --git a/21048-8.zip b/21048-8.zip
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
+/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+<!--
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Just Patty
+
+Author: Jean Webster
+
+Illustrator: C. M. Relyea
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21048]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUST PATTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'><a name="front" id="front"></a>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Front matter">
+<tr><td align='left'><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="245" height="400" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</td><td align='center'><br /><img src="images/frontis.jpg" width="228" height="400" alt="&quot;I want a new room-mate&quot;" title="&quot;I want a new room-mate&quot;" />
+<br /><span class="caption">&quot;I want a new room-mate&quot;</span>
+</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>Just Patty</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3> <h2>Jean Webster</h2>
+
+<div class='center'>
+Author of<br />
+When Patty Went to College<br />
+Daddy Long Legs, Etc.<br />
+<br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h3>Illustrated by<br />
+C. M. Relyea<br /><br /><br /><br />
+</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.png" width="60" height="50" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'><br /><br /><br /><big>THE CENTURY CO.</big><br />
+NEW YORK</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='center'>
+<small>Copyright, 1911, by</small><br />
+<span class="smcap"><small>The Century Co.</small></span><br />
+<small>Copyright, 1911, by</small> <span class="smcap"><small>The</small></span><br />
+<span class="smcap"><small>Curtis Publishing Company</small></span><br />
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 15%;' />
+
+<div class='center'><i><small>Published, October, 1911</small></i><br />
+<br /><br /><br /><br />
+<small>PRINTED IN U. S. A.</small></div>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='center'>MADE AT INNISFREE</div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="spine and contents">
+<tr><td align='left'><img src="images/spine.jpg" width="90" height="400" alt="Spine" title="Spine" />
+</td><td align='left'><div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><span class="smcap">chapter</span></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>I</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Reform</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>II</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Romantic History of Cuthbert St. John</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_33'>33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>III</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Virgil Strike</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>IV</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Third Man from the End</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_99'>99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>V</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Flannigan Honeymoon</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>VI</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Silver Buckles</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_149'>149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>VII</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">"Uncle Bobby"</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_181'>181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>VIII</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Society of Associated Sirens</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_199'>199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>IX</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Reformation of Kid McCoy</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>X</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Onions and Orchids</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_247'>247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>XI</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Lemon Pie and the Monkey-Wrench</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_273'>273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'><small>XII</small></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Gypsy Trail</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_309'>309</a></td></tr>
+</table></div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>List of Illustrations</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td align='left'>"I want a new room-mate!"</td><td align='center'><a href='#front'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='center'><span class="smcap">facing page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Patty just had time to snatch the box</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_174'>174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_286'>286</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Just Patty</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3>Reform</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 98px;">
+<img src="images/i.png" width="98" height="100" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>T'S a shame!" said Priscilla.</div>
+
+<p>"It's an outrage!" said Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"It's an insult!" said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"To separate us now after we've been together three years&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And it isn't as though we were <i>awfully</i> bad last year. Lots of girls
+had more demerits."</p>
+
+<p>"Only our badness was sort of conspicuous," Patty admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"But we were <i>very</i> good the last three weeks," reminded Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"And you should see my new room-mate!" wailed Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't be any worse than Irene McCullough."</p>
+
+<p>"She is!&mdash;Her father's a missionary, and she was brought up in China.
+Her name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> is Keren-happuch Hersey, after Job's youngest daughter. And
+she doesn't think it's funny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Irene," said Conny gloomily, "gained twenty pounds through the summer.
+She weighs&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you should see mine!" cried Patty, in exasperation. "Her name is
+Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale."</p>
+
+<p>"Keren studies every second; and expects me to walk on tiptoe so she can
+concentrate."</p>
+
+<p>"You should hear Mae Mertelle talk! She said her father was a financier,
+and wanted to know what mine was. I told her he was a reform judge, and
+that he spent his time putting financiers in prison. She says I'm an
+impertinent child," Patty grinned feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's nineteen, and has been proposed to twice."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy! Whatever made her choose St. Ursula's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Her father and mother ran away and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> got married when they were
+nineteen, and they're afraid she inherited the tendency. So they picked
+out a good, strict, church school. Mae doesn't know how she's ever going
+to fix her hair without a maid. She's awfully superstitious about
+moonstones. She never wears anything but silk stockings and she can't
+stand hash. I'll have to teach her how to make a bed. She always crosses
+on the White Star Line."</p>
+
+<p>Patty scattered these details at random. The others listened
+sympathetically, and added a few of their own troubles.</p>
+
+<p>"Irene weighs a hundred and fifty-nine pounds and six ounces, not
+counting her clothes," said Conny. "She brought two trunks <i>loaded</i> with
+candy. She has it hidden all over the room. The last sound I hear at
+night, is Irene crunching chocolates&mdash;and the first sound in the
+morning. She never says anything; she simply chews. It's like rooming
+with a cow. And I have a sweet collection of neighbors! Kid McCoy's
+across the hall, and she makes more noise than half-a-dozen cowboys.
+There's a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> French girl next door&mdash;you know, the pretty little one
+with the two black braids."</p>
+
+<p>"She looks rather desirable," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"She might be if she could talk, but she only knows about fifty words.
+Harriet Gladden's rooming with her, as limp and mournful as an oyster,
+and Evalina Smith's at the end of the corridor. You know what a
+<i>perfect</i> idiot Evalina is."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's beastly!" they agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy's to blame," said Conny. "The Dowager never would have separated
+us if she hadn't interfered."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've got her!" wailed Patty. "You two have Mam'selle and Waddams,
+and they're nice, sweet, unsuspicious lambs; but the girls in the East
+Wing simply can't sneeze but Lordy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!" Conny warned. "Here she comes."</p>
+
+<p>The Latin teacher, in passing, paused on the threshold. Conny
+disentangled herself from the mixture of clothes and books and sofa
+cushions that littered the bed, and politely rose to her feet. Patty
+slid down from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> the white iron foot-rail, and Priscilla descended from
+the top of the trunk.</p>
+
+<p>"Ladies don't perch about on the furniture."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Lord," they murmured in unison, gazing back from three pairs
+of wide, uplifted eyes. They knew, from gleeful past experience, that
+nothing so annoyed her as smiling acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord's eyes critically studied the room. Patty was still in
+traveling dress.</p>
+
+<p>"Put on your uniform, Patty, and finish unpacking. The trunks go down
+to-morrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Priscilla and Constance, why aren't you out of doors with the other
+girls, enjoying this beautiful autumn weather?"</p>
+
+<p>"But we haven't seen Patty for such a long time, and now that we are
+separated&mdash;" commenced Conny, with a pathetic droop of her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"I trust that your lessons will benefit by the change. You, Patty and
+Priscilla, are going to college, and should realize the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> necessity of
+being prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that you lay here depends
+your success for the next four years&mdash;for your whole lives, one might
+say. Patty is weak in mathematics and Priscilla in Latin. Constance
+<i>could</i> improve her French. Let us see what you can do when you really
+try."</p>
+
+<p>She divided a curt nod between the three and withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>"We are happy in our work and we dearly love our teachers," chanted
+Patty, with ironical emphasis, as she rummaged out a blue skirt and
+middy blouse with "St. U." in gold upon the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>While she was dressing, Priscilla and Conny set about transferring the
+contents of her trunk to her bureau, in whatever order the articles
+presented themselves&mdash;but with a carefully folded top layer. The
+overworked young teacher, who performed the ungrateful task of
+inspecting sixty-four bureaus and sixty-four closets every Saturday
+morning, was happily of an unsuspicious nature. She did not penetrate
+below the crust.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Lordy needn't make such a fuss over my standing," said Priscilla,
+frowning over an armful of clothes. "I passed everything except Latin."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, Pris! You're walking on my new dancing dress," cried Patty,
+as her head emerged from the neck of the blouse.</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla automatically stepped off a mass of blue chiffon, and resumed
+her plaint.</p>
+
+<p>"If they think sticking me in with Job's youngest daughter is going to
+improve my prose composition&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I simply <i>can't</i> study till they take Irene McCullough out of my room,"
+Conny echoed. "She's just like a lump of sticky dough."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait till you get acquainted with Mae Mertelle!" Patty sat on the floor
+in the midst of the chaos, and gazed up at the other two with wide,
+solemn eyes. "She brought five evening gowns cut low, and all her shoes
+have French heels. And she <i>laces</i>&mdash;my dears! She just holds in her
+breath and pulls. But that isn't the worst." She lowered her voice to a
+confidential whisper.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> "She's got some red stuff in a bottle. She says
+it's for her finger nails, but I <i>saw</i> her putting it on her face."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;not really?" in a horrified whisper from Conny and Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>Patty shut her lips and nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it dreadful?"</p>
+
+<p>"Awful!" Conny shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, let's mutiny!" cried Priscilla. "Let's <i>make</i> the Dowager give
+us back our old rooms in Paradise Alley."</p>
+
+<p>"But how?" inquired Patty, two parallel wrinkles appearing on her
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her that unless she does, we won't stay."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be sensible!" Patty jeered. "She'd ring the bell and order
+Martin to hitch up the hearse and drive us to the station for the
+six-thirty train. I should think you'd know by this time that you can't
+bluff the Dowager."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no use threatening," Conny agreed. "We must appeal to her
+feeling of&mdash;of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Affection," said Patty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Conny stretched out a hand and brought her up standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Patty, you're good at talking. We'll go down now while our
+courage is up.&mdash;Are your hands clean?"</p>
+
+<p>The three staunchly approached the door of Mrs. Trent's private study.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll use diplomacy," Patty whispered, as she turned the knob in
+response to the summons from within. "You people nod your heads at
+everything I say."</p>
+
+<p>Patty did use all the diplomacy at her command. Having dwelt touchingly
+upon their long friendship, and their sorrow at being separated, she
+passed lightly to the matter of their new room-mates.</p>
+
+<p>"They are doubtless very nice girls," she ended politely, "only, you
+see, Mrs. Trent, they don't match us; and it is extremely hard to
+concentrate one's mind upon lessons, unless one has a congenial
+room-mate."</p>
+
+<p>Patty's steady, serious gaze suggested that lessons were the end of her
+existence. A brief smile flitted over the Dowager's face, but the next
+instant she was grave again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is very necessary that we study this year," Patty added. "Priscilla
+and I are going to college, and we realize the necessity of being
+prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that we lay here, depends our
+success for the next four years&mdash;for our whole lives you might say."</p>
+
+<p>Conny jogged her elbow warningly. It was too patently a crib from Miss
+Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"And besides," Patty added hastily, "all my things are blue, and Mae has
+a purple screen and a yellow sofa cushion."</p>
+
+<p>"That is awkward," the Dowager admitted.</p>
+
+<p>"We are used to living in Paradise Al&mdash;I mean, the West Wing&mdash;and we
+shall&mdash;er&mdash;miss the sunsets."</p>
+
+<p>The Dowager allowed an anxious silence to follow, while she thoughtfully
+tapped the desk with her lorgnette. The three studied her face with
+speculative eyes. It was a mask they could not penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>"The present arrangement is more or less temporary," she commenced in
+equable tones.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> "I may find it expedient to make some changes, and I may
+not. We have an unusual number of new girls this year; and instead of
+putting them together, it has seemed wisest to mix them with the old
+girls. You three have been with us a long time. You know the traditions
+of the school. Therefore&mdash;" The Dowager smiled, a smile partially tinged
+with amusement&mdash;"I am sending you as missionaries among the newcomers. I
+wish you to make your influence felt."</p>
+
+<p>Patty straightened her back and stared.</p>
+
+<p>"Our influence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your new room-mate," Mrs. Trent continued imperturbably, "is too
+grown-up for her years. She has lived in fashionable hotels, and under
+such conditions, it is inevitable that a girl should become somewhat
+affected. See if you cannot arouse in Mae an interest in girlish sports.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Constance, are rooming with Irene McCullough. She is, as you
+know, an only child, and I fear has been a trifle spoiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> It would
+please me if you could waken her to a higher regard for the spiritual
+side of life, and less care for material things."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I'll try," Conny stammered, dazed at so suddenly finding herself
+cast in the unfamiliar r&ocirc;le of moral reformer.</p>
+
+<p>"And you have next to you the little French girl, Aurelie Deraismes. I
+should be pleased, Constance, if you would assume an oversight of her
+school career. She can help you to a more idiomatic knowledge of
+French&mdash;and you can do the same for her in English.</p>
+
+<p>"You, Priscilla, are rooming with&mdash;" She adjusted her lorgnette and
+consulted a large chart.&mdash;"Ah, yes, Keren Hersey, a very unusual girl.
+You two will find many subjects of mutual interest. The daughter of a
+naval officer should have much in common with the daughter of a
+missionary. Keren bids fair to become an earnest student&mdash;almost, if
+such a thing were possible, too earnest. She has never had any girl
+companions, and knows nothing of the give and take of school life. She
+can teach you, Priscilla,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> to be more studious, and you can teach her to
+be more, shall I say, flexible?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Trent," Priscilla murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"And so," the Dowager finished, "I am sending you out in my place, as
+moral reformers. I want the older girls to set an example to the
+newcomers. I wish to have the real government of the school a strong,
+healthy Public Opinion. You three exert a great deal of influence. See
+what you can do in the directions I have indicated&mdash;and in others that
+may occur to you as you mix with your companions. I have watched you
+carefully for three years, and in your fundamental good sense, I have
+the greatest confidence."</p>
+
+<p>She nodded dismissal, and the three found themselves in the hall again.
+They looked at one another for a moment of blank silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Moral reformers!" Conny gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"I see through the Dowager," said Patty, "She thinks she's found a new
+method of managing us."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't see that we're getting back to Paradise Alley," Priscilla
+complained.</p>
+
+<p>Patty's eyes suddenly brightened. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> seized them each by an elbow and
+shoved them into the empty schoolroom.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do what?" asked Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"Pitch right in and reform the school. If we just keep at
+it&mdash;steady&mdash;you'll see! We'll be back in Paradise Alley at the end of
+two weeks."</p>
+
+<p>"Um," said Priscilla, thoughtfully. "I believe we might."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll commence with Irene," said Conny, her mind eagerly jumping to
+details, "and make her lose that twenty pounds. That's what the Dowager
+meant when she said she wanted her less material."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have her thin in no time," Patty nodded energetically. "And we'll
+give Mae Mertelle a dose of bubbling girlishness."</p>
+
+<p>"And Keren," interposed Priscilla, "we'll teach her to become frivolous
+and neglect her lessons."</p>
+
+<p>"But we won't just confine ourselves to those three," said Conny. "The
+Dowager said to make our influence felt over the whole school."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" Patty agreed, rising to enthusiasm as she called the school
+roll. "Kid McCoy uses too much slang. We'll teach her manners. Rosalie
+doesn't like to study. We'll pour her <i>full</i> of algebra and Latin.
+Harriet Gladden's a jelly fish, Mary Deskam's an awful little liar,
+Evalina Smith's a silly goose, Nancy Lee's a telltale&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When you stop to think about it, there's something the matter with
+everybody," said Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"Except us," amended Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Y&mdash;yes," Patty agreed in thoughtful retrospection, "I can't think of a
+thing the matter with us&mdash;I don't wonder they chose us to head the
+reform!"</p>
+
+<p>Conny slid to her feet, a bundle of energy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on! We'll join our little playmates and begin the good
+work&mdash;Hooray for the great Reform Party!"</p>
+
+<p>They scrambled out of the open window, in a fashion foreign to the
+dictates of Thursday evening manner class. Crowds of girls in blue middy
+blouses were gathered in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> groups about the recreation ground. The three
+paused to reconnoiter.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Irene, still chewing." Conny nodded toward a comfortable bench
+set in the shade by the tennis courts.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a circus," Patty proposed. "We'll make Irene and Mae
+Mertelle roll hoops around the oval. That will kill 'em both with one
+stone&mdash;Irene will get thin, and Mae Mertelle girlish."</p>
+
+<p>Hoop-rolling was a speciality of St. Ursula's. The gymnasium instructor
+believed in teaching girls to run. Eleven times around the oval
+constituted a mile, and a mile of hoop-rolling freed one for the day
+from dumb-bells and Indian clubs. The three dived into the cellar, and
+returned with hoops as tall as themselves. Patty assumed command of the
+campaign and issued her orders.</p>
+
+<p>"Conny, you take a walk with Keren and shock her as much as possible; we
+must break her of being precise. And Pris, you take charge of Mae
+Mertelle. Don't let her put on any grown-up airs. If she tells you she's
+been proposed to twice, tell her you've<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> been proposed to so many times
+that you've lost count. Keep her snubbed all the time. I'll be elephant
+trainer and start Irene running; she'll be a graceful gazelle by the
+time I finish."</p>
+
+<p>They parted on their several missions. St. Ursula's peace had ended. She
+was in the throes of reform.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On Friday evening two weeks later, an unofficial faculty meeting was
+convened in the Dowager's study. "Lights-out" had rung five minutes
+before, and three harried teachers, relieved of duty for nine blessed
+hours while their little charges slept, were discussing their troubles
+with their chief.</p>
+
+<p>"But just what have they done?" inquired Mrs. Trent, in tones of
+judicial calm, as she vainly tried to stop the flood of interjections.</p>
+
+<p>"It is difficult to put one's finger on the precise facts," Miss
+Wadsworth quavered. "They have not broken any rules so far as I can
+discover, but they have&mdash;er&mdash;created an atmosphere&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Every girl in my corridor," said Miss Lord, with compressed lips, "has
+come to me separately, and begged to have Patty moved back to the West
+Wing with Constance and Priscilla."</p>
+
+<p>"Patty! <i>Mon Dieu!</i>" Mademoiselle rolled a pair of speaking eyes to
+heaven. "The things that child thinks of! She is one little imp."</p>
+
+<p>"You remember," the Dowager addressed Miss Lord, "I said when you
+suggested separating them, that it was a very doubtful experiment.
+Together, they exhaust their effervescence on each other; separated&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They exhaust the whole school!" cried Miss Wadsworth, on the verge of
+tears. "Of course they don't mean it, but their unfortunate
+dispositions&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mean it!" Miss Lord's eyes snapped. "Their heads are together
+planning fresh escapades every moment they are not in class."</p>
+
+<p>"But what have they done?" persisted Mrs. Trent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Wadsworth hesitated a moment in an endeavor to <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'chose'">choose</ins> examples from
+the wealth of material that presented itself.</p>
+
+<p>"I found Priscilla deliberately stirring up the contents of Keren's
+bureau drawers with a shinny stick, and when I asked what she was doing,
+she replied without the least embarrassment, that she was trying to
+teach Keren to be less exact; that Mrs. Trent had asked her to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Um," mused the Dowager, "that was not my precise request, but no
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"But the thing that has really troubled me the most," Miss Wadsworth
+spoke diffidently, "is a matter almost a blasphemy. Keren has a very
+religious turn of mind, but an unfortunate habit of saying her prayers
+out loud. One night, after a peculiarly trying day, she prayed that
+Priscilla might be forgiven for being so aggravating. Whereupon
+Priscilla knelt before her bed, and prayed that Keren might become less
+self-righteous and stubborn, and more ready to join in the sports of her
+playmates with gen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>erosity and openness of spirit. They carried
+on&mdash;well, really, one might almost call it a praying match."</p>
+
+<p>"Shocking!" cried Miss Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"And little Aurelie Deraismes&mdash;they have been drilling the child
+in&mdash;er&mdash;idiomatic English. The phrase that I overheard her repeating,
+seemed scarcely the expression that a lady would use."</p>
+
+<p>"What was it?" inquired the Dowager, with a slightly expectant note.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be <i>gum-swizzled!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wadsworth colored a deep pink. It was foreign to her nature even to
+repeat so doubtful an expression.</p>
+
+<p>The Dowager's lips twitched. It was a fact, deplored by her assistants,
+that her sense of humor frequently ran away with her sense of justice. A
+very naughty little girl, if she managed to be funny, might hope to
+escape; whereas an equally naughty little girl, who was not funny, paid
+the full penalty of her crime. Fortunately, however, the school at large
+had not discovered this vulnerable spot in the Dowager's armor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Their influence," it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the
+school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room
+any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know what the trouble is, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it!" said Mademoiselle. "The whole school laughs. It is touching
+the question of a <i>sweetch</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Of what?" The Dowager cocked her head. Mademoiselle's English was at
+times difficult. She mixed her languages impartially.</p>
+
+<p>"A sweetch&mdash;some hair&mdash;to make pompadour. Last week when they have
+tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a
+beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and
+the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin&mdash;entirely ruin&mdash;and
+Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but
+since it will not wash, she has suggest to Mae that she color her own
+hair to match the sweetch, and Mae lose her temper and call names. Then
+Patty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> has pretend to cry, and she put the green hair on Mae's bed with
+a wreath of flowers around, and she hang a stocking on the door for
+crape, and invite the girls to come to the funeral, and everybody laugh
+at Mae."</p>
+
+<p>"It's just as well," said the Dowager, unmoved. "I do not wish to favor
+the wearing of false hair."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the principle of the thing," said Miss Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"And that poor Irene McCullough," Mademoiselle continued the tale, "she
+dissolves herself in tears. Those three insist that she make herself
+thin, and she has no wish to become thin."</p>
+
+<p>"They take away her butter-ball," corroborated Miss Wadsworth, "before
+she comes to the table; they make her go without dessert, and they do
+not allow her to eat sugar on her oatmeal. They keep her exercising
+every moment, and when she complains to me, they punish her."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think," the Dowager spoke with a touch of sarcasm, "that Irene
+were big enough to take care of herself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She has three against her," reminded Miss Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"I called Patty to my room," said Miss Wadsworth, "and demanded an
+explanation. She told me that Mrs. Trent thought that Irene was too fat,
+and wished them to reduce her twenty pounds! Patty said that it was hard
+work, they were getting thin themselves, but they realized that they
+were seniors and must exert an influence over the school. I really think
+she was sincere. She talked very sweetly about moral responsibility, and
+the necessity of the older girls setting an example."</p>
+
+<p>"It is her impudence," said Miss Lord, "that is so exasperating."</p>
+
+<p>"That's&mdash;just Patty!" the Dowager laughed. "I must confess that I find
+all three of them amusing. It's good, healthy mischief and I wish there
+were more of it. They don't bribe the maids to mail letters, or smuggle
+in candy, or flirt with the soda-water clerk. They at least can be
+trusted."</p>
+
+<p>"Trusted!" gasped Miss Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"To break every minor rule with cheerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> unconcern," nodded the
+Dowager, "but never to do the slightest thing dishonorable. They have
+kind hearts and the girls all love them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A knock sounded on the door with startling suddenness, and before anyone
+could reply, the door burst open and Keren-happuch appeared on the
+threshold. She was clutching with one hand the folds of a brilliant
+Japanese kimono, the other she reserved for gestures. The kimono was
+sprinkled with fire-eating dragons as large as cats; and to the
+astonished spectators, Keren's flushed face and disheveled hair seemed
+to carry out the decorative scheme. The Dowager's private study was a
+sacred spot, reserved for interviews of formality; never had a pupil
+presented herself in such unceremonious garb.</p>
+
+<p>"Keren!" cried Miss Wadsworth. "What has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want a new room-mate! I can't stand Priscilla any longer. She's been
+having a birthday party in my room&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A birthday party?" Mrs. Trent turned questioningly to Miss Wadsworth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She nodded unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday was Priscilla's birthday, and she received a box from her
+aunt. This being Friday night, I gave her permission&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." The Dowager turned to the tragic figure in the center of
+the floor. "It is Priscilla's room as much as yours and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Keren plunged into a sea of words. The four leaned forward in a strained
+endeavor to pluck some sense from the torrent.</p>
+
+<p>"They used my bed for a table because it wasn't against the wall, and
+Patty tipped a pot of chocolate over in the middle of it. She said it
+was an accident&mdash;but she did it on purpose&mdash;I know she did! And because
+I objected, Priscilla said it wasn't polite to notice when a guest
+spilled anything, and she tipped a glass of current jelly on my pillow,
+to make Patty feel comfortable. That was the polite thing for a hostess
+to do, she said; they learned it last year in manner class. And the
+chocolate soaked right through, and Conny Wilder said it was fortunate I
+was thin, because I could sleep in a curve around it; if it had happened
+to Irene McCullough,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> she would have had to sleep in it, because she's
+so big she takes up the whole bed. And Priscilla said I could be
+thankful to-morrow's Saturday when we get clean sheets; it might have
+happened so that I would have had to sleep in that puddle of chocolate a
+whole week. And then the "Lights-out" rang, and they left me to clean
+up, and the housekeeper's gone to bed, and I can't get any fresh bed
+clothes, and I <i>won't</i> sleep that way! I'm not used to sleeping in
+chocolaty sheets. I don't like America and I <i>hate</i> girls."</p>
+
+<p>Tears were dripping from Keren's cheeks onto the fire-breathing dragons
+below. The Dowager, without comment, rose and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>"Katie," she said, as the maid on duty appeared at the door, "some fresh
+sheets for Miss Keren, please, and remake her bed. That will do for
+to-night, Keren. Get to sleep as quickly as possible, and don't talk.
+You mustn't disturb the other girls. We can see about changing
+room-mates to-morrow."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katie and the outraged dragons withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>A silence followed, while Miss Wadsworth and Mademoiselle exchanged
+glances of despair, and Miss Lord buckled on her war armor.</p>
+
+<p>"You see!" she said, with a suggestion of triumph, "when they get to the
+point of persecuting a poor little&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In my experience of school life," said Mrs. Trent judicially, "it is a
+girl's own fault when she is persecuted. Their methods are crude, but to
+the point. Keren is a hopeless little prig&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But at least you can't allow her to suffer&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, I shall do what I can toward peace. To-morrow morning, Keren
+can move in with Irene McCullough, and Patty and Conny and Priscilla go
+back to their old rooms in the West Wing. You, Mademoiselle, are
+somewhat inured&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not mind them together. They are just&mdash;what you
+say?&mdash;exhilarating. It is when they are spread out that it is
+difficult."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You mean," Miss Lord stared&mdash;"that you are going to <i>reward</i> their
+disgraceful conduct? It is exactly what they have been working for."</p>
+
+<p>"You must acknowledge," smiled the Dowager, "that they have worked hard.
+Perseverance deserves success."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The next morning, Patty and Conny and Priscilla, their arms running over
+with dresses and hats and sofa cushions, gaily two-stepped down the
+length of "Paradise Alley" while a relieved school assisted at the
+flitting. As they caught sight of Miss Lord hovering in the offing, they
+broke into the chorus of a popular school song:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="We like to go to chapel">
+<tr><td align='left'>"We like to go to chapel</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And listen to the preachers,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">We are happy in our work,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And we dearly love our teachers.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Daughters of Saint Ur-su-la!"</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3>The Romantic History of Cuthbert St. John</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/t.png" width="100" height="100" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>HE DOWAGER" had a very sensible theory that boarding-school girls
+should be kept little girls, until their school life was over, and they
+stepped out, fresh and eager and spontaneous, to greet the grown-up
+world. Saint Ursula's was a cloister, in fact, as in name. The masculine
+half of the human species was not supposed to count.</div>
+
+<p>Sometimes a new girl was inclined to turn up her nose at the youthful
+pastimes that contented her companions. But in the end she would be
+drawn irresistibly into the current. She would learn to jump rope and
+roll hoops; to participate in paper chases 'cross country; to skate and
+coast and play hockey on winter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> afternoons, to enjoy molasses-candy
+pulls and popcorn around the big open fire on Saturday nights, or
+impromptu masquerades, when the school raided the trunks in the attic
+for costumes. After a few weeks' time, the most spoiled little worldling
+lost her consciousness of calls outside of "bounds," and surrendered to
+the spirit of the youthful sisterhood.</p>
+
+<p>But the girls in their teens answer readily to the call of <span class="smcap">romance</span>. And
+occasionally, in the twilight hour between afternoon study and the
+dressing bell, as they gathered in the window-seat with faces to the
+western sky, the talk would turn to the future&mdash;particularly when
+Rosalie Patton was of the group. Pretty, dainty, inconsequential little
+Rosalie was pre&euml;minently fashioned for romance; it clung to her golden
+hair and looked from her eyes. She might be extremely hazy as to the
+difference between participles and supines, she might hesitate on her
+definition of a parallelopiped, but when the subject under discussion
+was one of sentiment, she spoke with conviction. For hers was no mere
+theoretical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> knowledge; it was gained by personal experience. Rosalie
+had been proposed to!</p>
+
+<p>She confided the details to her most intimate friends, and they confided
+them to their most intimate friends, until finally, the whole school
+knew the entire romantic history.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie's pre&euml;minence in the field of sentiment was held entirely
+fitting. Priscilla might excel in basket-ball, <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Cony'">Conny</ins> Wilder in
+dramatics, Keren Hersey in geometry and Patty Wyatt in&mdash;well, in
+impudence and audacity&mdash;but Rosalie was the recognized authority in
+matters of the heart; and until Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale came, nobody
+thought of questioning her position.</p>
+
+<p>Mae Mertelle spent an uncomfortable month shaking into place in the
+school life. The point in which she was accustomed to excel was
+<i>clothes</i>, but when she and her four trunks arrived, she found to her
+disgust that clothes were not useful at St. Ursula's. The school uniform
+reduced all to a dead level in the matter of fashion. There was another
+field, however, in which she might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> hope for supremacy. Her own
+sentimental history was vivid, compared to the colorless lives of most,
+and she proceeded to assert her claims.</p>
+
+<p>One Saturday evening in October, half-a-dozen girls were gathered in
+Rosalie's room, on piled-up sofa cushions, with the gas turned low and
+the light of the hunter's moon streaming through the window. They had
+been singing softly in a minor key, but gradually the singing turned to
+talk. The talk, in accordance with the moonlight and flying clouds, was
+in a sentimental vein; and it ended, naturally, with Rosalie's Great
+Experience. Between maidenly hesitations and many promptings she retold
+the story&mdash;the new girls had never heard it, and to the old girls it was
+always new.</p>
+
+<p>The stage setting had been perfect&mdash;a moonlit beach, and lapping waves
+and rustling pine trees. When <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Rosaile'">Rosalie</ins> chanced to omit any detail, her
+hearers, already familiar with the story, eagerly supplied it.</p>
+
+<p>"And he held your hand all the time he was talking," Priscilla
+prompted.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rosalie! Did he?" in a shocked chorus from the newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>"Y&mdash;yes. He just sort of took hold of it and forgot to let go, and I
+didn't like to remind him."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he couldn't live without me."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said I was awfully sorry, but he'd have to."</p>
+
+<p>"And then what happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing happened," she was obliged to confess. "I s'pose something
+might have happened if I'd accepted him, but you see, I didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"But you were very young at the time," suggested Evalina Smith. "Are you
+sure you knew your own mind?"</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie nodded with an air of melancholy regret.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I knew I couldn't ever love him, because, he&mdash;well, he had an
+awfully funny nose. It started to point in one direction, and then
+changed its mind and pointed in the other."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her hearers would have preferred that she had omitted this detail; but
+Rosalie was literal-minded and lacked the story-teller's instinct for
+suppression.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked if there wasn't any hope that I would change," she added
+pensively. "I told him that I could never love him enough to marry him,
+but that I would always respect him."</p>
+
+<p>"And then what did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he wouldn't commit suicide."</p>
+
+<p>A profound hush followed, while Rosalie gazed at the moon and the others
+gazed at Rosalie. With her gleaming hair and violet eyes, she was
+entirely their ideal of a storybook heroine. They did not think of
+envying her; they merely wondered and admired. She was crowned by
+natural right, Queen of Romance.</p>
+
+<p>Mae Van Arsdale, who had listened in silence to the recital, was the
+first to break the spell. She rose, fluffed up her hair, straightened
+her blouse, and politely suppressed a yawn.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Rosalie! You're a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing.&mdash;Good-night, children. I'm going to bed now."</p>
+
+<p>She sauntered toward the door, but paused on the threshold to drop the
+casual statement. "<i>I've</i> been proposed to three times."</p>
+
+<p>A shocked gasp arose from the circle at this <i>l&egrave;se-majest&eacute;</i>. The
+disdainful condescension of a new girl was more than they could brook.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a horrid old thing, and I don't believe a word she says!"
+Priscilla declared stoutly, as she kissed poor crushed little Rosalie
+goodnight.</p>
+
+<p>This slight <i>contretemps</i> marked the beginning of strained relations.
+Mae Mertelle gathered her own adherents, and Rosalie's special coterie
+of friends rallied to the standard of their queen. They intimated to
+Mae's followers that the quality of the romance was quite different in
+the two cases. Mae might be the heroine of any number of commonplace
+flirtations, but Rosalie was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> the victim of a <i>grande passion</i>. She was
+marked with an indelible scar that she would carry to the grave. In the
+heat of their allegiance, they overlooked the crookedness of the hero's
+nose and the avowed fact that Rosalie's own affections had not been
+engaged.</p>
+
+<p>But Mae's trump card had been withheld. Whispers presently spread about
+under the seal of confidence. She was hopelessly in love. It was not a
+matter of the past vacation, but of the burning present. Her room-mate
+wakened in the night to hear her sobbing to herself. She had no
+appetite&mdash;her whole table could testify to that. In the middle of
+dessert, even on ice-cream nights, she would forget to eat, and with her
+spoon half-raised, would sit staring into space. When reminded that she
+was at the table, she would start guiltily and hastily bolt the rest of
+the meal. Her enemies unkindly commented upon the fact that she always
+came to before the end, so she got as much as anybody else.</p>
+
+<p>The English classes at St. Ursula's were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> weekly drilled in the
+old-fashioned art of letter writing. The girls wrote letters home,
+minutely descriptive of school life. They addressed imaginary girl
+friends, and grandmothers and college brothers and baby sisters. They
+were learning the great secret of literary forcefulness&mdash;to suit their
+style to their audience. Ultimately, they arrived at the point of
+thanking imaginary young men for imaginary flowers. Mae listened to the
+somewhat stilted phraseology of these polite and proper notes with a
+supercilious smile. The class, covertly regarding her, thrilled anew.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, the details of the romance spread abroad. The man was
+English&mdash;Mae had met him on the steamer&mdash;and some day when his elder
+brother died (the brother was suffering from an incurable malady that
+would carry him off in a few years) he would come into the title; though
+just what the title was, Mae had not specifically stated. But in any
+case, her father was a staunch American; he hated the English and he
+hated titles. No daughter of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> his should ever marry a foreigner. If she
+did, she would never receive a dollar from him. However, neither Mae nor
+Cuthbert cared about the money. Cuthbert had plenty of his own. His name
+was Cuthbert St. John. (Pronounced Sinjun.) He had four names in all,
+but those were the two he used the most. He was in England now, having
+been summoned by cable, owing to the critical condition of his brother's
+health, but the crisis was past, and Cuthbert would soon be returning.
+Then&mdash;Mae closed her lips in a straight line and stared defiantly into
+space. Her father should see!</p>
+
+<p>Before the throbbing reality of this romance, Rosalie's poor little
+history paled into nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Then the plot began to thicken. Studying the lists of incoming steamers,
+Mae announced to her room-mate that he had landed. He had given his word
+to her father not to write; but she knew that in some way she should
+hear. And sure enough! The following morning brought a nameless bunch of
+violets. There had been doubters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> before&mdash;but at this tangible proof of
+devotion, skepticism crumbled.</p>
+
+<p>Mae wore her violets to church on Sunday. The school mixed its responses
+in a shocking fashion&mdash;nobody pretended to follow the service; all eyes
+were fixed on Mae's upturned face and far-off smile. Patty Wyatt pointed
+out that Mae had taken special pains to seat herself in the light of a
+stained-glass window, and that occasionally the rapt eyes scanned the
+faces of her companions, to make sure that the effect was reaching
+across the footlights. But Patty's insinuation was indignantly
+repudiated by the school.</p>
+
+<p>Mae was at last triumphantly secure in the r&ocirc;le of leading lady. Poor
+insipid Rosalie no longer had a speaking part.</p>
+
+<p>The affair ran on for several weeks, gathering momentum as it moved. In
+the European Travel Class that met on Monday nights, "English Country
+Seats" was the subject of one of the talks, illustrated by the
+stereopticon. As a stately, terraced mansion, with deer cropping grass
+in the fore<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>ground, was thrown upon the screen, Mae Mertelle suddenly
+grew faint. She vouchsafed no reason to the housekeeper who came with
+hot-water bottles and cologne; but later, she whispered to her room-mate
+that that was the house where he was born.</p>
+
+<p>Violets continued to arrive each Saturday, and Mae became more and more
+<i>distrait</i>. The annual basket-ball game with Highland Hall, a near-by
+school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year
+before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second
+time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued
+and scolded an apathetic team.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mae Mertelle and her beastly violets!" she disgustedly grumbled to
+Patty. "She's taken all the fight out of them."</p>
+
+<p>The teachers, meanwhile, were uneasily aware that the atmosphere was
+overcharged. The girls stood about in groups, thrilling visibly when Mae
+Mertelle passed by. There was a moonlight atmosphere about the school
+that was not conducive to high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> marks in Latin prose composition. The
+matter finally became the subject of an anxious faculty meeting. There
+was no actual data at hand; it was all surmise, but the source of the
+trouble was evident. The school had been swept before by a wave of
+sentiment; it was as catching as the measles. The Dowager was inclined
+to think that the simplest method of clearing the atmosphere would be to
+pack Mae Mertelle and her four trunks back to the paternal fireside, and
+let her foolish mother deal with the case. Miss Lord was
+characteristically bent upon fighting it out. She would stop the
+nonsense by force. Mademoiselle, who was inclined to sentiment, feared
+that the poor child was really suffering. She thought sympathy and
+tact&mdash;But Miss Sallie's bluff common-sense won the day. If the sanity of
+Saint Ursula's demanded it, Mae Mertelle must go; but she thought, by
+the use of a little diplomacy, both St. Ursula's sanity and Mae Mertelle
+might be preserved. Leave the matter to her. She would use her own
+methods.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Miss Sallie was the Dowager's daughter. She managed the practical end of
+the establishment&mdash;provided for the table, ruled the servants, and ran
+off, with the utmost ease, the two hundred acres of the school farm.
+Between the details of horseshoeing and haying and butter-making, she
+lent her abilities wherever they were needed. She never taught; but she
+disciplined. The school was noted for unusual punishments, and most of
+them originated in Miss Sallie's brain. Her title of "Dragonette" was
+bestowed in respectful admiration of her mental qualities.</p>
+
+<p>The next day was Tuesday, Miss Sallie's regular time for inspecting the
+farm. As she came downstairs after luncheon drawing on her driving
+gloves, she just escaped stepping on Conny Wilder and Patty Wyatt who,
+flat on their stomachs, were trying to poke out a golf ball from under
+the hat-rack.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, girls!" was her cheerful greeting. "Wouldn't you like a little
+drive to the farm? Run and tell Miss Wadsworth that you are excused from
+afternoon study.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> You may stay away from Current Events this evening,
+and make it up."</p>
+
+<p>The two scrambled into hats and coats in excited delight. A visit to
+Round Hill Farm with Miss Sallie, was the greatest good that St.
+Ursula's had to offer. For Miss Sallie&mdash;out of bounds&mdash;was the funniest,
+most companionable person in the world. After an exhilarating five-mile
+drive through a brown and yellow October landscape, they spent a couple
+of hours romping over the farm, had milk and ginger cookies in Mrs.
+Spence's kitchen; and started back, wedged in between cabbages and eggs
+and butter. They chatted gaily on a dozen different themes&mdash;the
+Thanksgiving masquerade, a possible play, the coming game with Highland
+Hall, and the lamentable new rule that made them read the editorials in
+the daily papers. Finally, when conversation flagged for a moment, Miss
+Sallie dropped the casual inquiry:</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, girls, what <i>has</i> got into Mae Van Arsdale? She droops
+about in corners and looks as dismal as a molting chicken."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty and Conny exchanged a glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," Miss Sallie continued cheerfully, "it's perfectly evident
+what the trouble is. I haven't been connected with a boarding-school for
+ten years for nothing. The little idiot is posing as the object of an
+unhappy affection. You know that I never favor talebearing, but, just as
+a matter of curiosity, is it the young man who passes the plate in
+church, or the one who sells ribbon in Marsh and Elkins's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither." Patty grinned. "It's an English nobleman."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Miss Sallie stared.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mae's father hates English noblemen," Conny explained, "and has
+forbidden him ever to see her again."</p>
+
+<p>"Her heart is broken," said Patty sadly. "She's going into a decline."</p>
+
+<p>"And the violets?" inquired Miss Sallie.</p>
+
+<p>"He promised not to send her any letters, but violets weren't
+mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm, I see!" said Miss Sallie; and, after a moment of thought, "Girls,
+I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> going to leave this matter in your hands. I want it stopped."</p>
+
+<p>"In our hands?"</p>
+
+<p>"The school can't be stirred up any longer; but the matter's too silly
+to warrant the teachers taking any notice of it. This is a thing that
+ought to be regulated by public opinion. Suppose you see what you can
+do&mdash;I will appoint you a committee to bring the school back to a solid
+basis of common sense. I know that I can trust you not to talk."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't exactly see what we can do," said Patty, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"You are usually not without resourcefulness," Miss Sallie returned with
+a flickering smile. "You may have a <i>carte blanche</i> to choose your own
+methods."</p>
+
+<p>"And may we tell Priscilla?" Conny asked. "We must tell her because we
+three&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hunt together?" Miss Sallie nodded. "Tell Priscilla, and let it stop at
+that."</p>
+
+<p>The next afternoon, when Martin drove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> into the village to accomplish
+the daily errands, he dropped Patty and Priscilla at the florists,
+empowered by the school to purchase flowers for the rector's wife and
+new baby. They turned inside, their minds entirely occupied with the
+rival merits of red and white roses. They ordered their flowers,
+inscribed the card, and then waited aimlessly till Martin should return
+to pick them up. Passing down the counter, they came upon a
+bill-sticker, the topmost item being, "Violets every Saturday to Miss
+Mae Van Arsdale, St. Ursula's School."</p>
+
+<p>They stopped and stared for a thoughtful moment. The florist followed
+their gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you happen to know the young lady who ordered them vi'lets?" he
+inquired. "She didn't leave any name, and I'd like to know if she wants
+me to keep on sending 'em. She only paid up to the first, and the price
+is going up."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't know who it was," said Patty, with well-assumed
+indifference. "What did she look like?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;she had on a blue coat," he suggested. As all sixty-four of the
+St. Ursula girls wore blue coats, his description was not helpful.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," Patty prompted, "was she quite tall with a lot of yellow hair
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's her!"</p>
+
+<p>He recognized the type with some assurance.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mae herself!" Priscilla whispered excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>Patty nodded and commanded silence.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll tell her," she promised. "And by the way," she added to
+Priscilla, "I think it would be nice for us to send some flowers to Mae,
+from our&mdash;er&mdash;secret society. But I'm afraid the treasury is pretty low
+just now. They'll have to be cheaper than violets. What are your
+cheapest flowers?" she inquired of the man.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a kind of small sunflower that some people likes for
+decoration. 'Cut-and-come-again' they're called. I can give you a
+good-sized bunch for fifty cents. They make quite a show."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Just the thing! Send a bunch of sunflowers to Miss Van Arsdale with
+this card." Patty drew a blank card toward her, and in an upright back
+hand traced the inscription, "Your disconsolate C. St. J."</p>
+
+<p>She sealed it in an envelope, then regarded the florist sternly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a Mason?" she asked, her eye on the crescent in his buttonhole.</p>
+
+<p>"Y&mdash;yes," he acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you understand the nature of an oath of secrecy? You are not to
+divulge to anyone the sender of these flowers. The tall young lady with
+the yellow hair will come in here and try to make you tell who sent
+them. You are not to remember. It may even have been a man. You don't
+know anything about it. This secret society at Saint Ursula's is so very
+much more secret than the Masonic Society, that it is even a secret that
+it exists. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;yes, ma'am," he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"If it becomes known," she added darkly, "I shall not be responsible for
+your life."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She and Priscilla each contributed a quarter for the flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be expensive," Patty sighed. "I think we'll have to ask
+Miss Sallie for an extra allowance while this committee is in session."</p>
+
+<p>Mae was in her room, surrounded by an assemblage of her special
+followers, when the flowers arrived. She received the box in some
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"He's sending flowers on Wednesdays as well as Saturdays!" her room-mate
+cried. "He must be getting desperate."</p>
+
+<p>Mae opened the box amid an excited hush.</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly lovely!" they cried in chorus, though with a slightly
+perfunctory undertone. They would have preferred crimson roses.</p>
+
+<p>Mae regarded the offering for a moment of stupefied amazement. She had
+been pretending so long, that by now she almost believed in Cuthbert
+herself. The circle was waiting, and she rallied her powers to meet this
+unexpected crisis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what sunflowers mean?" she asked softly. "They must convey
+some message. Does anybody know the language of flowers?"</p>
+
+<p>Nobody did know the language of flowers; but they were relieved at the
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a card!" Evalina Smith plucked it from among the bristling
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Mae made a motion to examine it in private, but she had been so generous
+with her confidences heretofore, that she was not allowed to withdraw
+them at this interesting point. They leaned over her shoulder and read
+it aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"'Your disconsolate C. St. J.'&mdash;Oh, Mae, think how he must be
+suffering!"</p>
+
+<p>"Poor man!"</p>
+
+<p>"He simply couldn't remain silent any longer."</p>
+
+<p>"He's the soul of honor," said Mae. "He wouldn't write a real letter
+because he promised not to, but I suppose&mdash;a little message like this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Patty Wyatt passing the door, sauntered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> in. The card was exhibited in
+spite of a feeble protest from Mae.</p>
+
+<p>"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.</p>
+
+<p>This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held
+aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie's friend.</p>
+
+<p>The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae
+Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could
+not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
+Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy
+was of an inexpensive variety&mdash;Patty had discovered the ten-cent
+store&mdash;but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what
+the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid
+profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed
+sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels
+had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious promptitude. Miss
+Sallie was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the
+outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most
+embarrassing moments to comply&mdash;always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded
+by an audience.</p>
+
+<p>Mae's Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days' time
+became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible
+as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the
+special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
+"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no
+avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert&mdash;and was bent upon eliciting all
+the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became
+one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw
+was the arrival of a complete edition&mdash;in paper&mdash;of Marie Corelli.</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody's just trying to be
+funny."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You mustn't mind, Mae, because they aren't just the sort that an
+American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that
+Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. <i>Everybody</i> reads
+Marie Corelli over there."</p>
+
+<p>The next Saturday, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping
+and the matin&eacute;e. Among other errands, the art class visited a photograph
+dealer's, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty's interest in
+Giotto and his kind was not very keen, and she sauntered off on a tour
+of inspection. She happened upon a pile of actors and actresses, and her
+eye brightened as she singled out a large photograph of an unfamiliar
+leading man, with curling mustache and dimpled chin and large appealing
+eyes. He was dressed in hunting costume and conspicuously displayed a
+crop. The picture was the last word in Twentieth Century Romance. And,
+most perfect touch of all, it bore a London mark!</p>
+
+<p>Patty unobtrusively deflected the rest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> the committee from a
+consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over
+the find.</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfect!" Conny sighed. "But it costs a dollar and fifty cents."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to go without soda water <i>forever!</i>" said Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"It is expensive," Patty agreed, "but&mdash;" as she restudied the liquid,
+appealing eyes&mdash;"I really think it's worth it."</p>
+
+<p>They each contributed fifty cents, and the picture was theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Patty wrote across the front, in the bold back hand that Mae had come to
+hate, a tender message in French, and signed the full name, "Cuthbert
+St. John." She had it wrapped in a plain envelope and requested the
+somewhat wondering clerk to mail it the following Wednesday morning, as
+it was an anniversary present and must not arrive before the day.</p>
+
+<p>The picture came on the five-o'clock delivery, and was handed to Mae as
+the girls trooped out from afternoon study. She re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>ceived it in sulky
+silence and retired to her room. Half a dozen of her dearest friends
+followed at her heels; Mae had worked hard to gain a following, and now
+it couldn't be shaken off.</p>
+
+<p>"Open it, Mae quick!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you s'pose it is?"</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be flowers or candy. He must be starting something new."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care what it is!" Mae viciously tossed the parcel into the
+wastebasket.</p>
+
+<p>Irene McCullough fished it out and cut the string.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mae, it's his photograph!" she squealed. "And he's per-fect-ly
+beau-ti-ful!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever see such eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does he curl his mustache, or it is natural?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell us he had a dimple in his chin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does he always wear those clothes?"</p>
+
+<p>Mae was divided between curiosity and anger. She snatched the photograph
+away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> cast one glance at the languishing brown eyes, and tumbled it,
+face downward, into a bureau drawer.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't ever mention his name to me again!" she commanded, as, with
+compressed lips, she commenced brushing her hair for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>On the next Friday afternoon&mdash;shopping day in the village&mdash;Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla dropped in at the florist's to pay a bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Two bunches of sunflowers, one dollar," the man had just announced in
+ringing tones from the rear of the store, when a step sounded behind
+them, and they faced about to find Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale, bent on a
+similar errand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Mae, fiercely, "I might have known it was you three."</p>
+
+<p>She stared for a moment in silence, then she dropped into a rustic seat
+and buried her head on the counter. She had shed so many tears of late
+that they flowed automatically.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she sobbed, "you'll tell the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> whole school, and everybody
+will laugh and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The three regarded her with unbending mien. They were not to be moved by
+a few tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You said that Rosalie was a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing," Priscilla reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>"And at least he was a live man," said Patty, "even if he did have a
+crooked nose."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still think she was a silly goose?" Conny inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"N&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think you've been a great deal more silly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Y&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you apologize to Rosalie?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"It will make quite a funny story," Patty ruminated, "the way we'll tell
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you're perfectly horrid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you apologize to Rosalie?" Priscilla asked again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;if you'll promise not to tell."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We'll promise on one condition&mdash;you're to break your engagement to
+Cuthbert St. John, and never refer to it again."</p>
+
+<p>Cuthbert sailed for England on the <i>Oceanic</i> the following Thursday; St.
+Ursula's plunged into a fever of basket-ball, and the atmosphere became
+bracingly free of Romance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span><br /></p><p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<h3>The Virgil Strike</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 98px;">
+<img src="images/i.png" width="98" height="100" alt="I" title="I" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>'M tired of Woman's Rights on Friday afternoons," said Patty
+disgustedly. "I prefer soda water!"</div>
+
+<p>"This makes the third time they've taken away our holiday for the sake
+of a beastly lecture," Priscilla grumbled, as she peered over Patty's
+shoulder to read the notice on the bulletin board, in Miss Lord's
+perpendicular library hand.</p>
+
+<p>It informed the school that instead of the usual shopping expedition to
+the village, they would have the pleasure that afternoon of listening to
+a talk by Professor McVey of Columbia University. The subject would be
+the strike of the women laundry workers. Tea would be served in the
+drawing-room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> afterwards, with Mae Van Arsdale, Harriet Gladden, and
+Patty Wyatt as hostesses.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not my turn!" objected Patty, as she noted the latter item. "I was
+hostess two weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>"That's because you wrote an essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie
+thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show
+him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only
+superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual
+problems of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I did want to go shopping!" Patty mourned. "I need some new
+shoe-strings. I've been tying a knot in my old ones every day for a
+week."</p>
+
+<p>"Here she comes," whispered Priscilla. "Look happy or she'll make you
+translate the whole&mdash;Good morning, Miss Lord! We were just noticing
+about the lecture. It sounds extremely interesting."</p>
+
+<p>The two smiled a perfunctory greeting, and followed their teacher to the
+morning's Latin.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord was the one who struck the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> modern note at St. Ursula's. She
+believed in militant suffragism and unions and boycotts and strikes; and
+she labored hard to bring her little charges to her own advanced
+position. But it was against a heavy inertia that she worked. Her little
+charges didn't care a rap about receiving their rights, in the dim
+future of twenty-one; but they were very much concerned about losing a
+present half-holiday. On Friday afternoons, they were ordinarily allowed
+to draw checks on the school bank for their allowances, and march in a
+procession&mdash;a teacher forming the head and tail&mdash;to the village stores,
+where they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water
+and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly
+stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village
+and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of
+six days of bounds.</p>
+
+<p>But every cloud has its silver lining.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord preceded the Virgil recitation that morning by a discussion of
+the lecture to come. The laundry strike, she told them,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> marked an epoch
+in industrial history. It proved that women, as well as men, were
+capable of standing by each other. The solidarity of labor was a point
+she wished her girls to grasp. Her girls listened with grave attention;
+and by eagerly putting a question, whenever she showed signs of running
+down, they managed to stave off the Latin recitation for three quarters
+of an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The professor, a mild man with a Van Dyke beard, came and lectured
+exhaustively upon the relations of employer and employed. His audience
+listened with politely intelligent smiles, but with minds serenely
+occupied elsewhere. The great questions of Capital and Labor, were not
+half so important to them, as the fact of the lost afternoon, or the
+essays that must be written for to-morrow's English, or even that this
+was ice-cream night with dancing class to follow. But Patty, on the
+front seat, sat with wide, serious eyes fixed on the lecturer's face.
+She was absorbing his arguments&mdash;and storing them for use.</p>
+
+<p>Tea followed according to schedule. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> three chosen ones received
+their guests with the facility of long-tried hostesses. The fact that
+their bearing was under inspection, with marks to follow, did not
+appreciably diminish their case. They were learning by the laboratory
+method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger
+world. Harriet and Mae presided at the tea table, while Patty engaged
+the personage in conversation. He commented later, to Miss Lord, upon
+the students' rare understanding in economic subjects.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord replied with some complaisance that she endeavored to have her
+girls think for themselves. Sociology was a field in which lessons could
+not be taught by rote. Each must work out her own conclusions, and act
+upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Ice-cream and dancing restored the balance of St. Ursula's, after the
+mental exertions of the afternoon. At half-past nine&mdash;the school did not
+retire until ten on dancing nights&mdash;Patty and Priscilla dropped their
+goodnight courtesy, murmured a polite "<i>Bon soir, Mam'selle</i>," and
+scampered up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>stairs, still very wide awake. Instead of preparing for bed
+with all dispatch, as well-conducted school girls should, they engaged
+themselves in practising the steps of their new Spanish dance down the
+length of the South Corridor. They brought up with a pirouette at
+Rosalie Patton's door.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie, still in the pale blue fluffiness of her dancing frock, was
+sitting cross-legged on the couch, her yellow curls bent over the open
+pages of a Virgil, tears spattering with dreary regularity on the lines
+she was conning.</p>
+
+<p>The course of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by
+blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing,
+deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone
+teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably
+predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra
+feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed&mdash;when she ought to
+have been concentrating upon Latin grammar&mdash;of that happy future state
+in which smiles and kisses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> would take the place of gerunds and
+gerundives.</p>
+
+<p>"You silly little muff!" cried Patty. "Why on earth are you bothering
+with Latin on a Friday night?"</p>
+
+<p>She landed herself with a plump on Rosalie's right, and took away the
+book.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to," Rosalie sobbed. "I'd never finish if I didn't begin. I
+don't see any sense to it. I can't do eighty lines in two hours. Miss
+Lord always calls on me for the end, because she knows I won't know
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you begin at the end and read backwards?" Patty practically
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"But that wouldn't be fair, and I can't do it so fast as the others. I
+work more than two hours every day, but I simply never get through. I
+know I shan't pass."</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty lines is a good deal," Patty agreed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's easy for you, because you know all the words, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I worked more than two hours on mine yesterday," said Priscilla, "and I
+can't af<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>ford it either. I have to save some time for geometry."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I just simply can't do it</i>," Rosalie wailed. "And she thinks I'm
+stupid because I don't keep up with Patty."</p>
+
+<p>Conny Wilder drifted in.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she asked, viewing Rosalie's tear-streaked face.
+"Cry on the pillow, child. Don't spoil your dress."</p>
+
+<p>The Latin situation was explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend
+every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all,"
+sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled,
+"and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put
+them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."</p>
+
+<p>Patty emerged from a moment of revery.</p>
+
+<p>"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that
+something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> told us to apply it
+to our everyday problems."</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in
+an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty
+lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn&mdash;particularly Rosalie.
+And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day
+by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or
+else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the
+solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each
+other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of
+the class to stand by Rosalie."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.</p>
+
+<p>"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and
+apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"But what if she doesn't give in?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll call out the Cicero and C&aelig;sar classes in a sympathetic strike."</p>
+
+<p>"Hooray!" cried Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see
+the justice of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly
+like the laundry workers&mdash;in the position of dependents, and the only
+way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If
+Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the
+whole class does, Lordie will <i>have</i> to give in."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she
+had grasped some basic principles.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run
+and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out
+Nancy Lee&mdash;she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here,
+Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody
+can sit down."</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman,
+outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a
+working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the
+regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to
+read the last twenty lines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved
+insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.</p>
+
+<p>The majority <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'or'">of</ins> the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly
+accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union
+had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution.
+Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her
+name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature,
+Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more
+feminine methods.</p>
+
+<p>Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who
+looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of
+St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene
+suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully
+refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny
+produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the
+chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>&mdash;and poor
+harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and
+dessert, sullenly added her signature.</p>
+
+<p>"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went
+to bed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired
+and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the
+Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the
+actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief
+address.</p>
+
+<p>"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last
+lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, <i>don't</i> look so
+scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all
+the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs
+down now is a <span class="smcap">coward</span>!"</p>
+
+<p>Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the
+fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> walking
+boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught
+the enemy's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask,
+Patty&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't
+go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the
+effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically
+surveyed it.</p>
+
+<p>"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord
+acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."</p>
+
+<p>The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a
+visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they
+waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the
+sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead was virgin jungle.
+This was the point for the Union to declare itself; and the burden, true
+to her forebodings, fell upon poor trembling little Rosalie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She cast an imploring glance toward Patty's sternly waiting countenance,
+stammered, hesitated, and miserably plunged into a sight translation.
+Rosalie never had the slightest luck at sight translations; even after
+two hours of patient work with a dictionary, she was still extremely
+hesitant as to meanings. Now, she blindly forged ahead,&mdash;amid a profound
+hush&mdash;attributing to the Pious &AElig;neas a most amazing set of actions. She
+finished; and the slaughter commenced. Miss Lord spent three minutes in
+obliterating Rosalie; then passed the lines to Irene McCullough.</p>
+
+<p>Irene drew a deep breath&mdash;she felt Conny encouragingly patting her on
+the back, while Patty and Priscilla, at either hand, jogged her elbow
+with insistent touch. She opened her mouth to declare the principles
+that had been foisted upon her over night; then she caught the cold
+gleam of Miss Lord's eye. Rosalie's sobs filled the room. And she fell.
+Irene was fairly good at Latin&mdash;her sight translation was at least
+intelligible. Miss Lord's comment was merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> sarcastic, as she passed
+to Florence Hissop. By this time the panic had swept through the ranks.
+Florence would like to have been true to her pledged troth, but the
+instinct of self-preservation is strong. She improved on Irene's
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the next ten lines, Patty, and endeavor to extract a glimmering of
+sense. Please bear in mind that we are reading poetry."</p>
+
+<p>Patty raised her head and faced her superior in the manner of a
+Christian martyr.</p>
+
+<p>"I only prepared the first sixty lines, Miss Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you not finish the lesson that I gave out?" Miss Lord inquired
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"We have decided that eighty lines are more than we can do in a day. It
+takes too much time away from our other lessons. We are perfectly
+willing to do sixty lines, and do them thoroughly, but we can't consider
+any more."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord for a moment simply stared. Never had she known such a
+flagrant case of insubordination. And it was purely insub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>ordination,
+for Patty was the most capable person in the class.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" she gasped at last.</p>
+
+<p>"We have formed a Virgil Union," Patty gravely explained. "You, Miss
+Lord, will appreciate the fairness of our demands better than any of the
+other teachers, because you believe in unions. Now, the girls in this
+class feel that they are overworked and underpa&mdash;er&mdash;that is, I mean the
+lessons are too long."</p>
+
+<p>Patty fetched a deep breath and started again.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty lines a day doesn't leave us any time for recreation, so we have
+determined to join together and demand our rights. We occupy the
+position of skilled laborers. You can get all the girls you want for
+C&aelig;sar and beginning Latin, but you can't find anybody but us to read
+Virgil. It's like the laundry trade. We are not just plain boilers and
+starchers; we are fancy ironers. If you want to have a Virgil class, you
+have <i>got</i> to have us. You can't call in scab labor. Now, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> aren't
+trying to take advantage because of our superior strength. We are
+perfectly willing to do an honest day's work, but we can't allow
+ourselves to be&mdash;er&mdash;to be&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Patty fumbled a moment for her word, but in the end she brought it out
+triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for
+you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of
+us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the
+others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against
+the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men.
+But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of
+Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will
+be obliged to go out on strike."</p>
+
+<p>Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.</p>
+
+<p>A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down
+in hopeless, abject terror before the storm.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> Miss Lord's icy sarcasm
+was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish
+ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely
+eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a
+<span class="smcap">cause</span>. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be
+saved&mdash;the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed,
+would fight and win.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord finally drew breath.</p>
+
+<p>"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she
+has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read
+them after luncheon."</p>
+
+<p>The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while
+Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to
+hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>"Scabs!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard
+the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> the tin-covered
+back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She
+had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at
+eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not
+quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the
+morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis
+the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause
+was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed
+until she learned the Latin&mdash;very well&mdash;she would leave her bones
+bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.</p>
+
+<p>An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle,
+to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry
+window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone
+slab of turkey.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave plate in wastebasket, Missy," he whispered hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>Patty, for an instant, struggled with dignity and martyrdom, but hunger
+and a love of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> intrigue triumphed. She tiptoed over and received the
+offering. There was no knife or fork, but primitive methods suffice in a
+case of real starvation. She finished the turkey and buried the plate
+beneath a pile of algebra papers. It was Osaki's daily business to empty
+the wastebasket; the plate in due course would be restored to its shelf.</p>
+
+<p>A few moments later a scurrying footfall sounded at the door, and a
+little Junior A. darted to Patty's side. She cast a conspiratorial
+glance over her shoulder as she drew from a bulging blouse two buttered
+rolls.</p>
+
+<p>"Take 'em quick!" she panted. "I must hurry back, or they'll suspect. I
+asked to be excused to get a handkerchief. Keep up your courage. We
+won't let you starve. It's splendid!"</p>
+
+<p>She thrust the rolls into Patty's lap and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Patty found it comforting to know that the school was with her. The
+attractions of martyrdom are <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'exhanced'">enhanced</ins> by the knowledge of an audience.
+Also, the rolls were a grateful addition to the turkey; her five-hour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+appetite was still insistent. She finished one of them and was about to
+begin on the second, when furtive footfalls sounded behind her, and one
+of the maids slipped a paper plate over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's some fresh gingerbread, Miss Patty. Cook says&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of a closing door startled her, and she <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'skurried'">scurried</ins> off like a
+detected thief.</p>
+
+<p>Patty placed her second roll in the wastebasket in company with the
+turkey plate, and was just starting on the gingerbread, when a
+scrambling sounded at the end window. A blue hat appeared momentarily
+over the sill, its owner boosted from below, and an unidentified hand
+sent an orange rolling down the center aisle. Patty hastily intercepted
+its course and dropped it into the wastebasket. Luncheon would be over
+momentarily, and a visit from Miss Lord was imminent. This influx of
+supplies was growing embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>She heard the rising flood of talk as the girls poured from the
+dining-room. She knew that sympathetic groups were viewing her from the
+open doors behind. Judging<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> from the ceaseless shuffle of footsteps, all
+Saint Ursula's had errands that led past the schoolroom door. Patty did
+not cast a glance behind, but with rigid shoulders stared into space.
+Presently a rattling sounded above her head. She raised startled eyes to
+a register set in the ceiling, and saw Irene McCullough's anxious face
+peering through the opening.</p>
+
+<p>"You can live for days on chocolates," came in a stage whisper. "I'm
+awfully sorry there's only half a pound; I ate the rest last night."</p>
+
+<p>The register was lifted out, and a box was swiftly lowered by a string.
+Irene was chief of the scabs.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Irene," Patty returned in a haughty stage whisper. "I do not
+care to accept any&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Miss Lord's voice became audible in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, young ladies, that afternoon recreation was to be spent out
+of doors?"</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 269px;">
+<img src="images/098-ill.jpg" width="269" height="400" alt="Patty just had time to snatch the box" title="Patty just had time to snatch the box" />
+<span class="caption">Patty just had time to snatch the box</span>
+</div>
+<p>Patty just had time to snatch the box and drop it in her lap, with an
+open essay book<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> above, when Miss Lord advanced into the room. Patty's
+face assumed an air of suffering stoicism, as she stared ahead, in the
+profound hope that Irene would have sense enough to remove eight feet of
+dangling string. Miss Lord was followed by Osaki, carrying a tray with
+two slices of dry bread and a glass of water.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you finished your Latin, Patty?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Miss Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to do to-morrow's lesson in afternoon study hour."</p>
+
+<p>Patty's tone was respectful, but her meaning was clear. She emphasized
+slightly the word "to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do the twenty lines immediately."</p>
+
+<p>A speaking silence from Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" The monosyllable was sharp enough to cut.</p>
+
+<p>"I stand by my principles," said Patty. "I am not a scab."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You may sit here until those twenty lines are finished."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Miss Lord."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish you to suffer. Here is bread and water."</p>
+
+<p>She motioned Osaki to set down the tray.</p>
+
+<p>Patty waved it aside.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a convict," she said with dignity. "I refuse to eat until I am
+served properly at the dining-room table."</p>
+
+<p>A fleeting grin replaced for a moment Osaki's Oriental calm. Miss Lord
+set the bread on a neighboring desk, and the two withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>All through recreation and afternoon study, Patty sat at her desk, the
+plate of bread conspicuously untouched at her elbow. Then the
+five-o'clock bell rang, and the girls trooped out and dispersed on their
+various businesses. The hour between afternoon study and dressing bell,
+was the one hour of the day entirely their own. Patty could hear them
+romping up the back stairs, and racing through the corridors. Kid McCoy
+was conducting a pillow fight in Paradise Alley<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> above her head. Groups
+passed the schoolroom window with happy calls and laughter. Pepper and
+Tabasco, the two riding horses, were saddled and brought out. She could
+see the girls taking turns in galloping around the oval, while Martin,
+as ringmaster, waved his whip and urged them on. Martin now was bent
+with rheumatism, but in his far-off reckless youth he had been a cowboy,
+and when he taught the girls to ride, it was with a disregard of broken
+bones that dismayed even the adventurous gymnasium teacher. Patty was
+his star pupil; she could stick on Red Pepper's back with nothing but a
+blanket to hold her. It was only very occasionally, when Martin was in a
+propitious mood, that the horses were saddled for mere public amusement.
+Patty's heart was sore as she watched Priscilla and Conny, her two
+dearest friends, disport themselves regardless of their incarcerated
+mate.</p>
+
+<p>It grew dusk; nobody came to furnish a light, and Patty sat in the
+semi-darkness, her head bent wearily on her arms. Finally she heard
+footsteps in the hall, and Miss Sallie<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> entered and closed the door
+behind her. Patty braced herself anew; one needed keen wits to match the
+"Dragonette."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sallie had been talking with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to
+think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her
+practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with
+business-like directness.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Patty, what is the meaning of all this nonsense?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty raised reproachful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Miss Sallie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, nonsense! Miss Lord says that you refused to learn the lesson that
+she assigned, and that you incited the rest of the girls to mutiny. You
+are one of the most able pupils in the class, and your failure to finish
+the lesson is nothing in the world but stubbornness. If it were Rosalie
+Patton now, there might be some sense in it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you understand," said Patty gently.</p>
+
+<p>"It might be well for you to explain," suggested Miss Sallie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I must stand by my principles."</p>
+
+<p>"By all means!" Miss <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Sally'">Sallie</ins> affably agreed. "And what are your
+principles?"</p>
+
+<p>"To hold out for sixty lines of Virgil. It isn't because I <i>want</i> to
+strike, Miss Sallie. It would be much easier for me to do the eighty
+lines, but that wouldn't be fair to Rosalie. The working day should not
+be gaged by the capacity of the strongest. Miss Lord will flunk Rosalie
+if the rest of us don't take care of her. Upon the solidarity of labor
+depends the welfare of the individual worker. It is the fight of the
+oppressed against the encroachments of&mdash;of&mdash;er&mdash;organized authority."</p>
+
+<p>"Um&mdash;I see!&mdash;I really begin to believe that you listened to that
+lecture, Patty."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I listened," Patty nodded, "and I must say that I am awfully
+disappointed in Miss Lord. She <i>told</i> us to apply our knowledge of
+sociology to the problems of our daily lives, and when we do, she backs
+down. But anyway, we intend to maintain the strike, until she is ready
+to meet our just demands. It isn't through selfish motives<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> that I am
+acting, Miss Sallie. I should a lot rather have something to eat and go
+horseback riding. I am fighting for the cause of my suffering sisters."</p>
+
+<p>The ceiling above shook at the impact, as four of her suffering sisters
+came down on top of one another, while the walls resounded with their
+shrieks and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sallie's lip twitched, but she controlled herself and spoke with
+serious gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, Patty, I am glad to know that this unprecedented behavior is
+caused by charitable motives. I am sure that when Miss Lord fully
+understands the case she will feel gratified. Suppose I act as
+intermediary and lay the matter before her? We may be able to arrive at
+an&mdash;er&mdash;compromise."</p>
+
+<p>The half hour that followed dinner was usually devoted to dancing in the
+big square hall, but to-night the girls were inclined to stand about in
+groups with furtive glances toward the schoolroom. A conference was
+going on inside. Miss Lord, the Dowager and the Dragonette had passed in
+and shut the door. Kid McCoy, returning from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> Paradise Alley, where she
+had been stretched on her stomach with her face to the register,
+reported that Patty had fainted through lack of food, that the Dowager
+had revived her with whiskey, and that she had come to, still cheering
+for the Union. Kid McCoy's statements, however, were apt to be touched
+by imagination. The school was divided in its opinion of Patty's course.
+The scabs were inclined to make light of her achievement, but Conny and
+Priscilla staunchly fanned enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, the schoolroom door opened, and the faculty emerged and passed
+into the Dowager's private study, while the dancing commenced with
+sudden fervor. No one to-day liked to be caught by Miss Lord whispering
+in a corner.</p>
+
+<p>Patty followed alone. Her face was pale, and there were weary circles
+about her eyes, but in them shone the light of victory.</p>
+
+<p>"Patty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"How'd it come out?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was perfectly splendid!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Was she furious?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"We arbitrated the question and have settled on a compromise," Patty
+replied with quiet dignity. "Hereafter the lesson will be seventy lines.
+The Virgil strike is declared off."</p>
+
+<p>They pressed about her eager for details, but she separated herself, and
+kept on toward the dining-room door. There was an aloofness about her,
+an air of having experienced the heights alone. She was not quite ready
+to rub shoulders with common humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The school settled itself to evening study, and Patty to her dinner.
+They could see her across the court, through the lighted window, as she
+sat in state at the end of a long table. Osaki on one side, tendered
+preserved strawberries, and Maggie on the other, frosted cakes. The
+rewards of martyrdom, in Patty's case, were solidly substantial.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>The Third Man from the End</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 98px;">
+<img src="images/o.png" width="98" height="100" alt="O" title="O" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>H, Patty! Did you bring us some wedding cake?"</div>
+
+<p>"Did you have any adventures?"</p>
+
+<p>Conny and Priscilla, with the dexterity of practice, sprang upon the
+rear step of the hearse as it turned in at the school gate, and rolled
+up the curving drive to the porte-coch&egrave;re. The "hearse" was the popular
+name for the black varnished wagonette which conveyed the pupils of St.
+Ursula's from church and station. It was planned to accommodate twenty.
+Patty and her suit-case, alone in the capacious interior, were jolting
+about like two tiny peas in a very big pod.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Adventures!" she called back excitedly. "<i>Wait till you hear!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>As they came to a stop, they were besieged by a crowd of blue-coated
+girls. It was afternoon recreation, and the whole school was abroad. The
+welcome that she received, would have led an onlooker to infer that
+Patty had been gone three months instead of three days. She and her two
+postilions descended, and Martin gathered up his reins.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, youse! All who wants a ride to the stables," was his
+hospitable invitation.</p>
+
+<p>It inundated him with passengers. They crowded inside&mdash;twice as many as
+the hearse would hold&mdash;they swarmed over the driver's seat and the
+steps; and two equestriennes even perched themselves on the horses'
+backs.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the adventure?" demanded Conny and Priscilla in a breath, as the
+cavalcade rattled off.</p>
+
+<p>Patty waved her hand toward the suit-case.</p>
+
+<p>"There it is. Take it upstairs. I'll be with you as soon as I've
+reported."</p>
+
+<p>"But that isn't your suit-case."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty shook her head mysteriously.</p>
+
+<p>"If you tried a thousand years you'd never guess who owns it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like a man's," said Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"It is."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty! Don't be so exasperating. Where'd you get it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a little souvenir that I picked up. I'll tell you as soon as I've
+interviewed the Dowager. Hurry, and slip in while Jelly isn't looking."</p>
+
+<p>They cast a quick glance over their shoulders toward the gymnasium
+instructor, who was arguing fat Irene McCullough into faster movements
+on the tennis court. Miss Jellings was insistent that "recreation"
+should be actively pursued out of doors. The two could easily have
+obtained permission to greet Patty's return inside; but it was the
+policy of the trio never to ask permission in minor matters. It wasted
+one's credit unnecessarily.</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla and Conny turned upstairs lug<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>ging the suit-case between them,
+while Patty approached the principal's study. Ten minutes later she
+joined her companions in Seven, Paradise Alley. They were sitting on the
+bed, their chins in their hands, studying the suit-case propped on a
+chair before them.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" they inquired in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>"She says she's glad to see me back, and hopes I didn't eat too much
+wedding cake. If my lessons show any falling off&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Who</i> owns it?"</p>
+
+<p>"The man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the
+funny songs third from the end on the right hand side."</p>
+
+<p>"Jermyn Hilliard, Junior?" Priscilla asked breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not really?" Conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Truly and honest!" Patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on
+the end. "J. H., Jr."</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> his!" cried Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Where on earth did you get it, Patty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it locked?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Patty nodded, "but my key will open it."</p>
+
+<p>"What's in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a dress suit, and collars, and&mdash;and things."</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you get it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Patty languidly, "it's a long story. I don't know that I
+have time before study hour&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tell us, please. I think you're beastly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;the glee club was last Thursday night."</p>
+
+<p>They nodded impatiently at this useless piece of information.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was Friday morning that I left. As I was listening to the
+Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting
+credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that
+Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the
+station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we
+got in, it was <i>cram</i> full of men. The entire Yale Glee Club was going
+to the station! There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> were so many of them that they were sitting in
+each other's laps. The whole top layer rose, and said perfectly gravely
+and politely: 'Madame, take my seat.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mam'selle was outraged. She said in French, which of course they all
+understood, that she thought American college boys had disgraceful
+manners; but I smiled a little&mdash;I couldn't help it, they were so funny.
+And then two of the bottom ones offered their seats, and we sat down.
+And you'll never believe it, but the third man from the end was sitting
+right next to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is he as good-looking near to, as he was on the stage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Better."</p>
+
+<p>"Are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked?"</p>
+
+<p>"They looked real but I couldn't examine them closely."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they're real!" said Conny indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you think?" Patty de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>manded. "They were going on my train.
+Did you ever hear of such a coincidence?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did Mam'selle think of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in
+charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt
+like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the
+smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me right
+into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite."</p>
+
+<p>"Patty!" they cried in shocked chorus. "You surely didn't speak to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. I looked out of the window and pretended he wasn't
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Conny murmured disappointedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the
+automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't
+see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went
+straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my
+suit-case and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack.
+That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to
+death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.</p>
+
+<p>"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very
+jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the
+time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>Conny nodded feelingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown
+people have horrid manners."</p>
+
+<p>"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought
+me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to
+obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time,
+what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."</p>
+
+<p>"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for
+dinner,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And
+there it was, wide open!"</p>
+
+<p>Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back
+the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a
+box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles
+filling in the interstices.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"They belong to him," <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Connie'">Conny</ins> murmured fervently.</p>
+
+<p>Patty nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He
+telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I
+didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't
+telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> Tom lives five miles from town, and there
+simply wasn't anything we could do that night."</p>
+
+<p>"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert,
+and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested
+Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to
+fit."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it looked all right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon.
+I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."</p>
+
+<p>"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?"
+asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the
+dressmaker's.</p>
+
+<p>"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply
+wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me
+herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it&mdash;just like all my dancing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash.
+I hated it anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'wail'">wait</ins> till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of
+her dresses&mdash;one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to
+wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It
+was white cr&ecirc;pe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was
+long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came
+and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet,
+and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I
+looked perfectly beautiful&mdash;I did, honestly&mdash;you wouldn't have known me.
+I looked <i>at least</i> twenty!</p>
+
+<p>"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out
+for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And
+he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as
+though I were flirting with my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it
+isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a
+good time&mdash;if you're pretty."</p>
+
+<p>Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed
+her chronicle.</p>
+
+<p>"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table.
+Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the
+whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with
+the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the
+program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across
+from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper&mdash;the man next
+to me&mdash;said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life;
+that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."</p>
+
+<p>"But about the suit-case," they prompted. "Didn't you do anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Tom telephoned again in the morning, and the station agent said
+he'd got the party on the wire as had the young lady's case. And he was
+coming back here in two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> days, and I was to leave his suit-case with the
+baggage man at the station, and he would leave mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But you didn't leave it."</p>
+
+<p>"I came on the other road. I'm going to send it down."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did you wear at the wedding?"</p>
+
+<p>"Louise's clothes. It didn't matter a bit, my not matching the other
+bridesmaids, because I was maid of honor, and ought to dress differently
+anyway. I've been grown up for three days&mdash;and I just wish Miss Lord
+could have seen me with my hair on the top of my head talking to men!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell the Dowager?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I told her about getting the wrong suit-case; I didn't mention the
+fact that it belonged to the third man from the end."</p>
+
+<p>"What did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"She said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's
+luggage; and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely. She
+telephoned to the baggage man that it was here, but she couldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> send
+Martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some
+eggs."</p>
+
+<p>Recreation was over, and the girls came trooping in to gather books and
+pads and pencils for the approaching study hour. Everyone who passed
+number Seven dropped in to hear the news. Each in turn received the
+story of the suit-case, and each in turn gasped anew at sight of the
+contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish?" said Rosalie Patton,
+sniffing.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's a button loose!" cried Florence Hissop, the careful
+housewife. "Where's some black silk, Patty?"</p>
+
+<p>She threaded a needle and secured the button. Then she daringly tried on
+the coat. Eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch.
+It was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present. Even
+Irene McCullough found it baggy.</p>
+
+<p>"He had awfully broad shoulders," said Rosalie, stroking the satin
+lining.</p>
+
+<p>They peered daintily at the other garments.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" squealed Mae Mertelle. "He wears blue silk suspenders."</p>
+
+<p>"And something else blue," chirped Edna Hartwell, peering over her
+shoulder. "They're pajamas!"</p>
+
+<p>"And to think of such a thing happening to Patty!" sighed Mae Mertelle.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" bristled Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"You're so young and so&mdash;er&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Young!&mdash;Wait till you see me with my hair done up."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what the end will be?" asked Rosalie.</p>
+
+<p>"The end," said Mae unkindly, "will be that the baggage man will deliver
+the suit-case, and Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, will never know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A maid appeared at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"If you please," she murmured, her amazed eyes on Irene who was still
+wearing the coat, "Mrs. Trent would like to have Miss Patty Wyatt come
+to the drawing-room, and I am to take the suit-case down. The gentleman
+is waiting."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty!" a gasp went around the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Do your hair up&mdash;quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head,
+while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and
+relocked the suit-case.</p>
+
+<p>They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a
+perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the
+drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by
+an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close,
+with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the
+walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man
+of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They
+gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty
+as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her
+that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head
+against the railing and laughed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale
+grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to
+make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't
+mind at all not having his dress-suit&mdash;never feels comfortable in it
+anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it
+on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study
+bell."</p>
+
+<p>Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a
+further detail:</p>
+
+<p>"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3>The Flannigan Honeymoon</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/t.png" width="100" height="100" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>HE Murphy family, with a judicious eye to the buttered side of the
+bread, had adopted Saint Ursula as their patron saint. The
+family&mdash;consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy, eleven little Murphys
+and "Gramma" Flannigan&mdash;occupied a five-room cottage close to the gates
+of St. Ursula's school. They subsisted on the vicarious charity of
+sixty-four girls, and the intermittent labor of Murphy <i>p&egrave;re</i>, who, in
+his sober intervals, was a sufficiently efficient stone-cutter and
+mason.</div>
+
+<p>He had built the big entrance gates, and the long stone wall that
+enclosed the ten acres of "bounds." He had laid the foun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>dation of the
+new west wing&mdash;known as Paradise Alley&mdash;and had constructed all the
+chimneys and driveways and tennis courts on the place. The school was a
+monument to his long and leisurely career.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, with an unusual display of foresight, had
+christened their first baby after the school. Ursula Murphy may not be a
+euphuistic combination, but the child was amply repaid for carrying such
+a name, by receiving the cast-off clothes of generations of St. Ursula
+girls. There was danger, for a time, that the poor little thing would be
+buried beneath a mountain of wearing apparel; but her parents
+providentially discovered a second-hand clothes man, who relieved her of
+a part of the burden.</p>
+
+<p>After Ursula, had come other little Murphys in regular succession; and
+it had grown to be one of the legendary privileges of the school to
+furnish the babies with names and baptismal presents. Mrs. Murphy was
+not entirely mercenary in her yearly request. She appreciated the
+artistic quality of the names that the girls provided. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> had a
+distinction, that she herself, with her lack of literary training, would
+never have been able to give. The choosing of the names had come to be a
+matter involving politics almost as complicated as the election of the
+senior president. Different factions proposed different names;
+half-a-dozen tickets would be in the field, and the balloting was
+conducted with rousing speeches.</p>
+
+<p>There was one hampering restriction. Every baby must have a patron
+saint. Upon this point, the Murphys stood firm. However, by a careful
+study of early Christian martyrs, the girls had managed to unearth a
+list of recondite saints with fairly unusual and picturesque names.</p>
+
+<p>So far, the roll of the Murphy offspring read:</p>
+
+<p>Ursula Marie, Geraldine Sabina, Muriel Veronica and Lionel Ambrose
+(twins), Aileen Clotilda, John Drew Dominick, Delphine Olivia, Patrick
+(he had been born in the summer vacation, and the long-suffering priest
+had insisted that the boy be named for his father), Sidney Orlando
+Boniface,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> Richard Harding Gabriel, Yolanda Genevieve. This completed
+the list, until one morning early in December, Patrick Senior presented
+himself at the kitchen door, with the news that another name&mdash;a
+boy's&mdash;would be seasonable.</p>
+
+<p>The school immediately went into a committee of the whole. Several names
+had been put up, and the discussion was growing heated, when Patty Wyatt
+jumped to her feet with the proposal of "Cuthbert St. John." The
+suggestion was met with cheers; and Mae Van Arsdale indignantly left the
+room. The name was carried by unanimous vote.</p>
+
+<p>Cuthbert St. John Murphy was christened the following Sunday, and
+received a gold-lined porridge spoon in a green plush box.</p>
+
+<p>So delighted was the school at Patty's felicitous suggestion, that, by
+way of reward, they elected her chairman of the Christmas Carnival
+Committee. The Christmas Carnival was a charitable institution
+contemporaneous with the founding of the school. St. Ursula's scheme of
+education<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> was broad; it involved growth in a wide variety of womanly
+virtues, and the greatest of these was charity. Not the modern,
+scientific, machine-made charity, but the comfortable, old-fashioned
+kind that leaves a pleasant glow of generosity in the heart of the
+giver. Every year at Christmastide a tree was decked, a supper laid, and
+the poor children of the neighborhood bidden to partake. The poor
+children were collected by the school girls, who drove about from house
+to house, in bob-sleighs or hay-wagons, according to the snow. The girls
+regarded it as the most diverting festival of the school year; and even
+the poor children, when they had overcome their first embarrassment,
+found it fairly diverting.</p>
+
+<p>The original scheme had been for each girl to have an individual
+prot&eacute;g&eacute;, that she might call upon the family and come into personal
+relations with a humbler class. She was to learn the special needs of
+her child, and give something really useful, such as stockings or
+trousers or flannel petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>It was an admirable scheme on paper, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> in actual practice it fell
+down. St. Ursula's was situated in an affluent district given over to
+the estates of the idle rich, and the proletarian who clung to the
+skirts of these estates was amply provided with an opportunity to work.
+In the early days, when the school was small, there had been sufficient
+poor children to go round; but as St. Ursula's had grown, the poor
+seemed to have diminished, until now the school was confronted by an
+actual scarcity. But the Murphys, at least, they had always with them.
+They yearly offered thanks for this.</p>
+
+<p>Patty accepted her chairmanship and appointed sub-committees to do the
+actual work. For herself and Conny and Priscilla she reserved the
+privilege of choosing the recipients of St. Ursula's bounty. This
+entailed several exhilarating afternoons out of bounds. A walk abroad is
+as inspiring to the inmates of a prison as a trip through Europe to
+those at large. They spent the better part of a week canvassing the
+neighborhood, only to reveal the embarrassing fact that there were nine
+possible children, aside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> from the Murphy brood, and that none of these
+nine were from homes that one could conscientiously term poor. The
+children's sober industrious parents could well supply their temperate
+Christmas demands.</p>
+
+<p>"And there are only six Murphys the right age," Conny grumbled, as they
+turned homewards in the cold twilight of a wintry day, after an
+unprofitable two hours' tramp.</p>
+
+<p>"That makes about one child to every five girls," Priscilla nodded
+dismally.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, this charity business makes me tired!" Patty burst out. "It's fun
+for the girls, and nothing else. The way we dole out stuff to perfectly
+nice people, is just plain insulting. If anybody poked a pink tarlatan
+stocking full of candy at me, and said it was because I'd been a good
+little girl, I'd throw it in their face."</p>
+
+<p>In moments of intensity, Patty's English was not above reproach.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Patty," Priscilla slipped a soothing hand through her arm,
+"we'll stop in at the Murphys' and count 'em over again. Maybe there's
+one we overlooked."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The twins are only fifteen," said Conny hopefully. "I think they'll
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"And Richard Harding's nearly four. He's old enough to enjoy a tree. The
+more Murphys we can get the better. They always love the things we
+give."</p>
+
+<p>"I know they do!" Patty growled. "We're teaching the whole lot of them
+to be blooming beggars&mdash;I shall be sorry I ever used any slang, if we
+can't put the money to better use than this."</p>
+
+<p>The funds for the carnival were yearly furnished by a tax on slang. St.
+Ursula demanded a fine of one cent for every instance of slang or bad
+grammar let fall in public. Of course, in the privacy of one's own room,
+in the bosom of one's chosen family, the rigor was relaxed. Your dearest
+friends did not report you&mdash;except in periods of estrangement. But your
+acquaintances and enemies and teachers did, and even, in moments of
+intense honorableness, you reported yourself. In any case, the slang
+fund grew. When the committee had opened the box this year, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> found
+thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents.</p>
+
+<p>Patty allowed herself, after some slight protest, to be drawn to the
+door of the Murphy domicile. She was not in an affable mood, and a call
+upon the Murphys required a great deal of conversation. They found the
+family hilariously assembled in an over-crowded kitchen. The entire
+dozen children babbled at once, shriller and shriller, in a vain
+endeavor to drown each other out. A cabbage stew, in progress on the
+stove, filled the room with an odorous steam. Shoved into a corner of
+the hearth, was poor old Gramma Flannigan, surrounded by noisy, pushing
+youngsters, who showed her gray hairs but scant consideration. The girls
+admired the new baby, while Yolanda and Richard Harding crawled over
+their laps with sticky hands. Mrs. Murphy, meanwhile, discanted in a
+rich brogue upon the merits of "Coothbert St. Jawn" as a name. She liked
+it, she declared, as well as any in the list. It sure ought to bring
+luck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> to a child to carry the name of two saints. She thanked the young
+ladies kindly.</p>
+
+<p>Patty left Conny and Priscilla to carry off the social end of the call,
+while she squeezed herself onto the woodbox by Gramma Flannigan's chair.
+Mrs. Murphy's mother was a pathetic old body, with the winning speech
+and manners of Ireland a generation ago. Patty found her the most
+remunerative member of the household, so far as interest went. She
+always liked to get her started with stories of her girlhood, when she
+had been a lady's maid in Lord Stirling's castle in County Clare, and
+young Tammas Flannigan came and carried her off to America to help make
+his fortune. Tammas was now a bent old man with rheumatism, but in his
+keen blue eyes and Irish smile, Gramma still saw the lad who had courted
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"How's your husband this winter?" Patty asked, knowing that she was
+taking the shortest road to the old woman's heart.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head with a tremulous smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm not hearin' for four days. Tammas ain't livin' with us no more."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pity for you to be separated!" said Patty, with quick sympathy,
+not realizing on how sore a subject she was touching.</p>
+
+<p>The flood gates of the old woman's garrulity broke down.</p>
+
+<p>"With Ursuly an' Ger-r-aldine growin' oop an' havin' young min to wait
+on thim, 'twas needin' a parlor they was, an' they couldn't spare the
+room no longer for me'n Tammas. So they put me in the garret with the
+four gurrls, an' Tammas, he was sint oop the road to me son Tammas.
+Tammas's wife said as Tammas could sleep in the kitchen to pay for
+carryin' the wood an' watter, but she couldn't take us both because she
+takes boarders."</p>
+
+<p>Patty cocked her head for a moment of silence, as she endeavored to
+pluck sense from this tangle of Tammases.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too bad!" she comforted, laying a sympathetic hand on the old
+woman's knee.</p>
+
+<p>Gramma Flannigan's eyes filled with the ready tears of old age.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm not complainin', for it's the way o' the world. The owld must step
+off, an' make room for the young. But it's lonely I am without him!
+We've lived together for forty-seven years, an' we know each other's
+ways."</p>
+
+<p>"But your son doesn't live very far away." Patty offered what solace she
+might. "You must see Thomas very often."</p>
+
+<p>"That an' I don't! You might as well have a husband dead, as a mile an'
+a half away an' laid oop with rheumatism."</p>
+
+<p>The clock pointed to a quarter of six, and the visitors rose. They had
+still to walk half a mile and dress before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman clung to Patty's hand at parting. She seemed to find more
+comfort in the little stray sympathy that Patty had offered, than in all
+her exuberant brood of grandchildren.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it dreadful to be old, and just sit around waiting to die?" Patty
+shuddered, as they faced the cold darkness outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Dreadful!" Conny cordially agreed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> "Hurry up! Or we'll be late for
+dinner, and this is chicken night."</p>
+
+<p>They turned homeward at a jog trot that left little breath for speech;
+but Patty's mind was working as fast as her legs.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got a perfectly splendid idea," she panted as she turned in at the
+gate and trotted up the driveway toward the big lighted house that
+spread wide wings to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" they asked.</p>
+
+<p>The quick insistent clang of the gong floated out to meet them, and on
+the instant, hurrying figures flitted past the windows&mdash;the summons to
+meals brought a readier response than the summons to study.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you after dinner. No time now," Patty returned as she peeled
+off her coat.</p>
+
+<p>They were unlacing their blouses as they clattered up the back stairs,
+and pulling them over their heads in the upper hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Go slow&mdash;please!" they implored of the down-going procession whose
+track they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> crossed. Dinner was the only meal which might be approached
+by the front stairs, which were carpeted instead of tinned.</p>
+
+<p>Their evening frocks were fortunately in one piece, and they dove into
+them with little ceremony. The three presented themselves flushed of
+cheek and somewhat rumpled as to hair, but properly gowned and
+apologetic, just as grace was ended. To be late for grace only meant one
+demerit; the first course came higher, and the second higher still.
+Punishment increased by geometrical progression.</p>
+
+<p>During the half hour's intermission before evening study, the three
+separated themselves from the dancers in the hall, and withdrew to a
+corner of the deserted schoolroom.</p>
+
+<p>Patty perched herself on a desk, and loudly stated her feelings.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired of having the Dowager get up at prayers, and make a speech
+about the beautiful Christmas spirit, and how sweet it is to make so
+many little children happy, when she knows perfectly well that it's
+just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> a lark for us. I'm chairman this year and I can do as I please.
+I've had enough of this fake charity; and I'm not going to have any
+Christmas tree!"</p>
+
+<p>"No Christmas tree?" Conny echoed blankly.</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you going to do with the thirty-seven dollars and
+eight-four cents?" asked Priscilla, the practical.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen!" Patty settled to her argument. "There aren't any children
+around here who need a blessed thing, but Gramma and Granpa Flannigan
+do. That poor old woman, who is just as nice as she can be, is crowded
+in with all those horrid, yelling, sticky little Murphys; and Granpa
+Flannigan is poked into Tammas Junior's kitchen, running errands for
+Tammas Junior's wife, who is a per-fect-ly <i>terrible</i> woman. She throws
+kettles when she gets mad. Gramma worries all the time for fear he has
+rheumatism, and nobody to rub on liniment, or make him wear the right
+underclothes. They're exactly as fond of each other as any other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+husband and wife, and just because Ursula wants to have callers, I say
+it's a mean shame for them to be separated!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is too bad," Conny agreed impartially. "But I don't see that we can
+help it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes! Instead of having a Christmas tree, we'll rent that empty
+little cottage down by the laurel walk, and mend the chimney&mdash;Patrick
+can do that for nothing&mdash;and put in new windows, and furnish it, and set
+them up in housekeeping."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we can do it for thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four
+cents?" Priscilla asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where the charity comes in! Every girl in school will go without
+her allowance for two weeks. Then we'll have more than a hundred
+dollars, and you can furnish a house perfectly beautifully for that. And
+it would be real charity to give up our allowances, because they are
+particularly useful at Christmas time."</p>
+
+<p>"But will the girls want to give their allowances?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll fix it so they'll have to," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> Patty. "We'll call a mass
+meeting and make a speech. Then everybody will file past and sign a
+paper. No one will dare refuse with the school looking on."</p>
+
+<p>Patty's fire kindled an answering flame in the other two.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a good idea!" Conny declared.</p>
+
+<p>"And it would be a lark, fixing the house," said Priscilla. "Almost as
+much fun as getting married ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," Patty nodded. "Those poor old things haven't had a chance to
+see each other alone for years. We'll give 'em a honeymoon all over
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Patty was outwardly occupied with geometry the next hour, but her mind
+was busy hemming sheets and towels and tablecloths. It being Thursday
+evening, the hour between eight and nine was occupied with "manners."
+The girls took turns in coming gracefully downstairs, entering the
+drawing-room, announced by Claire du Bois in the r&ocirc;le of footman, and
+shaking hands with their hostesses&mdash;Conny Wilder, as dowager mama, and
+towering above her, as d&eacute;butante daugh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>ter, Irene McCullough, the
+biggest girl in the school. The gymnasium teacher who assigned the
+r&ocirc;les, had a sense of humor. An appropriate remark was expected from
+each guest, the weather being barred.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Wilder!" Priscilla gushed, advancing with outstretched hand, "and
+dear little Irene! It doesn't seem possible that the child is actually
+grown. It was only yesterday that she was a mite of a thing toddling
+about&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla was shoved on by Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Me dear Mrs. Wilder," she inquired in a brogue that would have put the
+Murphys to shame, "have ye heard the news that's goin' round? Mr. and
+Mrs. Tammas Flannigan have taken the Laurel Cottage for the season. They
+are thinkin' of startin' a salon. They will be at home ivery afternoon
+during recreation hour&mdash;and will serve limonade and gingerbread in
+summer, and soup and sandwiches in winter. Ye must take Irene to call on
+thim."</p>
+
+<p>The moment "manners" was over, the three withdrew to the seclusion of
+Patty's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> and Conny's room in Paradise Alley, and closed the door against
+callers. Between nine and nine-thirty was the fashionable calling hour
+at St. Ursula's. The time was supposed to be occupied in getting ready
+for bed, but if one were clever about undressing in the dark, one might
+devote the thirty minutes to social purposes.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone to sleep! Don't disturb us!" the placard read that they impaled
+upon the door, but the clatter of tongues inside belied the words.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't my idea fine about the lemonade and soup?" Patty demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The great thing about charity is not to make it charity. You must keep
+people self-supporting," Priscilla quoted from their last lesson in
+sociology.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll fix little tables under the apple tree in summer and in the
+parlor in winter," Patty planned, "and all the school girls and
+automobiles will stop for lemonade. We'll charge the girls five cents a
+glass and the automobiles ten."</p>
+
+<p>"And I say, let's make Patrick and Tam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>mas each contribute a dollar a
+week toward their support," Conny proposed. "They must eat up a dollar's
+worth of potatoes as they are living now."</p>
+
+<p>They continued planning in whispers until long after "lights-out" had
+rung; and Priscilla, in a laudable desire to be inconspicuous, was
+obliged to crawl on hands and knees past Mademoiselle's open door,
+before she gained her own room at the end of the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>The moment recreation sounded the next afternoon, they obtained
+permission to be out of bounds, and set off at a brisk trot. It was
+their business-like intention to have all the statistics complete,
+before submitting the matter to the assembled school.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll first call on Patrick and Tammas and make 'em promise the
+dollar," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>Patrick readily promised his dollar&mdash;Patrick was always strong in
+promises&mdash;and the girls proceeded gaily to Tammas Junior's. They found
+Granpa on the back doorstep anxiously wiping his feet; he was a
+tremulous reed that bowed before every blast of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> the daughter-in-law's
+tongue. Tammas Junior, after being taken aside and told the project,
+thought he could manage two dollars a week. An expression of relief
+momentarily took the hunted look from his eyes. He was clearly glad to
+rescue his father from the despotic rule of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>The girls turned away with their minds made up. It only remained to
+secure the cottage, coerce the school, and hem the sheets.</p>
+
+<p>"You go and price furniture and wall paper," Patty issued her orders,
+"while I see about the rent. We'll meet at the soda-water fountain."</p>
+
+<p>She found the real-estate man who owned the cottage established in an
+office over the bank; and by what she considered rare business ability,
+beat him down from nine dollars a month to seven. This stroke
+accomplished, she intimated her readiness for the lease.</p>
+
+<p>"A lease will not be necessary," he said. "A month to month verbal
+agreement will do for me."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't consider it without a lease," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> Patty, firmly. "You might
+sell or something, and then we'd have to move out."</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman amusedly filled in the form, and signed as party of the
+first part. He passed the pen to Patty and indicated the space reserved
+for the signature of the party of the second part.</p>
+
+<p>"I must first consult my partners," she explained.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see! Have them sign here, and then bring the lease back."</p>
+
+<p>"All of them?" she asked, dubiously scanning the somewhat cramped
+quarters. "I'm afraid there won't be room."</p>
+
+<p>"How many partners have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sixty-three."</p>
+
+<p>He stared momentarily, then as his eye fell on the embroidered "St. U."
+on Patty's coat sleeve, he threw back his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon!" he apologized, "but I was a bit staggered for a
+moment. I am not used to doing business on such a large scale. In order
+to be legal," he gravely explained, "the paper will have to be signed by
+all the parties to the contract. If there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> is not enough room, you might
+paste on an er&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Annex?" suggested Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," he agreed and with grave politeness bowed her out.</p>
+
+<p>As the bell rang that indicated the end of study that evening, Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla jumped to their feet, and called a mass meeting of
+the school. The door was closed after the retreating Miss Jellings, and
+for half an hour the three made speeches separately and in unison. They
+were persuasive talkers and they carried the day. The allowance was
+voted with scarcely a dissenting voice, and the school filed past and
+signed the lease.</p>
+
+<p>For two weeks St. Ursula's was a busy place&mdash;and also Laurel Cottage.
+Bounds were practically enlarged to include it. The girls worked in
+gangs during every recreation hour. The cellar was whitewashed by a
+committee of four, who went in blue, and came out speckled like a
+plover's egg. Tammas Junior had volunteered for this job, but it was one
+the girls could not relinquish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> They did allow him to kalsomine the
+ceilings and hang the wall paper; but they painted the floors and lower
+reaches of woodwork themselves. The evening's hour of recreation no
+longer found them dancing, but sitting in a solid phalanx on the stairs
+hemming sheets and tablecloths. The house was to be furnished with a
+completeness that poor Mrs. Flannigan, in all her married life, had
+never known before.</p>
+
+<p>When everything was finished, the day before the holidays, the school in
+a body wiped its feet on the door-mat and tiptoed through on a last
+visit of inspection. The cottage contained three rooms, with a cellar
+and woodshed besides. The wall paper and chintz hangings of the parlor
+were flaming pink peonies with a wealth of foliage&mdash;a touch of
+flamboyant for some tastes, but Granpa's and Gramma's eyes were failing,
+and they liked strong colors. Also, crafty questioning had elicited the
+fact that "pinies" were Gramma's favorite flower. The kitchen had
+turkey-red curtains with a cheerful strip of rag carpet and two
+comfortable easy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> chairs before the hearth. The cellar was generously
+stocked from the school farm&mdash;Miss Sallie's contribution&mdash;with potatoes
+and cabbages and carrots and onions, enough to make Irish stew for three
+months to come. The woodbin was filled, and even a five-gallon can of
+kerosene. Sixty-four pairs of eyes had scanned the rooms minutely to
+make sure that no essential was omitted.</p>
+
+<p>Both the Murphy and Flannigan households had been agog for days over the
+proposed flitting of the pair. Even Mrs. Tammas had volunteered to wash
+the windows of the new cottage, and for a week she had scarcely been
+cross. The old man was already wondering at life. When the time arrived,
+Mrs. Murphy secretly packed Gramma's belongings and dressed her in her
+best, under the pretext that she was to be taken in a carriage to a
+Christmas party to have supper with her husband. The old woman was in a
+happy flutter at the prospect. Granpa was prepared for the journey by
+the same simple strategy.</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Conny and Priscilla, as orig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>inators of the enterprise, had
+been appointed to install the old couple; but with tactful forbearance,
+they delegated the right to the son and daughter. They saw that the
+fires were burning, the lamps lighted, and the cat&mdash;there was even a
+cat&mdash;asleep on the hearth rug; then when the sound of carriage wheels in
+front told them that Martin had arrived with his passengers, they
+quietly slipped out the back way and jogged home to dinner through the
+snowy dusk.</p>
+
+<p>They were met by a babel of questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Was Gramma pleased with the parlor clock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did she know what to do with the chaffing-dish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Were they disappointed at not having a feather bed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did they like the cat, or would they rather have had a parrot?" (The
+school had been torn asunder on this important point.)</p>
+
+<p>At the dinner table that night&mdash;such of the school as was
+left&mdash;chattered only of Laurel Cottage. They were as excited over Gramma
+and Granpa's happiness, as over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> their own approaching holiday. All
+sixty-four were planning to drink tea, on the first day of their return,
+from Gramma's six cups.</p>
+
+<p>Toward nine o'clock, Patty and Priscilla, by a special dispensation that
+allowed late hours in vacation, received permission to accompany Conny
+and ten other dear friends to the station for the western express.
+Driving back alone in the "hearse," still bubbling with the hilarity of
+Christmas farewells, they passed the Laurel Cottage.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe they're still up!" said Priscilla. "Let's stop and wish 'em a
+Merry Christmas, just to make sure they like it."</p>
+
+<p>Martin was readily induced to halt; his discipline also was relaxed in
+vacation. They approached the door, but hesitated at sight of the
+picture revealed by the lighted window. To interrupt with the boisterous
+greetings of the season, seemed like rudely breaking in upon the
+seclusion of lovers. Only a glance was needed to tell them that the
+house-warming was successful. Gramma and Granpa were sitting before the
+fire in their comfortable red-cushioned rocking-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>chairs; the lamp shed a
+glow on their radiant faces, as they held each other's hands and smiled
+into the future.</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Priscilla tiptoed away and climbed back into the hearse, a
+touch sobered and thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," Patty pondered, "they are just as contented as if they lived
+in a palace with a million dollars and an automobile! It's funny, isn't
+it, what a little thing makes some people happy?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>The Silver Buckles</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/t.png" width="100" height="100" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>O be cooped up for three weeks with the two stupidest girls in the
+school&mdash;"</div>
+
+<p>"Kid McCoy isn't so bad," said Conny consolingly.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a horrid little tomboy."</p>
+
+<p>"But you know she's entertaining, Patty."</p>
+
+<p>"She never says a word that isn't slang, and <i>I</i> think she's the limit!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway, Harriet Gladden&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is perfectly dreadful and you know it. I would just as soon spend
+Christmas with a weeping angel on a tombstone."</p>
+
+<p>"She is pretty mournful," Priscilla agreed. "I've spent three
+Christmases with her. But anyway, you'll have fun. You can be late for
+meals whenever you want, and Nora lets you make candy on the kitchen
+stove."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty sniffed disdainfully as she commenced the work of resettling her
+room, after the joyous upheaval of a Christmas packing. The other two
+assisted in silent sympathy. There was after all not much comfort to be
+offered. School in holiday time was a lonely substitute for home.
+Priscilla, whose father was a naval officer, and whose home was a
+peripatetic affair, had become inured to the experience; but this
+particular year, she was gaily setting out to visit cousins in New
+York&mdash;with three new dresses and two new hats! And Patty, whose home was
+a mere matter of two hours in a Pullman car, was to be left behind; for
+six-year old Thomas Wyatt had chosen this inopportune time to come down
+with scarlet fever. The case was of the lightest; Master Tommy was
+sitting up in bed and occupying himself with a box of lead soldiers. But
+the rest of the family were not so comfortable. Some were quarantined
+in, and the others out. Judge Wyatt had installed himself in a hotel and
+telegraphed the Dowager to keep Patty at St. Ursula's during the
+holidays. Poor Patty had been happily pack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>ing her trunk when the news
+arrived; and as she unpacked it, she distributed a few excusable tears
+through the bureau drawers.</p>
+
+<p>Ordinarily, a number remained for the holidays,&mdash;girls whose homes were
+in the West or South, or whose parents were traveling abroad or getting
+divorces&mdash;but this year the assortment was unusually meager. Patty was
+left alone in "Paradise Alley." Margarite McCoy, of Texas, was stranded
+at the end of the South Corridor, and Harriet Gladden of Nowhere, had a
+suite of eighteen rooms at her disposal in "Lark Lane." These and four
+teachers made up the household.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet Gladden had been five years straight at St. Ursula's&mdash;term time
+and vacations without a break. She came a lanky little girl of twelve,
+all legs and arms, and she was now a lanky big girl of seventeen, still
+all legs and arms. An invisible father, at intervals mentioned in the
+catalogue, mailed checks to Mrs. Trent; and beyond this made no sign.
+Poor Harriet was a mournful, silent, neglected child; entirely out of
+place in the effervescing life that went on around her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She never had any birthday boxes from home, never any Christmas
+presents, except those that came from the school. While the other girls
+were clamoring for mail, Harriet stood in the background silent and
+unexpectant. Miss Sallie picked out her clothes, and Miss Sallie's
+standards were utilitarian rather than <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'esthetic'">&aelig;sthetic</ins>. Harriet, with no
+exception, was the worst dressed girl in the school. Even her school
+uniform, which was an exact twin of sixty-three other uniforms, hung
+upon her with the grace of a meal-bag. Miss Sallie, with provident
+foresight, always ordered them a size too large in order to allow her to
+grow and Harriet invariably wore them out, before she had established a
+fit.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth becomes of Harriet Gladden during vacation?" Priscilla
+once wondered on the opening day.</p>
+
+<p>"They keep her on ice through the summer," was Patty's opinion, "and she
+never gets entirely thawed out."</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact this was, as nearly as possible, what they did do
+with her. Miss Sallie picked out a quiet, comfortable, healthy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+farmhouse, and installed Harriet in charge of the farmer's wife. By the
+end of three months she was so desperately lonely, that she looked
+forward with pleasurable excitement to the larger isolation of term
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Patty, one day, had overheard two of the teachers discussing Harriet,
+and her reported version had been picturesque.</p>
+
+<p>"Her father hasn't seen her for years and years. He just chucks her in
+here and pays the bills."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't wonder he doesn't want her at home!" said Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any home. Her mother is divorced, and married again, and
+living in Paris. That was the reason Harriet couldn't go abroad with the
+school party last year. Her father was afraid that when she got to
+Paris, her mother would grab her&mdash;not that either of them really wants
+her, but they like to spite each other."</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla and Conny sat up interestedly. Here was a tragic intrigue,
+such as you expect to meet only in novels, going on under their very
+noses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You girls who have had a happy home life, cannot imagine the loneliness
+of a childhood such as Harriet's," said Patty impressively.</p>
+
+<p>"It's dreadful!" Conny cried. "Her father must be a perfect <i>Beast</i> not
+to take any notice of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Harriet has her mother's eyes," Patty explained. "Her father can't bear
+to look at her, because she reminds him of the happy past that is dead
+forever."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Miss Wadsworth say that?" they demanded in an interested chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Not in exactly those words," Patty confessed. "I just gathered the
+outline."</p>
+
+<p>This story, with picturesque additions, lost no time in making the
+rounds of the school. Had Harriet chosen to play up to the romantic and
+melancholy r&ocirc;le she was cast for, she might have attained popularity of
+a sort; but Harriet did not have the slightest trace of the histrionic
+in her make-up. She merely moped about, and continued to be heavy and
+uninteresting. Other more exciting matters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> demanded public attention;
+and Harriet and her blasted childhood were forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>Patty stood on the veranda waving good-by to the last hearseful of
+Christmas travelers, then turned indoors to face an empty three weeks.
+As she was listlessly preparing to mount the stairs, Maggie waylaid her
+with the message:</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Trent would like to speak to you in her private study, Miss
+Patty."</p>
+
+<p>Patty turned back, wondering for just which of her latest activities she
+was to be called to account. A visit to the Dowager's private study
+usually meant that a storm was brewing. She found the four left-behind
+teachers cosily gathered about the tea table, and to her surprise, was
+received with four affable smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Patty, and have some tea."</p>
+
+<p>The Dowager motioned her to a chair, while she mingled an inch of tea
+with three inches of hot water. Miss Sallie furnished a fringed napkin,
+Miss Jellings presented buttered toast, and Miss Wadsworth, salted
+almonds. Patty blinked dazedly and ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>cepted the offerings. To be waited
+on by four teachers was an entirely new experience. Her spirits rose
+considerably as she mentally framed the story for Priscilla's and
+Conny's delectation. When she had ceased to wonder why she was being
+thus honored, the reason appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Patty," said the Dowager, "that none of your special
+friends are to be here this year; but I am sure that you and Margarite
+and Harriet will get on very happily. Breakfast will be half an hour
+later than usual, and the rules about bounds will be somewhat
+relaxed&mdash;only of course we must always know where to find you. I shall
+try to plan a matin&eacute;e party in the city, and Miss Sallie will take you
+to spend a day at the farm. The ice is strong enough now for you to
+skate, and Martin will get out the sleds for you to coast. You must be
+in the open air as much as possible; and I shall be very pleased if you
+and Margarite can interest Harriet in out-of-door sports. Speaking of
+Harriet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The Dowager hesitated momentarily, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> Patty's acute understanding
+realized that at last they were getting at the kernel of the interview.
+The tea and toast had been merely wrapping. She listened with a touch of
+suspicion, while the Dowager lowered her voice with an air of
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Speaking of Harriet, I should like to enlist your sympathy, Patty. She
+is very sweet and genuine. A girl that anyone might be proud to have for
+a friend. But through an accident, such as sometimes happens in a
+crowded, busy, selfish community, she has been overlooked and left
+behind. Harriet has never seemed to adjust herself so readily as most
+girls; and I fear that the poor child is often very lonely. It would be
+highly gratifying to me if you would make an effort to be friendly with
+her. I am sure that she will meet your advances half way."</p>
+
+<p>Patty murmured a few polite phrases and retired to dress for dinner,
+stubbornly resolved to be as distant with Harriet as possible. Her
+friendship was not a commodity to be bought with tea and buttered toast.</p>
+
+<p>The three girls had dinner alone at a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> candle-lit table set in a
+corner of the dining-room, while the four teachers occupied a
+conveniently distant table in the opposite corner.</p>
+
+<p>Patty commenced the meal by being as monosyllabic as possible; but it
+was not her natural attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal
+had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at
+Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the
+vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During
+term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax
+on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone to swell the
+public coffers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a relief to let dinner-table conversation flow where it listed;
+usually, with a teacher in attendance and the route marked out, there
+was a cramped formality about the meal. French conversation was supposed
+to occupy the first three courses five nights in the week, and every
+girl must contribute at least two remarks. It cannot be said that on
+French nights the dining-room was garrulous. Saturday night was devoted
+to a discussion (in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> English) of current events, gleaned from a study of
+the editorials in the morning paper. Nobody at St. Ursula's had much
+time for editorials, and even on an English Saturday conversation
+languished. But the school made up for it on Sunday. This day, being
+<i>festa</i>, they could talk about anything they chose; and sixty-four
+magpies chattering their utmost, would have been silence in comparison
+to St. Ursula's at dinner time on Sunday.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The four days preceding Christmas passed with unexpected swiftness. A
+snow-storm marked the first, followed by three days of glistening
+sunshine. Martin got out the bobs, and the girls piled in and rode to
+the wood-lot for evergreens. There were many errands in the village, and
+the novelty of not always having a teacher at one's heels, proved in
+itself diverting.</p>
+
+<p>Patty found the two companions which circumstances had forced upon her
+unexpectedly companionable. They skated and coasted and had snow fights;
+and Harriet, to Patty's wide-eyed astonishment, assumed a very
+ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>preciable animation. On Christmas Eve they had been out with Martin
+delivering Christmas baskets to old time prot&eacute;g&eacute;s of the school; and on
+the way home, through pure overflowing animal spirits, for a mile or
+more they had "caught on" the back of the bob, and then tumbled out and
+run and caught on again, until they finally dove head foremost into the
+big piled-up drift by the porte-coch&egrave;re. They shook the snow from their
+clothes, like puppies from a pond, and laughing and excited trooped
+indoors. Harriet's cheeks were red from contact with the snow, her
+usually prim hair was a tangled mass about her face, her big dark eyes
+had lost their mournful look. They were merry, mischievous, girlish
+eyes. She was not merely pretty, but beautiful, in a wild, unusual
+gypsyish way that compelled attention.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," Patty whispered to Kid McCoy as they divested themselves of
+rubbers and leggins in the lower hall. "Look at Harriet! Isn't she
+pretty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Golly!" murmured the Kid. "If she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> knew enough to play up to her looks,
+she'd be the ravingest beauty in all the school."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's make her!" said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>At the top of the stairs they met Osaki with a hammer and chisel.</p>
+
+<p>"I open two box," he observed. "One Mees Margarite McCoy. One Mees Patty
+Wyatt."</p>
+
+<p>"Hooray!" cried the Kid, starting at a gallop for her room in the South
+Wing.</p>
+
+<p>A Christmas box to Kid McCoy meant a lavish wealth of new possessions
+out of all proportion to her desserts. She owned a bachelor guardian who
+was subject to fits of such erratic generosity that the Dowager had
+regularly to remind him that Margarite was but a school girl with simple
+tastes. Fortunately he always forgot this warning before the next
+Christmas&mdash;or else he knew Kid too well to believe it&mdash;and the boxes
+continued to come.</p>
+
+<p>Patty had also started without ceremony for Paradise Alley, when she
+became aware of deserted Harriet, slowly trailing down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> dim length
+of Lark Lane. She ran back and grasped her by an elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Harry! And help me open my box."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet's face flushed with sudden pleasure; it was the first time, in
+the five and a half years of her school career, that she had ever
+achieved the dignity of a nickname. She accompanied Patty with some
+degree of eagerness. The next best thing to receiving a Christmas box of
+your own, is to be present at the reception of a friend's.</p>
+
+<p>It was a big square wooden box, packed to the brim with smaller boxes
+and parcels tied with ribbon and holly, and tucked into every crevice
+funny surprises. You could picture, just from looking at it, the kind of
+home that it came from, filled with jokes and nonsense and love.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the first Christmas I've ever spent away from home," said Patty,
+with the suggestion of a quiver in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>But her momentary soberness did not last; the business of exploration
+was too absorbing to allow any divided emotion. Harriet sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> on the edge
+of the bed and watched in silence, while Patty gaily strewed the floor
+with tissue paper and scarlet ribbon. She unpacked a wide assortment of
+gloves and books and trinkets, each with a message of love. Even the
+cook had baked a Christmas cake with a fancy top. And little Tommy, in
+wobbly uphill printing, had labeled an elephant filled with candy, "<span class="smcap">for
+dere cister from tom</span>."</p>
+
+<p>Patty laughed happily as she plumped a chocolate into her mouth, and
+dropped the elephant into Harriet's lap.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't they dears to go to such a lot of trouble? I tell you, it pays
+to stay away sometimes, they think such a lot more of you! This is from
+Mother," she added, as she pried off the cover of a big dressmaker's
+box, and lifted out a filmy dancing frock of pink cr&ecirc;pe.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it perfectly sweet?" she demanded, "and I didn't need it a bit!
+Don't you love to get things you don't need?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never do," said Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>Patty was already deep in another parcel.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"From Daddy, with all the love in the world," she read. "Dear old Dad!
+What on earth do you s'pose it is? I hope Mother suggested something.
+He's a perfect idiot about choosing presents, unless&mdash;Oh!" she squealed.
+"Pink silk stockings and slippers to match; and look at those perfectly
+lovely buckles!"</p>
+
+<p>She offered for Harriet's inspection a pink satin slipper adorned with
+the daintiest of silver buckles, and with heels dizzily suggestive of
+France.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't my father a lamb?" Patty gaily kissed her hand toward a
+dignified, judicial-looking portrait on the bureau. "Mother suggested
+the slippers, of course, but the buckles and French heels were his own
+idea. She likes me sensible, and he likes me frivolous."</p>
+
+<p>She was deep in the absorbing business of holding the pink frock before
+the glass to make sure that the color was becoming, when she was
+suddenly arrested by the sound of a sob, and she turned to see Harriet
+throw herself across the bed and clutch the pillow in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> storm of
+weeping. Patty stared with wide-open eyes; she herself did not indulge
+in such emotional demonstrations, and she could not imagine any possible
+cause. She moved the pink satin slippers out of reach of Harriet's
+thrashing feet, gathered up the fallen elephant and scattered
+chocolates, and sat down to wait until the cataclysm should pass.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" she mildly inquired, when Harriet's sobs gave place
+to choking gasps.</p>
+
+<p>"My father never sent me any s-silver b-buckles."</p>
+
+<p>"He's way off in Mexico," said Patty, awkwardly groping for consolation.</p>
+
+<p>"He never sends me anything! He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't
+recognize me if he met me on the street."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he would," Patty assured her with doubtful comfort. "You
+haven't changed a bit in four years."</p>
+
+<p>"And he wouldn't like me if he did know me. I'm not pretty, and my
+clothes are never nice, and&mdash;" Harriet was off again.</p>
+
+<p>Patty regarded her for a moment of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> thoughtful silence, then she decided
+on a new tack. She stretched out a hand and shook her vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"For goodness' sake, stop crying! That's what's the matter with your
+father. No man can stand having tears dripped down his neck all the
+time."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet arrested her sobs to stare.</p>
+
+<p>"If you could see the way you look when you cry! Sort of streaked. Come
+here!" She took her by the shoulder and faced her before the mirror.
+"Did you ever see such a fright? And I was just thinking, before you
+began, about how pretty you looked. I was, honestly. You could be as
+pretty as any of the rest of us, if you'd only make up your mind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I couldn't! I'm just as ugly as I can be. Nobody likes me and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's your own fault!" said Patty sharply. "If you were fat, like Irene
+McCullough, or if you didn't have any chin like Evalina Smith, there
+might be some reason, but there isn't anything on earth the matter with
+you, except that you're so <i>damp!</i> You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> cry all the time, and it gets
+tiresome to be forever sympathizing. I'm telling you the truth because
+I'm beginning to like you. There's never any use bothering to tell
+people the truth when you don't like them. The reason Conny and Pris and
+I get on so well together, is because we always tell each other the
+exact truth about our faults. Then we have a chance to correct
+them&mdash;that's what makes us so nice," she added modestly.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet sat with her mouth open, too surprised to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"And your clothes are awful," pursued Patty interestedly. "You ought not
+to let Miss Sallie pick 'em out. Miss Sallie's nice; I like her a lot,
+but she doesn't know any more than a rabbit about clothes; you can tell
+that by the way she dresses herself. And then, too, you'd be a lot nicer
+if you wouldn't be so stiff. If you'd just laugh the way the rest of us
+do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"How can I laugh when I don't think things are funny? The jokes the
+girls make are awfully silly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Speech was no longer possible, for Kid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> McCoy came stampeding down the
+corridor with as much racket as a cavalcade of horses. She was decked in
+a fur scarf and a necklace set with pearls, she wore a muff on her head,
+drum-major fashion; a lace handkerchief and a carved ivory fan protruded
+from the pocket of her blouse and a pink chiffon scarf floated from her
+shoulders; her wrist was adorned with an Oriental bracelet and she was
+lugging in her arms a silver-mounted Mexican saddle, of a type that
+might be suited to the plains of Texas, but never to the respectable
+country lanes adjacent to St. Ursula's.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully for Guardie!" she shouted as she descended upon them. "He's a
+daisy; he's a ducky; he's a lamb. Did you ever see such a perfectly
+corking saddle?"</p>
+
+<p>She plumped it over a chair, transformed the pink chiffon scarf into a
+bridle, and proceeded to mount and canter off.</p>
+
+<p>"Get up! Whoa! Hi, there! Clear the road."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet jumped aside to avoid being bumped, while Patty snatched her
+pink frock<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> from the path of the runaway. They were shrieking with
+laughter, even Harriet, the tearful.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you see!" said Patty, suddenly interrupting her mirth. "It's
+perfectly easy to laugh if you just let yourself go. Kid isn't really
+funny. She's just as silly as she can be."</p>
+
+<p>Kid brought her horse to a stand.</p>
+
+<p>"Well I like that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me for telling the truth," said Patty politely, "I'm just using
+you for an illustration&mdash;Heavens! There's the bell!"</p>
+
+<p>She commenced unlacing her blouse with one hand, while she pushed her
+guests to the door with the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry and dress, and come back to button me up. It would be a very
+delicate attention for us to be on time to-night. We've been late for
+every meal since vacation began."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The girls spent Christmas morning coasting. They were on time for
+luncheon&mdash;and with appetites!</p>
+
+<p>The meal was half over when Osaki ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>peared with a telegram, which he
+handed to the Dowager. She read it with agitated surprise and passed it
+to Miss Sallie, who raised her eyebrows and handed it to Miss Wadsworth,
+who was thrown into a very visible flutter.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth can it be?" Kid wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy's eloped, and they've got to hunt for a new Latin teacher," was
+Patty's interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>As the three girls left the table, the Dowager waylaid Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>"Step into my study a moment. A telegram has just come&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Kid climbed the stairs in wide-eyed wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be bad news, for Miss Sallie was smiling&mdash;" meditated Patty.
+"And I can't think of any good news that can be happening to Harriet."</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and
+Harriet burst into Patty's room wild with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"He's coming!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right now&mdash;this afternoon&mdash;He's been in New York on business, and is
+coming to see me for Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad!" said Patty heartily. "Now, you see the reason he hasn't
+come before is because he has been away off in Mexico."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet shook her head, with a sudden drop in her animation.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he thinks he ought."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's so. He doesn't care for me&mdash;really. He likes girls to be jolly and
+pretty and clever like you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then&mdash;<i>be</i> jolly and pretty and clever like me."</p>
+
+<p>Harriet's eyes sought the mirror, and filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a perfect idiot!" said Patty, despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm an awful fright in my green dress," said Harriet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Patty grudgingly conceded. "You are."</p>
+
+<p>"The skirt is too short, and the waist is too long."</p>
+
+<p>"And the sleeves are sort of queer," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>Faced by these dispiriting facts, she felt her enthusiasm ebbing.</p>
+
+<p>"What time is he coming?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Four o'clock."</p>
+
+<p>"That gives us two hours," Patty rallied her forces. "One can do an
+awful lot in two hours. If you were only nearer my size, you could wear
+my new pink dress&mdash;but I'm afraid&mdash;" She regarded Harriet's long legs
+dubiously. "I'll tell you!" she added, in a rush of generosity. "We'll
+take out the tucks and let down the hem."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty!" Harriet was tearfully afraid of spoiling the gown. But when
+Patty's zeal in any cause was roused, all other considerations were
+swept aside. The new frock was fetched from the closet, and the ripping
+began.</p>
+
+<p>"And you can wear Kid's new pearl neck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>lace and pink scarf, and my silk
+stockings and slippers&mdash;if you can get 'em on&mdash;and I think Conny left a
+lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late to
+pack&mdash;and&mdash;Here's Kid now!"</p>
+
+<p>Miss McCoy's sympathies were enlisted and in fifteen minutes the task of
+transforming a remonstrating, excited, and occasionally tearful Harriet
+into the school beauty, was going gaily forward. Kid McCoy was supposed
+to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal
+feminine came triumphantly to the fore. She sat herself down, with
+Patty's manicure scissors, and for three-quarters of an hour
+painstakingly ripped out tucks.</p>
+
+<p>Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't strain it back so tight," she ordered. "It looks as though you'd
+done it with a monkey-wrench. Here! Give me the comb."</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 529px;">
+<img src="images/186-ill.jpg" width="529" height="500" alt="Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet&#39;s hair." title="Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet&#39;s hair." />
+<span class="caption">Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet&#39;s hair.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>She pushed Harriet into a chair, tied a towel about her neck, and
+accomplished the coifing by force.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"How's that?" she demanded of Kid.</p>
+
+<p>"Bully!" Kid mumbled, her mouth full of pins.</p>
+
+<p>Harriet's hair was rippled loosely about her face, and tied with a pink
+ribbon bow. The ribbon belonged to Conny Wilder, and had heretofore
+figured as a belt; but individual property rights were forced to bow
+before the cause.</p>
+
+<p>The slippers and stockings did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly
+ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope
+of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit
+Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent leather
+pumps.</p>
+
+<p>"But after all," Patty reassured her, "it's better for you to wear
+black. Your feet would be sort of conspicuous in pink." She was still in
+her truthful mood. "I'll tell you!" she cried, "you can wear my silver
+buckles." And she commenced cruelly wrenching them from their pink
+chiffon setting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Patty! <i>Don't!</i>" Harriet gasped at the sacrilege.</p>
+
+<p>"They're just the last touch that your costume needs." Patty ruthlessly
+carried on the work of destruction. "When your father sees those
+buckles, he'll think you're <i>beautiful!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>For a feverish hour they worked. They clothed her triumphantly in all
+the grandeur that they could command. The entire corridor had
+contributed its quota, even to the lace-edged handkerchief with a
+hand-embroidered "H" that had been left behind in Hester Pringle's top
+drawer. The two turned her critically before the mirror, the pride of
+creation in their eyes. As Kid had truly presaged, she was the ravingest
+beauty in all the school.</p>
+
+<p>Irish Maggie appeared in the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Gladden is in the drawin'-room, Miss Harriet." She stopped and
+stared. "Sure, ye're that beautiful I didn't know ye!"</p>
+
+<p>Harriet went with a laugh&mdash;and a fighting light in her eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty and Kid restlessly set themselves to reducing the chaos that this
+sudden butterfly flight had caused in Paradise Alley&mdash;it is always
+dreary work setting things to rights, after the climax of an event has
+been reached.</p>
+
+<p>It was an hour later that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the
+hall, and Harriet ran in&mdash;danced in&mdash;her eyes were shining; she was a
+picture of youth and happiness and bubbling spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" cried Patty and Kid in a breath.</p>
+
+<p>She stretched out her wrist and displayed a gold-linked bracelet set
+with a tiny watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" she cried, "he brought me that for Christmas. And I'm going to
+have all the dresses I want, and Miss Sallie isn't going to pick them
+out ever again. And he's going to stay for dinner to-night, and eat at
+the little table with us. And he's going to take us into town next
+Saturday for luncheon and the matin&eacute;e, and the Dowager says we may go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" observed the Kid. "It paid for all the trouble we took."</p>
+
+<p>"And what do you think?" Harriet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> caught her breath in a little gasp.
+"<i>He likes me!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I knew those silver buckles would fetch him!" said Patty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>"Uncle Bobby"</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 99px;">
+<img src="images/w.png" width="99" height="100" alt="W" title="W" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>HILE St. Ursula's was still dallying with a belated
+morning-after-Christmas breakfast, the mail arrived, bringing among
+other matters, a letter for Patty from her mother. It contained cheering
+news as to Tommy's scarlet fever, and the expressed hope that school was
+not too lonely during the holidays; it ended with the statement that Mr.
+Robert Pendleton was going to be in the city on business, and had
+promised to run out to St. Ursula's to see her little daughter.</div>
+
+<p>The last item Patty read aloud to Harriet Gladden and Kid McCoy
+(christened Margarite). The three "left-behinds" were occupying a table
+together in a secluded corner of the dining-room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who's Mr. Robert Pendleton?" inquired Kid, looking up from her own
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>"He used to be my father's private secretary when I was a little girl. I
+always called him 'Uncle Bobby.'"</p>
+
+<p>Kid returned to her mail. She took no interest in the race of uncles,
+either real or fictitious. But Patty, being in a reminiscent mood,
+continued the conversation with Harriet, who had no mail to deflect her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he went away and commenced practising for himself. It's been ages
+since I've seen him; but he was really awfully nice. He used to spend
+his entire time&mdash;when he wasn't writing Father's speeches&mdash;in getting me
+out of scrapes. I had a goat named Billy-Boy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is he married?" asked Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no, I don't think so. I believe he had a disappointment in his youth,
+that broke his heart."</p>
+
+<p>"What fun!" cried Kid, re&euml;merging. "Is it still broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"How old is he?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I'm sure. He must be <i>quite</i> old by now." (Her tone
+suggested that he was tottering on the brink of the grave.) "It has been
+seven years since I've seen him, and he was through college then."</p>
+
+<p>Kid dismissed the subject. Old men, even with broken hearts, contained
+no interest for her.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon, as the three girls were gathered in Patty's room
+enjoying an indigestible four o'clock tea of milk and bread and butter
+(furnished by the school) and fruit cake and candy and olives and
+stuffed prunes, the expressman arrived with a belated consignment of
+Christmas gifts, among them a long narrow parcel addressed to Patty. She
+tore off the wrapping, to find a note and a white pasteboard box. She
+read the note aloud while the others looked over her shoulder. Patty
+always generously shared experiences with anyone who might be near.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+"<i>My Dear Patty,&mdash;</i><br />
+
+<p>"Have you forgotten 'Uncle Bobby' who used to
+stand between you and many well-de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>served
+spankings? I trust that you have grown into a <span class="smcap">very
+good girl</span> now that you are old enough to go away
+to school!</p>
+
+<p>"I am coming to see for myself on Thursday
+afternoon. In the meantime, please accept the
+accompanying Christmas remembrance, with the hope
+that you are having a happy holiday, in spite of
+having to spend it away from home. </p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-right: 10em;">"Your old playfellow,</span><br />
+"<span class="smcap">Robert Pendleton."</span><br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"What do you s'pose it is?" asked Patty, as she addressed herself to
+unknotting the gold cord on the box.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it's either flowers or candy," Harriet returned. "Miss Sallie
+says it isn't proper to&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Looks to me like American Beauty roses," suggested Kid McCoy.</p>
+
+<p>Patty beamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it a lark to be getting flowers from a <i>man?</i> I feel awfully
+grown up!"</p>
+
+<p>She lifted the cover, removed a mass of tissue paper, and revealed a
+blue-eyed, smiling doll.</p>
+
+<p>The three girls stared for a bewildered moment, then Patty slid to the
+floor, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> buried her head in her arms against the bed and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"It's got real hair!" said Harriet, gently lifting the doll from its bed
+of tissue paper, and entering upon a detailed inspection. "Its clothes
+come off, and it opens and shuts its eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Whoop!" shouted Kid McCoy, as she snatched a shoe-horn from the bureau
+and commenced an Indian war dance.</p>
+
+<p>Patty checked her hysterics sufficiently to rescue her new treasure from
+the danger of being scalped. As she squeezed the doll in her arms, safe
+from harm's way, it opened its lips and emitted a grateful, "<i>Ma-ma!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>They laughed afresh. They laid on the floor and rolled in an ecstasy of
+mirth until they were weak and gasping. Could Uncle Bobby have witnessed
+the joy his gift brought to three marooned St. Ursulites, he would have
+indeed been gratified. They continued to laugh all that day and the
+following morning. By afternoon Patty had just recovered her
+self-control sufficiently to carry off with decent gravity Uncle Bobby's
+promised visit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As a usual thing, callers were discouraged at St. Ursula's. They must
+come from away, accredited with letters from the parents, and then must
+pass an alarming assemblage of chaperones. Miss Sallie remained in the
+drawing-room during the first half of the call (which could last an
+hour), but was then supposed to withdraw. But Miss Sallie was a social
+soul, and she frequently neglected to withdraw. The poor girl would sit
+silent in the corner, a smile upon her lips, mutiny in her heart, while
+Miss Sallie entertained the caller.</p>
+
+<p>But rules were somewhat relaxed in the holidays. On the day of Uncle
+Bobby's visit, by a fortuitous circumstance, Miss Sallie was five miles
+away, superintending a new incubator house at the school farm. The
+Dowager and Miss Wadsworth and Miss Jellings were scheduled for a
+reception in the village, and the other teachers were all away for the
+holidays. Patty was told to receive him herself, and to remember her
+manners, and let him do a little of the talking.</p>
+
+<p>This left her beautifully free to carry out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> the outrageous scheme that
+she had concocted over night. Harriet and Kid lent their delighted
+assistance, and the three spent the morning planning for her entrance in
+character. They successfully looted the "Baby Ward" where the fifteen
+little girls of the school occupied fifteen little white cots set in
+fifteen alcoves. A white, stiffly starched sailor suit was discovered,
+with a flaring blue linen collar, and a kilted skirt, that was
+shockingly short. Kid McCoy gleefully unearthed a pair of blue and white
+socks that exactly matched the dress, but they proved very much too
+small.</p>
+
+<p>"They wouldn't look well anyway," said Patty, philosophically, "I've got
+an awful scratch on one knee."</p>
+
+<p>Gymnasium slippers with spring heels reduced her five feet by an inch.
+She spent the early afternoon persuading her hair to hang in a row of
+curls, with a spanking blue bow over her left ear. When she was
+finished, she made as sweet a little girl as one would ever find romping
+in the park on a sunny morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What will you do if he kisses you?" inquired Kid McCoy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try not to laugh," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>She occupied the fifteen minutes of waiting in a dress rehearsal. By the
+time Maggie arrived with the tidings that the visitor was below, she had
+her part letter-perfect. Kid and Harriet followed as far as the first
+landing, where they remained dangling over the banisters, while Patty
+shouldered her doll and descended to the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p>She sidled bashfully into the door, dropped a courtesy, and extended a
+timid hand to the tall young gentleman who rose and advanced to meet
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Uncle Wobert?" she lisped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well! Is this little Patty?"</p>
+
+<p>He took her by the chin and turned up her face for a closer
+inspection&mdash;Mr. Pendleton was, mercifully, somewhat near-sighted. She
+smiled back sweetly, with wide, innocent, baby eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You're getting to be a great big girl!" he pronounced with fatherly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+approval. "You reach almost to my shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>She settled herself far back in a deep leather chair, and sat primly
+upright, her feet sticking straight out in front, while she clasped the
+doll in her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Sank you very much, Uncle Bobby, for my perfectly beautiful doll!"
+Patty imprinted a kiss upon the smiling bisque lips.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Bobby watched with gratified approval. He liked this early
+manifestation of the motherly instinct.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you going to name her?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't make up my mind." She raised anxious eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>"How would Patty Junior do?"</p>
+
+<p>She repudiated the suggestion; and they finally determined upon Alice,
+after "Alice in Wonderland." This point happily disposed of, they
+settled themselves for conversation. He told her about a Christmas
+pantomime he had seen in London, with little girls and boys for actors.</p>
+
+<p>Patty listened, deeply interested.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'll send you the fairy book that has the story of the play," he
+promised, "with colored pictures; and then you can read it for yourself.
+You know how to read, of course?" he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" said Patty, reproachfully. "I've known how to read a <i>long</i>
+time. I can read anyfing&mdash;if it has big print."</p>
+
+<p>"Well! You are coming on!" said Uncle Bobby.</p>
+
+<p>They fell to reminiscing, and the conversation turned to Billy-Boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the time he chewed up his rope and came to church?"
+Patty dimpled at the recollection.</p>
+
+<p>"Jove! I'll never forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And usually Faver found an excuse for not going, but that Sunday Mover
+<i>made</i> him, and when he saw Billy-Boy marching up the aisle, with a sort
+of dignified smile on his face&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Bobby threw back his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought the Judge would have a stroke of apoplexy!" he declared.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But the funniest thing," said Patty, "was to see you and Father trying
+to get him out! You pushed and Father pulled, and first Billy balked and
+then he butted."</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly realized that she had neglected to lisp, but Uncle Bobby
+was too taken up with the story to be conscious of any lapse. Patty
+inconspicuously reassumed her character.</p>
+
+<p>"And Faver scolded me because the rope broke&mdash;and it wasn't my fault at
+all!" she added with a pathetic quiver of the lips. "And the next day he
+had Billy-Boy shot."</p>
+
+<p>At the remembrance Patty drooped her head over the doll in her arms.
+Uncle Bobby hastily offered comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Patty! Maybe you'll have another goat some day."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, with the suggestion of a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I never will! They don't let us keep goats here. And I loved
+Billy-Boy. I'm <i>awfully</i> lonely without him."</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Patty! You're too big a girl to cry." Uncle Bobby patted
+her curls,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> with kindly solicitude. "How would you like to go to the
+circus with me some day next week, and see all the animals?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty cheered up.</p>
+
+<p>"Will there be ele-phunts?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be several," he promised. "And lions and tigers and camels."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, goody!" she clapped her hands and smiled through her tears. "I'd
+love to go. Sank you very, <i>very</i> much."</p>
+
+<p>Half an hour later Patty rejoined her friends in Paradise Alley. She
+executed a few steps of the sailor's hornpipe with the doll as partner,
+then plumped herself onto the middle of the bed and laughingly regarded
+her two companions through over-hanging curls.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell us what he said," Kid implored. "We nearly pulled our necks out by
+the roots stretching over the banisters, but we couldn't hear a word."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he kiss you?" asked Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>"N-no." There was a touch of regret in her tone. "But he patted me on
+the head. He has a very sweet way with children.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> You'd think he'd had a
+course in kindergarten training."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you talk about?" insisted Kid, eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Patty outlined the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"And he's going to take me to the circus next Wednesday," she ended, "to
+see the elephunts!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Dowager will never let you go," objected Harriet.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, she will!" said Patty. "It's perfectly proper to go to the
+circus with your uncle&mdash;'specially in vacation. We've got it all
+planned. I'm to go into town with Waddy. I heard her say she had an
+appointment at the dentist's&mdash;and he'll be at the station with a
+hansom&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"More likely a baby carriage," Kid put in quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Wadsworth will never take you into town in <i>those</i> clothes,"
+Harriet objected.</p>
+
+<p>Patty hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, while her dimples came
+and went.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," she said, "that the next time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> I'll give him an entirely
+different kind of a sensation."</p>
+
+<p>And she did.</p>
+
+<p>Anticipatory of the coming event, she sent her suit to the tailor's and
+had him lengthen the hem of the skirt two inches. She spent an entire
+morning retrimming her hat along more mature lines, and she purchased a
+veil&mdash;with spots! She also spent twenty-five cents for hairpins, and did
+up her hair on the top of her head. She wore Kid McCoy's Christmas furs
+and Harriet's bracelet watch; and, as she set off with a somewhat
+bewildered Miss Wadsworth, they assured her that she looked <i>old</i>.</p>
+
+<p>They reached the city a trifle late for Miss Wadsworth's appointment.
+Patty spied Mr. Pendleton across the waiting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Uncle Robert!" she said; and to her intense satisfaction, Miss
+Wadsworth left her to accost him alone.</p>
+
+<p>She sauntered over in a very blas&eacute; fashion and held out her hand. The
+spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he did not
+recognize her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Pendleton! How do you do?" Patty smiled cordially. "It's really
+awfully good of you to devote so much time to my entertainment. And so
+original of you to think of a circus! I haven't attended a circus for
+years. It's really refreshing after such a dose of Shakespeare and Ibsen
+as the theaters have been offering this winter."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pendleton offered a limp hand and hailed a hansom without comment.
+He leaned back in the corner and continued to stare for three silent
+minutes; then he threw back his head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord, Patty! Do you mean to tell me that you've grown up?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty laughed too.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Uncle Bobby, what do you think about it?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Dinner was half over that night before the two travelers returned. Patty
+dropped into her seat and unfolded her napkin, with the weary air of a
+society woman of many engagements.</p>
+
+<p>"What happened?" the other two clam<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>ored. "Tell us about it! Was the
+circus nice?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"The circus was charming&mdash;and so were the elephants&mdash;and so was Uncle
+Bobby. We had tea afterwards; and he gave me a bunch of violets and a
+box of candy, instead of the fairy book. He said he wouldn't be called
+'Uncle Bobby' by anyone as old as me&mdash;that I'd got to drop the
+'Uncle'&mdash;It's funny, you know, but he really seems younger than he did
+seven years ago."</p>
+
+<p>Patty dimpled and cast a wary eye toward the faculty table across the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"He says he has business quite often in this neighborhood."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Society of Associated Sirens</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 99px;">
+<img src="images/c.png" width="99" height="100" alt="C" title="C" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>ONNY had gone home to recuperate from a severe attack of pink-eye.
+Priscilla had gone to Porto Rico to spend two weeks with her father and
+the Atlantic Fleet. Patty, lonely and abandoned, was thrown upon the
+school for society; and Patty at large, was very likely to get into
+trouble.</div>
+
+<p>On the Saturday following the double departure, she, with Rosalie Patton
+and Mae Van Arsdale, made a trip into the city in charge of Miss
+Wadsworth, to accomplish some spring shopping. Patty and Rosalie each
+needed new hats&mdash;besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and
+petticoats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>&mdash;and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit.
+These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to
+relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy
+affords.</p>
+
+<p>But when they presented themselves at the theater, they were faced by
+the announcement that the star had met with an automobile accident on
+his way to the performance, and that he was too damaged to appear; money
+would be refunded at the box office. The girls still clamored for their
+matin&eacute;e, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting
+substitute for Hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and
+ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of
+character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal
+defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges
+elected to do.</p>
+
+<p>To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss
+Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself
+picked out a drama entitled "The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> Wizard of the Nile," under the
+impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the
+original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French
+flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's
+Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the
+style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were
+enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at
+the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and
+very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to
+her shocking career of wickedness, she <i>smoked cigarettes!</i></p>
+
+<p>Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried,
+breathless, horrified&mdash;fascinated; but the three girls were simply
+fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all
+the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up
+realms of adventure,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's.
+The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was
+becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English
+officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling two hands rise
+from the darkness and clutch her shoulders on the right and left. She
+sat upright with a very audible gasp, and demanded in unguardedly loud
+tones, "Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>The two hands instantly covered her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh-h! Keep quiet! Haven't you any sense?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mademoiselle's door is wide open, and Lordy's visiting her."</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie perched on the right of the bed, and Mae Mertelle on the left.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" asked Patty, crossly.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got a perfectly splendid idea," whispered Rosalie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A secret society," echoed Mae Mertelle.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone!" growled Patty. "I want to go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>She laid down again in the narrow space left by her visitors. They paid
+no attention to her inhospitality, but drawing their bath robes closer
+about them, settled down to talk. Patty, being comfortably inside and
+warm, while they shivered outside, was finally induced to lend a drowsy
+ear.</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought of a new society," said Mae Mertelle. She did not propose
+to share the honor of creation with Rosalie. "And it's going to be
+<i>really</i> secret this time. I'm not going to let in the whole school.
+Only us three. And this society hasn't just a few silly secrets; it has
+an <i>aim</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to call it the Society of Associated Sirens," Rosalie
+eagerly broke in.</p>
+
+<p>"That <i>what?</i>" demanded Patty.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie rolled off the sonorous syllables a second time.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sho-shiety of Ash-sho-she-ated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> Shi-rens," Patty mumbled sleepily.
+"It's too hard to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but we won't call it that in public. The name's a secret. We'll
+call it the S. A. S."</p>
+
+<p>"What's it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll promise not to tell?" Mae asked guardedly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course I won't tell."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even Pris and Conny when they get back?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll make them members," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;perhaps&mdash;but this is the kind of society that's better small. And
+we three are the only ones who really ought to be members, because we
+saw the play. But anyhow; you must promise not to tell unless Rosalie
+and I give you permission. Do you promise that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! I promise. What's it for?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to become sirens," Mae whispered impressively. "We're going
+to be beautiful and fascinating and ruthless&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Like Cleopatra," said Rosalie.</p>
+
+<p>"And avenge ourselves on Man," added Mae.</p>
+
+<p>"Avenge ourselves&mdash;what for?" inquired Patty, somewhat dazed.</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;for&mdash;for breaking our hearts and destroying our faith in&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My heart hasn't been broken."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," said Mae with a touch of impatience, "because you don't know
+any men, but you will know them some day, and then your heart will be
+broken. You ought to have your weapons ready."</p>
+
+<p>"In time of peace prepare for war," quoted Rosalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Do&mdash;you think it's quite ladylike to be a siren?" asked Patty
+dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>"It's <i>perfectly</i> ladylike!" said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly
+be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who was a siren?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no," Patty confessed. "I don't believe I have."</p>
+
+<p>"And look at Cleopatra," put in Rosalie. "I'm sure she was a lady."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"All right!" Patty agreed. "What are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to become beautiful and fascinating, with a fatal charm
+that ensnares every man who approaches."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think we can?" There was <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'same'">some</ins> doubt in Patty's tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Mae's got a book," put in Rosalie eagerly, "about 'Beauty and Grace.'
+You soak your face in oatmeal and almond-oil and honey, and let your
+hair hang in the sun, and whiten your nose with lemon juice, and wear
+gloves at night, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You really ought to have a bath of asses' milk," interrupted Mae.
+"Cleopatra had; but I'm afraid it will be impossible to get."</p>
+
+<p>"And you ought to learn to sing," added Rosalie, "and have some one song
+like the 'Lorelei!' that you always hum when you're about to ensnare a
+victim."</p>
+
+<p>The project was foreign to Patty's ordinary train of thought, but it did
+have an element of novelty and allurement. Neither Mae nor Rosalie were
+the partners she would naturally have chosen in any enterprise, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+circumstances had thrown them together that day, and Patty was an
+obliging soul. Also, her natural common sense was wandering; she was
+still under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the new society for several minutes more, until they
+heard the murmur of Miss Lord's voice, bidding Mademoiselle goodnight.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Lordy!" Patty whispered warily. "I think you'd better to go to
+bed. We can plan the rest in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, let's," said Rosalie, with a shiver. "I'm freezing!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we must first take the vow," insisted Mae Mertelle. "We ought
+really to do it at midnight&mdash;but maybe half-past ten will do as well.
+I've got it all planned. You two say it after me."</p>
+
+<p>They joined hands and whispered in turn:</p>
+
+<p>"I most solemnly promise to keep secret the name and object of this
+society; and if I break this oath, may I become freckled and bald and
+squint-eyed and pigeon-toed, now and forever more."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three members of the S. A. S. devoted their leisure during the next
+few days to a careful study of the work on Beauty; and painstakingly set
+about putting its precepts into practice. Some of these seemed
+perplexingly at variance. The hair, for example, was to be exposed to
+air and sunlight, but the face was not. They cleverly circumvented this
+difficulty however. The week's allowance went for chamois-skin. During
+every recreation hour, they retired to an airy knoll in the lower
+pasture, and sat in a patient row, with hair streaming in the wind, and
+faces protected by homemade masks.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, a little Junior A, wandering far afield in a game of
+hide-and-seek, came upon them unawares; and returned to the safe
+confines of the playground with frightened shrieks. Dark rumors began to
+float about the school as to the aim and scope of the new society.
+Suggestions ranged all the way from Indian squaws to Druid priestesses.</p>
+
+<p>They almost met with disaster while acquiring the ingredients of the
+oatmeal poultice. The oatmeal and lemon were compar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>atively easy; the
+cook supplied them without much fuss. But she stuck at the honey. There
+were jars and jars of strained honey in the storeroom; but the windows
+were barred, and the key was in the bottom of Nora's pocket. Confronted
+by the immediate necessity of becoming beautiful, they could not
+placidly sit down for five days, and wait for the weekly shopping trip
+to the village. Besides, with a teacher in attendance, there would be no
+possible chance of making the purchase. Honey was a contraband article,
+in the same class with candy and jam and pickles.</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the feasibility of filing through the iron gratings, or
+of chloroforming Nora and stealing the key, but in the end Patty
+accomplished the matter by the use of a little simple blarney. She
+dropped into the kitchen one afternoon with the plaintive admission that
+she was hungry. Nora hastened to supply a glass of milk and a piece of
+bread and butter, while Patty perched on a corner of the carving-table
+and settled herself for conversation. The girls were not supposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> to
+visit the kitchen, but the law was never rigidly enforced. Nora was a
+social soul and she welcomed callers. Patty praised the apple dumplings
+of last night's dessert; progressed from that to a discussion of the
+engaging young plumber who at the moment claimed all of Nora's thoughts;
+then, by a natural transition, she passed to honey. Before she left, she
+had obtained Nora's promise to substitute it for marmalade the next
+morning at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>The members of the S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and
+unobtrusively transferred a supply from their plates to their laps.</p>
+
+<p>But even so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to
+collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her
+pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same
+instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor.
+Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely
+found her napping. She plumped down on her knees in the midst of the
+puddle, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> widespread skirts, commenced frantically searching for
+an imaginary stick-pin.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it necessary for you to block up the entire hall?" was Miss Lord's
+only comment as she passed.</p>
+
+<p>The rug was happily reversible, and by the simple process of turning it
+over, Patty satisfactorily cleaned up the mess. The other two girls were
+generous, and shared their supply: so in the end she obtained her honey.</p>
+
+<p>For three wakeful nights they stuck to the poultice&mdash;though perhaps it
+would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite
+of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sallie, who represented St. Ursula's board of health, met Patty
+Wyatt in the hall one morning. She took her by the chin and turned her
+to the light. Patty squirmed embarrassedly.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child! What is the matter with your face?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know&mdash;exactly. It seems sort of&mdash;of&mdash;dandruffy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I should think it did! What have you been eating?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only what I get at meals," said Patty, relievedly telling the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"There's something the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie.
+"What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Miss Sallie!" Patty earnestly remonstrated. "I don't need it,
+<i>really</i>. I'm sure I'll be all right." She had tried boneset tea before;
+it was the bitterest brew that was ever concocted.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Sallie met Mae Van Arsdale suffering from the same complaint,
+and later still, Rosalie Patton, she commenced to be perturbed. The
+apple trees under her care at the farm had been afflicted that spring
+with San Jos&eacute; scale, but she had hardly expected the disease to spread
+to the school girls. That afternoon she superintended an infusion of
+boneset, of gigantic proportions, and at bedtime a reluctant school
+formed in line and filed past Miss Sallie, who, ladle in hand, presided
+over the punch bowl. Each<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> received a flowing cupful and drank it with
+what grace she might, until Patty's turn came. She disposed of hers in a
+blue china umbrella holder which stood in the hall behind Miss Sallie's
+back. The remainder of the line successfully followed her lead.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Sallie watched her little charges closely for the next few days;
+and sure enough, the scales disappeared. (The Associated Sirens had
+discarded poultices.) She was more than ever convinced of the efficacy
+of boneset.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after the founding of the society, Mae Mertelle returned from a
+week-end visit to her home. (Her mother was ill and she had been sent
+for. Someone in Mae's family was conveniently ill a great deal of the
+time.) She brought with her three bracelets of linked scales
+representing a serpent swallowing his tail. S. A. S. in tiny letters was
+engraved between the emerald eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"They are perfectly sweet!" said Patty, with grateful appreciation. "But
+why a snake?"</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a snake; it's a serpent," Mae<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> explained. "To represent
+Cleopatra. She was the Serpent of the Nile. We'll be Serpents of the
+Hudson."</p>
+
+<p>With the appearance of the bracelets, curiosity in the S. A. S.
+increased, but unlike the other secret societies which had appeared from
+time to time, its <i>raison d'&ecirc;tre</i> remained a mystery. The school really
+commenced to believe that the society had a secret. Miss Lord, who had
+the reputation of being curious, stopped Patty one day as she was
+leaving the Virgil class, and admired the new bracelet.</p>
+
+<p>"And what may be the meaning of S. A. S.?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a secret society," said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, a secret society!" Miss Lord smiled. "Then I suppose the name is a
+<span class="smcap">deep mystery</span>." She lowered her voice, as she said it, to sepulchral
+depths.</p>
+
+<p>There was something peculiarly irritating about Miss Lord's manner; it
+always suggested that she was amused by the vagaries of her little
+pupils. She did not possess Miss Sallie's happy faculty of meeting them
+on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> level. Miss Lord peered down from above (through lorgnettes).</p>
+
+<p>"Of course the name is a secret," said Patty. "If that got out, it would
+give the whole thing away."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is the object of this famous society? Or is that too a
+secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, that is, I mustn't tell you exactly."</p>
+
+<p>Patty smiled up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that
+always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let her
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a sort of branch of the Sunshine Society," she added
+confidentially. "We're to&mdash;well&mdash;to smile on people, you know, and make
+them like us."</p>
+
+<p>"I see!" said Miss Lord, with an air of friendly understanding. "Then S.
+A. S. stands for 'Sunshine and Smiles?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please! You mustn't say it out loud," Patty lowered her voice and
+threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds," Miss Lord promised solemnly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Patty. "It would be dreadful if it got out."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a very sweet, womanly society," Miss Lord added approvingly. "But
+you ought not to keep it all to yourselves. Can't you let me be an
+honorary member of the S. A. S.?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Miss Lord!" said Patty sweetly. "If you care to belong, we
+should <i>love</i> to have you."</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy wants to be a Siren!" she announced to her two fellow members
+when she met them shortly in the gymnasium. The account of the interview
+was received with hilarity. Miss Lord was anything but the accepted type
+of siren.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought a few smiles might relieve the gloom of Latin class," Patty
+explained. "It amuses Lordy to think she's helping the children in their
+play; and it doesn't hurt the children."</p>
+
+<p>For a time the S. A. S. flourished with the natural health of youth, but
+as the novelty wore off, the business of becoming beautiful grew
+onerous. Mae and Rosalie continued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> to study the beauty book with dogged
+perseverance,&mdash;the subject lay along the line of their natural
+ambitions&mdash;but Patty felt other matters calling. Spring field sports had
+commenced, and the nearness of the annual match with Highland-Hall,
+crowded out her interest in cold cream and almond meal. She and Mae were
+not naturally <i>simpatica</i>, and in spite of Mae's insistence, Patty
+became an apathetic siren.</p>
+
+<p>One Saturday just after the spring recess, Patty received permission to
+lunch in town with "Uncle Bobby." He was an uncle by courtesy only, but
+Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by
+natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite
+proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the
+oldest and baldest of family friends.</p>
+
+<p>When the "hearse" returned from the station at dusk with Mademoiselle
+and the city contingent, Rosalie Patton was waiting the arrival on the
+porte-coch&egrave;re. She separated Patty from the group and whispered in her
+ear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The most awful thing has happened!"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" Patty demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"The S. A. S. All is discovered!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not really!" cried Patty, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Come in here."</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie drew her into the empty cloak-room and shut the door.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;they've found out the name&mdash;and everything?" Patty demanded
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite everything, but they would have if it hadn't been for Lordy.
+She saved us for once."</p>
+
+<p>"Lordy saved us!" There was incredulity mixed with Patty's horror. "What
+do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yesterday, Mae went shopping in the village with Miss
+Wadsworth&mdash;and you know what kind of a chaperone Waddy makes." Patty
+nodded impatiently. "<i>Anybody</i> could fool her. And Mae, right under her
+very nose, commenced a flirtation with the <i>Soda-Water Clerk</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Patty hotly. "How perfectly horrid!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"She didn't care anything about it, really. She was just trying to put
+the principles of the S. A. S. into practice."</p>
+
+<p>"She might at least have picked out somebody decent!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he is quite decent. He's engaged to the girl at the underwear
+counter in Bloodgood's, and he didn't want to be flirted with a bit. But
+you know how persistent Mae Mertelle is, when she makes up her mind. The
+poor young man just couldn't help himself. He was so embarrassed that he
+didn't know what he was doing. He gave Hester Pringle half chocolate and
+half sarsaparilla, and she says it was a <i>perfectly awful</i> combination.
+It made her feel so sick that she couldn't eat any dinner. And all this
+time Waddy just sat and smiled into space and saw nothing; but all the
+girls saw,&mdash;and <i>so did the drugstore man!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Patty breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"And this morning Miss Sallie went to the drugstore to get some potash
+for Harriet Gladden's sore throat, and he told her all about it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did Miss Sallie do?" Patty asked faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Do! She came back with blood in her eye, and told the Dowager, and they
+called up Mae Mertelle and then&mdash;" Rosalie closed her eyes and
+shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Patty impatiently. "What happened?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Dowager was <i>perfectly outraged!</i> She told Mae that she had
+disgraced the school and that she would be expelled. And she wrote a
+telegram to Mae's father to come and take her away. And she asked Mae if
+she had anything to say for herself, and Mae said it wasn't her fault.
+That you and I were to blame just as much as she, because we were all in
+a society together, but that she couldn't tell about it because she'd
+sworn."</p>
+
+<p>"Beast!" said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"So then they sent for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A.
+S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when
+she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> it
+knew, and I never did pretend to be a sphinx."</p>
+
+<p>"All right," said Patty, bracing herself for the shock. "What did they
+say when they heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"They didn't hear! I was just on the point of breaking my vows and
+telling all, when who should pop in but Lordy. And she was <i>perfectly
+splendid!</i> She said she knew all about the S. A. S. That it was a very
+admirable institution, and that she was a member herself! She said it
+was a branch of the Sunshine Society, and that Mae had never meant to
+flirt with the young man. She had just meant to smile and be kind to
+everybody she came in contact with, and he had taken advantage. And Mae
+said, yes, that was the way of it, and she shoved off all the blame on
+that poor innocent soda-water clerk."</p>
+
+<p>"Just like her," Patty nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And now Mae is <i>perfectly furious</i> with him for getting her into
+trouble. She says that he's a horrid little thing with a turn-up nose,
+and that she'll never drink another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> glass of soda-water as long as she
+stays in St. Ursula's."</p>
+
+<p>"And they're going to let her stay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The Dowager tore up the telegram. But she gave Mae ten demerits,
+and made her go without dessert for a week, and learn Thanatopsis by
+heart. And she can't <i>ever</i> go shopping in the village any more. When
+she needs new hair ribbons or stockings or anything, she must send for
+them by some of the other girls."</p>
+
+<p>"And what's the Dowager going to do to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing at all&mdash;and if it hadn't been for Lordy, we'd all three have
+been expelled."</p>
+
+<p>"And I've always detested Lordy," said Patty contritely. "Isn't it
+dreadful? You simply can't keep enemies. Just as you think people are
+perfectly horrid, and begin to enjoy hating them, they all of a sudden
+turn out nice."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate Mae Mertelle," said Rosalie.</p>
+
+<p>"So do I!" Patty agreed cordially.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to leave her old society."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm already out." Patty glanced toward the mirror. "And I'm not
+freckled and I'm not squint-eyed."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Rosalie stared; she had for the moment forgotten the
+dread nature of the oath.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told Uncle Bobby."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Patty! How could you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I&mdash;that is&mdash;" Patty appeared momentarily confused. "You see," she
+confessed, "I thought myself that it would be sort of interesting to
+practice on somebody, so I&mdash;I&mdash;just tried&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And did he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Patty shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"It was awfully uphill work. He never helped a bit. And then he noticed
+my bracelet and wanted to know what S. A. S. meant. And before I knew
+it, I was telling him!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>"First he roared; then he got awfully sober, and he gave me a long
+lecture&mdash;it was really very impressive&mdash;sort of like Sunday School, you
+know. And he took the bracelet away from me and put it in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> pocket.
+He told me he'd send me something nicer."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you s'pose it will be?" asked Rosalie interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it won't be a doll!"</p>
+
+<p>Two days later the morning mail brought a small parcel for Miss Patty
+Wyatt. She opened it under her desk in geometry class. Buried in
+jeweler's cotton she found a gold linked bracelet that fastened with a
+padlock in the shape of a heart. On the back of one of Uncle Bobby's
+cards was written:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the
+key."</p>
+
+<p>Patty deflected Rosalie as she was turning into French and privately
+exhibited the bracelet with pride.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie regarded it with sentimental interest.</p>
+
+<p>"What has he done with the key?" she wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose," said Patty, "he's got it in his pocket."</p>
+
+<p>"How awfully romantic!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It sounds sort of romantic," Patty agreed with the suggestion of a
+sigh. "But it isn't really. He's thirty years old, and beginning to be
+bald."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>The Reformation of Kid McCoy</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 101px;">
+<img src="images/m.png" width="101" height="100" alt="M" title="M" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>ISS McCOY, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of
+St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She
+was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received&mdash;and retained&mdash;in
+a respectable-boarding-school.</div>
+
+<p>"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant
+bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to
+be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written
+reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was
+the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> ranch had given her;
+and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed
+expostulation of the ladies in charge.</p>
+
+<p>Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside
+the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous
+father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and
+losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk
+from a champagne glass. Her father had died&mdash;quite opportunely&mdash;while
+his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter
+to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next
+three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with
+"Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'or'">of</ins> St. Ursula's.</p>
+
+<p>The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference
+with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the
+East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any
+molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all
+permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing
+master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an
+exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers
+on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him
+sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly
+in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had
+received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:</p>
+
+<p>"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"</p>
+
+<p>The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was
+beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had
+never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however,
+St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss
+McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation
+sometime.</p>
+
+<p>When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate&mdash;- she wore her room-mates
+out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the
+essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in
+the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous
+mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was
+looking worn.</p>
+
+<p>Then the change came.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of
+wide-eyed amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a
+lady!"</p>
+
+<p>"A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been
+polishing her face.</p>
+
+<p>"A <i>lady</i>. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through
+the embroidery in her night gown."</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> the window seat, disposed the
+folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and
+allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her
+shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the
+last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement
+and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an
+endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate
+in Asia&mdash;or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a
+lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was
+sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her
+father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that
+kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> his sweet little
+golden-haired daughter in England."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie
+had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't
+haul her up sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to
+India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a
+sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond&mdash;that was
+her name&mdash;to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond
+went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made
+it beautiful and homelike and comfortable&mdash;she wouldn't let him drink or
+smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty
+glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy
+of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."</p>
+
+<p>"You've read it!" said Rosalie.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of," said Patty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and
+were married&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing
+on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a
+lonely heart?"</p>
+
+<p>"Um&mdash;yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she
+knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy
+come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest.
+"It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book,
+and I had the <i>awfulest</i> time making her read it. She made fun of it at
+first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the
+resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."</p>
+
+<p>"Kid's story? What <i>are</i> you talking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> about?" Patty was commencing to be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book.
+Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen
+are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he
+needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a
+lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of
+his life."</p>
+
+<p>Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and
+regarded her with a touch of asperity.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see anything so funny&mdash;I think it's very romantic."</p>
+
+<p>"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even
+pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can <i>stay</i> one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than
+that&mdash;you wait and see."</p>
+
+<p>And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of
+the year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her
+deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were
+extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed
+week, and it did last.</p>
+
+<p>Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call
+her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat
+through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a
+sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a
+solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising
+scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of
+the school.</p>
+
+<p>They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe
+played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school
+saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting
+before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while
+Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives
+sheathed in their boots, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> lariats peacefully coiled over their
+shoulders, gathered by the open window.</p>
+
+<p>Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a
+rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The
+entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up
+the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer
+book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass
+atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.</p>
+
+<p>This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost
+beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a
+lady.</p>
+
+<p>Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming
+East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South
+Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held
+earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should
+behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They
+pondered a long time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> over whether or not she should kiss him, but
+Rosalie decided in the negative.</p>
+
+<p>"When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him
+that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past
+three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."</p>
+
+<p>"Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."</p>
+
+<p>It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school&mdash;in a
+body&mdash;flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They
+had rather hoped for a flannel shirt and boots and spurs, and, in any
+case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a
+frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick,
+and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear
+that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the
+plate in church.</p>
+
+<p>But the worst is still to tell.</p>
+
+<p>He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back
+to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> womanly influence
+would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie
+was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride&mdash;a tall, fair, beautiful
+woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls
+after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful
+presence, sixty-four&mdash;no, sixty-three&mdash;of her auditors decided to grow
+up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed
+incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in
+an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never&mdash;she
+realized it perfectly&mdash;could she have competed in femininity with
+Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to
+practise from the cradle.</p>
+
+<p>They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school,
+Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie
+and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her
+shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers
+gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the
+girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor
+followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a
+reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the
+town."</p>
+
+<p>The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss
+Lord came to investigate&mdash;and she came on her tiptoes.</p>
+
+<p>Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a
+short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted
+upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp,
+while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above
+the uproar.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."</p>
+
+<p>Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord tower<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>ing above the heads crowded in
+the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was
+without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she
+managed to articulate:</p>
+
+<p>"Sunday evening in a Church school!"</p>
+
+<p>The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone.
+Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed
+possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour.
+"Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the
+darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from
+Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around
+her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie&mdash;she's a horrid, snooping old
+thing! What did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart
+and take f-fifty demerits."</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> never work them off. She had no
+<i>right</i> to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself
+from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her
+sweet little daughter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<h3>Onions and Orchids</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/t.png" width="100" height="100" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>HE perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."</div>
+
+<p>Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth
+time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the
+billowing whiteness of the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'cheery'">cherry</ins> tree which had burst into blossom
+overnight.</p>
+
+<p>It was particularly necessary that she should finish her lessons with
+dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with
+Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the
+weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of
+half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> to
+dress, leaving the stay-at-homes to another hour of work.</p>
+
+<p>She started upstairs; but she did not get very far on the way. As she
+passed the open door that led to the back porch, she stepped outside to
+examine the cherry tree at close range; then she strolled the length of
+the pergola to see how the wistaria was coming on; from there, it was
+just a step to the lane, with its double row of pink-tipped apple trees.
+Before she knew it, Patty found herself sitting on the stone wall at the
+end of the lower pasture. Behind her lay the confines of St. Ursula's.
+Before her the World.</p>
+
+<p>She sat on the top of the wall, and dangled her feet out of bounds. The
+very most scandalous crime one could commit at St. Ursula's was to go
+out of bounds without permission. Patty sat and gazed at the forbidden
+land. She knew that she had no time to waste if she were to catch the
+hearse and the train and the dentist's chair. But still she sat and
+dreamed. Finally, far across the fields on the highroad, she spied the
+hearse bowling merrily to the station. Then it occurred to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> her that she
+had forgotten to report to Mademoiselle that she was going, and that
+Mademoiselle, accordingly, would not be missing her. At the school, of
+course, they would think that she had gone, and likewise would not be
+missing her. Without any premeditated iniquity, she was free!</p>
+
+<p>She sat a few moments longer to let the feeling penetrate. Then she slid
+over the wall and started&mdash;a joyous young mutineer, seeking adventure.
+Following the cheery course of the brook, she dipped into a tangled
+ravine and stretch of woodland, raced down a hillside and across a
+marshy meadow, leaping gaily from hummock to hummock&mdash;occasionally
+missing and going in. She laughed aloud at these misadventures, and
+waved her arms and romped with the wind. In addition to the delicious
+sense of feeling free, was added the delicious sense of feeling bad. The
+combination was intoxicating.</p>
+
+<p>And so, always following the stream, she came at last to another
+wood&mdash;not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The
+dead limbs were cut away, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> the ground was neatly brushed up under
+the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under
+rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily
+pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious
+depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough
+to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It
+looked like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale.</p>
+
+<p>This second wood, however, was bordered by a solid stone wall, and on
+top of the wall, by four strands of barbed wire. Signs appeared at
+intervals&mdash;three were visible from where Patty stood&mdash;stating that these
+were private grounds, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the
+full extent of the law.</p>
+
+<p>Patty knew well to whom it belonged; she had often passed the front
+gates which faced on the other road. The estate was celebrated in the
+neighborhood, in the United States, for the matter of that. It comprised
+500 acres and belonged to a famous&mdash;or infamous&mdash;multi-millionaire. His
+name was Silas Weatherby, and he was the originator of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> great many
+Wicked Corporations. He had beautiful conservatories full of tropical
+plants, a sunken Italian garden, an art collection and picture gallery.
+He was a crusty old codger always engaged in half-a-dozen lawsuits. He
+hated the newspapers, and the newspapers hated him. He was in
+particularly bad repute at St. Ursula's, because, in response to a
+politely couched note from the principal, asking that the art class
+might view his Botticelli and the botany class his orchids, he had
+ungraciously replied that he couldn't have a lot of school girls running
+over his place&mdash;if he let them come one year, he would have to let them
+come another, and he didn't wish to establish a precedent.</p>
+
+<p>Patty looked at the "No Trespassing" signs and the barbed wire, and she
+looked at the wood beyond. They couldn't do anything if they did catch
+her, she reasoned, except turn her out. People weren't jailed nowadays
+for taking a peaceable walk in other people's woods. Besides, the
+millionaire person was attending a directors' meeting in Chicago. This
+bit of neighborhood gos<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>sip she had gleaned that morning in her weekly
+perusal of the daily press&mdash;Saturday night at dinner they were supposed
+to talk on current topics, so Saturday morning they glanced at the
+headlines and an editorial. Since the family were not at home, why not
+drop in and inspect the Italian garden? The servants were doubtless more
+polite than the master.</p>
+
+<p>She selected a portion of the wall where the wire seemed slack, and
+wriggled under, stomach-wise, tearing only a small hole in the shoulder
+of her blouse. She played with the enchanted wood half an hour or so;
+then following a path, she quite suddenly left the wood behind, and
+popped out into a garden&mdash;not a flower garden, but a kitchen garden on
+an heroic scale. Neat plots of sprouting vegetables were bordered by
+currant bushes, and the whole was surrounded by a high brick wall,
+against which pear trees were trained in the English fashion.</p>
+
+<p>A gardener was engaged, with his back toward Patty, in setting out baby
+onions. She studied him dubiously, divided between a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> prompting to run,
+and a social instinct of friendliness. He was an extremely picturesque
+gardener, dressed in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, with a touch of
+red in his waistcoat, and a cardigan jacket and a cap on the side of his
+head. He did not look very affable; but he did look rheumatic&mdash;even if
+he chased her, she was sure that she could run faster than he. So she
+settled herself on his wheelbarrow and continued to watch him, while she
+pondered an opening remark.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced up suddenly and caught sight of her. The surprise nearly
+tipped him over.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning!" said Patty pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh!" grunted the man. "What are you doing there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Watching you plant onions."</p>
+
+<p>This struck Patty as a self-evident truth, but she was perfectly willing
+to state it.</p>
+
+<p>He grunted again as he straightened his back and took a step toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you come from?" he demanded gruffly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Over there." Patty waved her hand largely to westward.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" he remarked. "You belong to that school&mdash;Saint Something or
+Other?"</p>
+
+<p>She acknowledged it. Saint Ursula's monogram was emblazoned large upon
+her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they know you're out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she returned candidly, "I don't believe they do. I am quite sure
+of it in fact. They think I've gone to the dentist's with Mam'selle, and
+she thinks I'm at school. So it leaves me entirely at leisure. I thought
+I'd come over and see what Mr. Weatherby's Italian garden looks like.
+I'm interested in Italian gardens."</p>
+
+<p>"Well I'll be&mdash;!" He commenced, and came a trifle nearer and stared
+again. "Did you happen to see any 'No Trespassing' signs as you came
+through?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy, yes! The whole place is peppered with 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"They don't seem to have impressed you much."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I never pay any attention to 'No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span> Trespassing' signs," said Patty
+easily. "You'd never get anywhere in this world if you let <i>them</i> bother
+you."</p>
+
+<p>The man unexpectedly chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe you would!" he agreed. "I've never let them bother me,"
+he added meditatively.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I help you plant your onions?" Patty asked politely. It struck
+her that this might be the quickest route to the Italian garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, thank you!"</p>
+
+<p>He accepted her offer with unexpected cordiality, and gravely explained
+the mode of work. The onions were very tiny, and they must be set
+right-side up with great care; because it is very difficult for an
+embryonic onion to turn itself over after it has once got started in the
+wrong direction.</p>
+
+<p>Patty grasped the business very readily, and followed along in the next
+row three feet behind him. It turned out sociable work; by the end of
+fifteen minutes they were quite old friends. The talk ranged far&mdash;over
+philosophy and life and morals. He had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span> very decided opinion on every
+subject&mdash;she put him down as Scotch&mdash;he seemed a well-informed old
+fellow though, and he read the papers. Patty had also read the paper
+that morning. She discoursed at some length upon whether or not
+corporations should be subject to state control. She stoutly agreed with
+her editor that they should. He maintained that they were like any other
+private property, and that it was nobody's damned business how they
+managed themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"A penny, please," said Patty, holding out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"A penny?&mdash;what for?"</p>
+
+<p>"That 'damn.' Every time you use slang or bad grammar you have to drop a
+penny in the charity box. 'Damn' is much worse than slang; it's
+swearing. I ought to charge you five cents, but since this is the first
+offense, I'll let you off with one."</p>
+
+<p>He handed over his penny, and Patty gravely pocketed it.</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of things do you learn in that school?" he inquired with a
+show of curiosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She obligingly furnished a sample:</p>
+
+<p>"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."</p>
+
+<p>"You will find that useful," he commented with the suggestion of a
+twinkle in his eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Very," she agreed&mdash;"on examination day."</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour, onion-planting grew to be wearying work; but Patty
+was bound to be game, and stick to her job as long as he did. Finally,
+however, the last onion was in, and the gardener rose and viewed the
+neat rows with some satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do for to-day," he declared; "we've earned a rest."</p>
+
+<p>They sat down, Patty on the wheelbarrow, the man on an upturned tub.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you like working for Mr. Weatherby?" she inquired. "Is he as bad
+as the papers make out?"</p>
+
+<p>The gardener chuckled slightly as he lighted his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said judiciously, "he's always been very decent to me, but I
+don't know as his enemies have any cause to love him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think he's horrid!" said Patty.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked the man with a slight air of challenge. He was quite
+willing to run his master down himself, but he would not permit an
+outsider to do it.</p>
+
+<p>"He's so terribly stingy with his old conservatories. The Dowager&mdash;I
+mean Mrs. Trent, the principal, you know&mdash;wrote and asked him to let the
+botany class see his orchids, and he was just as rude as he could be!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure he didn't mean it," the man apologized.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he did!" maintained Patty. "He said he couldn't have a lot of
+school girls running through and breaking down his vines&mdash;as if we would
+do such a thing! We have perfectly beautiful manners. We learn 'em every
+Thursday night."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe he was a little rude," he agreed. "But you see, he hasn't had
+your advantages, Miss. He didn't learn his manners in a young ladies'
+boarding-school."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't learn them anywhere," Patty shrugged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gardener took a long pull at his pipe and studied the horizon with
+narrowed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't quite fair to judge him the way you would other people," he
+said slowly. "He's had a good deal of trouble in his life; and now he's
+old, and I dare say pretty lonely sometimes. All the world's against
+him&mdash;when people are decent, he knows it's because they're after
+something. Your teacher, now, is polite when she wants to see his
+conservatories, but I'll bet she believes he's an old thief!"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't he?" asked Patty.</p>
+
+<p>The man grinned slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"He has his moments of honesty like the rest of us."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," Patty grudgingly conceded, "he may not be so bad when you
+know him. It's often the way. Now, there was Lordy, our Latin teacher. I
+used to despise her; and then&mdash;in the hour of trial&mdash;she came up to the
+scratch, and was <i>per-fect-ly bully!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"A penny."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty handed him back his own.</p>
+
+<p>"She kept me from getting expelled&mdash;she did, really. I've never been
+able to hate her since. And you know, I miss it dreadfully. It's sort of
+fun having an enemy."</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a good many," he nodded, "and I've always managed to enjoy
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"And probably they're really quite nice?" she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," he agreed, "the worst criminals are often very pleasant
+people when you see their right side."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's true," said Patty. "It's mainly chance that makes people
+bad&mdash;I know it is in my own case. This morning for instance, I got up
+with every intention of learning my geometry and going to the
+dentist's&mdash;and yet&mdash;here I am! And so," she pointed a moral, "you always
+ought to be kind to criminals and remember that under different
+circumstances you might have been in jail yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"That thought," he acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I&mdash;we&mdash;that
+is,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby
+believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who
+are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a
+cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer in charge of the
+orchids."</p>
+
+<p>"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a
+murderer."</p>
+
+<p>"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A good many years&mdash;and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air
+of challenge.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope he appreciates you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."</p>
+
+<p>He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian
+garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."</p>
+
+<p>"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's tiresome work&mdash;good for my character."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Patty laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me,
+I stop and think how my own back ached."</p>
+
+<p>"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced
+approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and
+fountains and clipped yew trees.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.</p>
+
+<p>"And who is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year,
+because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most
+plants&mdash;at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and
+Keren<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van
+Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay
+in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the
+city and gives them to Keren."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for
+the rest to help?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends
+can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes
+back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or
+Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears
+eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I
+could help?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty glanced about tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't
+got in her book."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall take back as many as you can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> carry," he promised. "We'll pay
+a visit to the orchid house."</p>
+
+<p>They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the
+conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely
+forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock
+in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St.
+Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before&mdash;and
+that she was in a starving condition.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."</p>
+
+<p>"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.</p>
+
+<p>She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she
+cared little who furnished it.</p>
+
+<p>"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter
+and&mdash;er&mdash;cookies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four
+o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without
+being missed."</p>
+
+<p>"You just wait in the pavilion, and I'll see what the gardener's cottage
+can supply us."</p>
+
+<p>He was back in fifteen minutes, chuckling as he lugged a big hamper.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have a picnic," he proposed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let's!" said Patty joyously. She did not mind eating with him in
+the least, for he had washed his hands, and appeared quite clean.</p>
+
+<p>She helped him unpack the hamper and set the table in the little
+pavilion beside the fountain. He had lettuce sandwiches, a pat of
+cottage cheese, a jug of milk, orange marmalade, sugar cookies, and
+gingerbread hot from the oven.</p>
+
+<p>"What a perfectly bully spread!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Another penny!"</p>
+
+<p>Patty peered into an empty pocket.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to charge it. I've used up all my ready money."</p>
+
+<p>The spring sun was warm, the fountain was splashing, the wind was
+sprinkling the pavilion floor with white magnolia petals. Patty helped
+herself to marmalade with a happy sigh of contentment.</p>
+
+<p>"The most fun in the world is to run away from the things you ought to
+do," she pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>He acknowledged this immoral truth with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you ought to be working?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There are one or two little matters that might be the better for my
+attention."</p>
+
+<p>"And aren't you glad you're not doing them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bully glad!"</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Give it back."</p>
+
+<p>The cent returned to her pocket, and the meal progressed gaily. Patty
+was in an elated frame of mind, and Patty's elation was catching.
+Escaping from bounds, tres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>passing on a private estate, planting onions,
+and picnicking in the Italian garden with the head gardener&mdash;she had
+never had such a dizzying whirl of adventures. The head gardener also
+seemed to enjoy the sensation of offering sanctuary to a runaway school
+girl. Their appreciation of the lark was mutual.</p>
+
+<p>As Patty, with painstaking honesty, was dividing the last of the
+gingerbread into two exact halves, she was startled by the sound of a
+footstep on the gravel path behind; and there walked into their party a
+groom&mdash;a crimson-faced, gaping young man who stood mechanically bobbing
+his head. Patty stared back a touch apprehensively. She hoped that she
+hadn't got her friend into trouble. It was very possibly against the
+rules for gardeners to entertain runaway school girls in the Italian
+garden. The groom continued to stare and to duck his head, and her
+companion rose and faced him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he inquired with a note of sharpness. "What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beg pardon, sir, but this telegram come,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> and Richard says it might be
+important, sir, and he says for me to find you, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He received the telegram, ran his eyes over it, scribbled an answer on
+the back with a gold pencil which he extracted from his pocket, and
+dismissed the man with a curt nod. The envelope had fluttered to the
+table and lay there face up. Patty inadvertently glanced at the address,
+and as the truth flashed across her, she hid her head against the back
+of the stone seat in a gale of laughter. Her companion looked
+momentarily sheepish, then he too laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You have enjoyed the privilege of telling me exactly how rude you think
+I am. Not even the reporters always allow themselves that pleasure."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that was before I knew you! I think now that you have perfectly
+beautiful manners."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed his thanks.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall endeavor to have better in the future. It will be my pleasure
+to put my greenhouses at the disposal of the young ladies of St.
+Ursula's some afternoon soon."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Really?" she smiled. "That's awfully nice of you!"</p>
+
+<p>They repacked the hamper and divided the crumbs among the goldfish in
+the fountain.</p>
+
+<p>"And now," he inquired, "which will you visit first&mdash;the picture gallery
+or the orchids?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty emerged from the orchid house at four o'clock, her arms filled
+with an unprecedented collection for Conny's book. The big yellow
+four-in-hand coach was standing outside the stable being washed. She
+examined it interestedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Should you like to have me drive you home on that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'd love it!" Patty dimpled. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't be wise,"
+she added on second thought. "No, I am sure it wouldn't be wise," she
+firmly turned her back. Her eyes fell on the road, and an apprehensive
+light sprang to her face.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the hearse!"</p>
+
+<p>"The hearse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the school wagonette. I think I'd better be going."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He accompanied her back, through the vegetable garden and the enchanted
+wood, and held her flowers while she crawled under the fence, tearing a
+hole in the other shoulder of her blouse.</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands through the barbed wire.</p>
+
+<p>"I've enjoyed both the onions and the orchids," said Patty politely,
+"and particularly the gingerbread. And if I ever have any convict
+friends in need of employment, I may send them to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do so," he urged. "I will find them a job here."</p>
+
+<p>She started off, then turned to wave good-by to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a perfectly bully time!"</p>
+
+<p>"A penny!" he called.</p>
+
+<p>Patty laughed and ran.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<h3>The Lemon Pie and the Monkey-Wrench</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 101px;">
+<img src="images/e.png" width="101" height="100" alt="E" title="E" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>VALINA SMITH was a morbid young person who loved to dabble in the
+supernatural. Her taste in literature was for Edgar A. Poe. In religion
+she inclined toward spiritualism. Her favorite amusement was to gather a
+few shuddering friends about her, turn out the gas, and tell ghost
+stories. She had an extensive repertoire of ghoulish incidents, that
+were not fiction but the actual experience of people she knew. She had
+even had one or two spiritual adventures herself; and she would set
+forth the details with wide eyes and lowered voice, while her auditors
+held one another's hands and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> shivered. The circle in which Evalina
+moved had not much sense of humor.</div>
+
+<p>One Saturday evening St. Ursula's School was in an unusually social
+mood. Evalina was holding a ghost party in her room in the East Wing;
+Nancy Lee had invited her ten dearest friends to a birthday spread in
+Center; the European History class was celebrating the completion of the
+Thirty-Years War by a molasses-candy pull in the kitchen; and Kid McCoy
+was conducting a potato race down the length of the South Corridor&mdash;the
+entrance fee a postage stamp, the prize sealed up in a large bandbox and
+warranted to be worth a quarter.</p>
+
+<p>Patty, who was popular, had been invited to all four of the functions.
+She had declined Nancy's spread, because Mae Van Arsdale, her particular
+enemy, was invited; but had accepted the other invitations, and was
+busily spending the evening as an itinerant guest.</p>
+
+<p>She carried her potato, insecurely balanced on a teaspoon, over one
+table and under another, through a hoop suspended from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> ceiling, and
+deposited it in the wastebasket at the end of the corridor, in exactly
+two minutes and forty-seven seconds. (Kid McCoy had a stop-watch.) This
+was far ahead of anyone else's record, and Patty lingered hopefully a
+few minutes in the neighborhood of the bandbox; but a fresh inrush of
+entries postponed the bestowal of the prize, so she left the judges to
+settle the question at their leisure, and drifted on to Evalina's room.</p>
+
+<p>She found it dark, except for the fitful blue flare of alcohol and salt
+burning in a fudge pan. The guests were squatting about on sofa
+cushions, looking decidedly spotty in the unbecoming light. Patty
+silently dropped down on a vacant cushion, and lent polite attention to
+Evalina, who at the moment held the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, I had a very remarkable experience myself last summer.
+Happening to visit a spiritualist camp, I attended a materializing
+s&eacute;ance."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Rosalie Patton.</p>
+
+<p>"A s&eacute;ance in which spirits appear to mediums in the material form they
+occupied dur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>ing life," Evalina condescendingly explained. Rosalie was
+merely an invited guest. She did not belong to the inner cult.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Rosalie, vaguely enlightened.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't really expect anything to happen," Evalina continued, "and I
+was just thinking how foolish I was to have wasted that dollar, when the
+medium shut her eyes and commenced to tremble. She said she saw the
+spirit of a beautiful young girl who had passed over five years before.
+The girl was dressed in white and her clothes were dripping wet, and she
+carried in her hand a monkey-wrench."</p>
+
+<p>"A monkey-wrench!" cried Patty. "What on earth&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know any more than you do," said Evalina impatiently. "I'm just
+telling what happened. The Medium couldn't get her full name, but she
+said her first name commenced with 'S.' And instantly, it came over me
+that it was my Cousin Susan who fell into a well and was drowned. I
+hadn't thought of her for years, but the description answered perfectly.
+And I asked the me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>dium, and after a little, she said yes, it was Susan,
+and that she had come to send me a warning."</p>
+
+<p>Evalina allowed an impressive pause to follow, while her auditors leaned
+forward in strained attention.</p>
+
+<p>"A warning!" breathed Florence Hissop.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She told me never to eat lemon pie."</p>
+
+<p>Patty choked with sudden laughter. Evalina cast her a look and went on.</p>
+
+<p>"The medium shivered again and came out of the trance, and she couldn't
+remember a thing she had said! When I told her about the monkey-wrench
+and the lemon pie, she was just as much puzzled as I was. She said that
+the messages that came from the spirit world were often inexplicable;
+though they might seem to deal with trivial things, yet in reality they
+contained a deep and hidden truth. Probably some day I would have an
+enemy who would try to poison me with lemon pie, and I must never, on
+<i>any</i> account, taste it again."</p>
+
+<p>"And haven't you?" Patty asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never," said Evalina sadly.</p>
+
+<p>Patty composed her features into an expression of scientific inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think the medium told the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've never had any cause to doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you really believe in ghosts?"</p>
+
+<p>"In spirits?" Evalina amended gently. "Many strange things happen that
+cannot be explained in any other manner."</p>
+
+<p>"What would you do if her spirit should appear to you? Would you be
+scared?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not!" said Evalina, with dignity. "I was very fond of Cousin
+Susan. I have no cause to fear her spirit."</p>
+
+<p>The smell of boiling molasses penetrated from below; Patty excused
+herself and turned toward the kitchen. The spiritual heights on which
+Evalina dwelt, she found a trifle too rare for ordinary breathing.</p>
+
+<p>The candy was on the point of being poured into pans.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Patty!" Priscilla ordered, "you haven't done any work. Run down
+to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span> storeroom and get some butter to keep our hands from sticking."</p>
+
+<p>Patty obligingly accompanied the cook to the cellar, with not a thought
+in the world beyond butter. On a shelf in the storeroom stood
+to-morrow's dessert&mdash;a row of fifteen lemon pies, with neatly decorated
+tops of white meringue. As Patty looked at them, she was suddenly
+assailed by a wicked temptation; she struggled with it for a moment of
+sanity, but in the end she fell. While Nora's head was bent over the
+butter tub, Patty opened the window and deftly plumped a pie through the
+iron grating onto the ledge without. By the time Nora raised her head,
+the window was shut again, and Patty was innocently translating the
+label on a bottle of olive oil.</p>
+
+<p>As they pulled their candy in a secluded corner of the kitchen, Patty
+hilariously confided her plan to Conny and Priscilla. Conny was always
+game for whatever mischief was afoot, but Priscilla sometimes needed
+urging. She was&mdash;most inconveniently&mdash;beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> to develop a moral
+nature, and the other two, who as yet were comfortably un-moral,
+occasionally found her difficult to coerce.</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla finally lent a grudging consent, while Conny enthusiastically
+volunteered to acquire a monkey-wrench. Being captain of sports, she
+could manage the matter better than Patty. On a flying visit to the
+stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the
+tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of
+her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it
+away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to
+Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great
+deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the
+pie&mdash;slightly damaged as to its meringue top, but still distinctly
+recognizable as lemon&mdash;were safely cached under Patty's bed to await
+their part in the night's adventure.</p>
+
+<p>"Lights-out" as usual, rang at nine-thirty, but it rang to deaf ears. A
+spirit of restless festivity was abroad. The little girls in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span> "Baby
+Ward" larked about the halls in a pillow fight, until they were sternly
+ordered to bed by the Dowager herself. It was close to ten o'clock when
+the candy-pullers washed their sticky hands and turned upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Patty found a delegation of potato racers waiting with the news that she
+had won the prize. An interested crowd gathered to watch her open the
+box; it contained a tin funeral wreath that had been displayed that
+winter in the window of the village undertaker&mdash;Kid had bought it cheap,
+owing to fly specks that would not rub off. The wreath was hoisted on
+the end of a shinny stick and marched through the corridor to the tune
+of "John Brown's Body," while Mademoiselle ineffectually wrung her hands
+and begged for quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Mes ch&egrave;res enfantes</i>&mdash;it is ten o'clock. <i>Soyez tranquilles.</i>
+Patty&mdash;<i>Mon Dieu</i>&mdash;How you are bad! Margarite McCoy, you do not listen
+to me? <i>Nous verrons!</i> Go to your room, dis in-stant! You do not belong
+in my hall. Children! I implore. Go to bed&mdash;all&mdash;<i>tout de suite!</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The procession cheered and marched on, until Miss Lord descended from
+the East and commanded silence. Miss Lord when incensed was effectual.
+The peace of conquest settled for a time over Paradise Alley, and she
+returned to her own camp. But a fresh hub-bub broke out, when it was
+discovered that someone had sprinkled granulated sugar, in liberal
+quantities, through every bed in the Alley. Patty and Conny would have
+been suspected, had their own sheets not yielded a plentiful harvest. It
+was another half hour before the beds were remade, and the school
+finally composed to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>When the teacher on duty had made her last rounds, and everything was
+quiet, Patty turned back the covers of her bed and cautiously stepped to
+the floor. She was still fully clothed, except that she had changed her
+shoes for softer soled bedroom slippers, better fitted for nocturnal
+adventures. Priscilla and Conny joined her. Fortunately a full moon
+shone high in the sky, and they needed no artificial light. Aided by her
+two assistants, Patty draped the sheets of her bed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> about her into two
+voluminous wings, and fastened them securely with safety pins. A pillow
+slip was pulled over her head and the corners tied into ears. They
+hesitated a moment with scissors suspended.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up and cut a nose," Patty whispered. "I'm smothering!"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems sort of too bad to spoil a perfectly good pillow slip," said
+Priscilla, with a slight access of conscience.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll drop some money in the missionary box," Patty promised.</p>
+
+<p>The nose and eyes were cut; a grinning mouth and devilishly curved
+eyebrows were added with burnt cork. The pillow slip was tied firmly
+about her neck to allow no chance of slipping, the ears waved
+lopsidedly; she was the most amazing specter that ever left a
+respectable grave.</p>
+
+<p>These preparations had occupied some time. It was already ten minutes of
+twelve.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait till the stroke of midnight," said Patty. "Then I'll flutter
+into Evalina's room, and wave my wings, and whisper, 'Come!' The
+monkey-wrench and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> pie, I'll leave on the foot of her bed, so she'll
+know she wasn't dreaming."</p>
+
+<p>"What if she screams?" asked Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't scream. She loves ghosts&mdash;especially Cousin Susan. She said
+to-night she'd be glad to meet her."</p>
+
+<p>"But what if she does scream?" persisted Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's easy! I'll dash back and pop into bed. Before anybody wakes,
+I'll be sound asleep."</p>
+
+<p>They made a reconnoitering excursion into the empty corridors to make
+sure that all was quiet. Only regular breathing issued from open doors.
+Evalina fortunately lived in a single, but unfortunately, it was at the
+extreme end of the East Wing in the opposite corner of the building from
+Patty's own domicile. Conny and Priscilla, in bedroom slippers and
+kimonos, tiptoed after Patty as she took her flight down the length of
+the Alley. She sailed back and forth and waved her wings in the
+moonlight that streamed through the skylight in the central hall. The
+two spectators clung together and shiv<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>ered delightedly. In spite of
+having been behind the scenes and assisted at the make-up, they received
+a distinct sensation&mdash;what it would be to one suddenly wakened from
+sleep, to a believer in ghosts, they were a bit apprehensive to
+consider. At the entrance to the East Wing, they handed Patty her pie
+and monkey-wrench, and retreated to their own neighborhood. In case of
+an uproar, they did not wish to be discovered too far from home.</p>
+
+<p>Patty flitted on down the corridor, past yawning doors, into Evalina's
+room, where she took up a central position in a patch of moonlight. A
+few sepulchral "Comes!" brought no response. Evalina was a sound
+sleeper.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 310px;">
+<img src="images/300-ill.jpg" width="310" height="400" alt="Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck" title="Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck" />
+<span class="caption">Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck</span>
+</div>
+<p>Patty shook the foot of the bed. The sleeper stirred slightly but slept
+on. This was annoying. The ghost had no mind to make noise enough to
+disturb the neighbors. She laid the pie and the monkey-wrench on the
+counterpane, and shook the bed again, with the insistence of an
+earthquake. As she was endeavoring to resume her proper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>ties, Evalina
+sat up and clutched the bed clothes about her neck with a frenzied jerk.
+Patty just had time to save the pie&mdash;the monkey-wrench went to the floor
+with a crash; and the crash, to Patty's startled senses, was echoed and
+intensified from far down the hall. She had no chance to wave her wings
+or murmur, "Come." Evalina did not wait for her cue. She opened her
+mouth as wide as it would open, and emitted shriek after shriek of such
+ear-splitting intensity, that Patty, for a moment, was too aghast to
+move. Then, still hugging the pie in her arms, she turned and ran.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>To her consternation the cries were answered ahead. The whole house
+seemed to be awake and shrieking. She could hear doors banging and
+frightened voices demanding the cause of the tumult. She was making a
+quick dash for her own room, trusting to the confusion and darkness to
+make good her escape, when Miss Lord, gaily attired in a flowered
+bath-robe, appeared at the end of the corridor. Patty was headed
+straight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> for her arms. With a gasp of terror, she turned back toward
+the shrieking Evalina.</p>
+
+<p>She realized by now that she was in a trap.</p>
+
+<p>A narrow passage led from the East Wing to the servants' quarters. She
+dived into this. If she could reach the back stairs it would mean
+safety. She pushed the door open a crack, and to her horror, was
+confronted by a worse uproar. The servants' quarters were in a state of
+panic. She saw Maggie dashing past, wrapped in a pink striped blanket,
+while above the general confusion rose Norah's rich brogue:</p>
+
+<p>"Help! Murther! I seen a bur-r-gu-lar!"</p>
+
+<p>She shut the door and shrank back into the passage. Behind her Evalina
+was still hysterically wailing:</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a ghost! I saw a ghost!"</p>
+
+<p>Before her the cry of "Burglars!" was growing louder.</p>
+
+<p>Utterly bewildered at this double demonstration, Patty flattened herself
+against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> wall in the friendly darkness of the passage, while she
+soulfully thanked Heaven that the proposed electric lights had not yet
+been installed. A dozen voices were calling for matches, but no one
+seemed to find any. She pantingly tugged at the pillowcase fastened
+about her neck; but Conny had tied it firmly with a white hair ribbon,
+and the knot was behind. In any case, even if she could remove her
+masquerade, she was lost if they found her; for she was still wearing
+the white dress of the evening, and not even Patty's imagination could
+compass an excuse for that at twelve o'clock at night.</p>
+
+<p>The search was growing nearer; she caught the glimmer of a light ahead.
+At any moment they might open the door of the passage. The linen closet
+was the only refuge at hand&mdash;and that was very temporary. She felt for
+the door handle and slipped inside. If she could find a pile of sheets,
+she might dive to the bottom and hope to escape notice, being mostly
+sheet herself. But it was Saturday, and all the linen had gone down. A
+long, slippery, inclined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> chute connected the room with the laundry in
+the basement two floors below. Steps were already audible in the
+passage. She heard Miss Lord's voice say:</p>
+
+<p>"Bring a light! We'll search the linen closet."</p>
+
+<p>Patty did not hesitate. In imagination she could already feel the
+pressure of Miss Lord's grasp upon her shoulder. A broken neck was
+preferable.</p>
+
+<p>Still hugging the lemon pie&mdash;in all her excitement she had clasped it
+firmly&mdash;she climbed into the chute, stretched her feet out straight in
+front, and pushed off. For two breathless seconds she dashed through
+space, then her feet hit the trap door at the bottom, and she shot into
+the laundry.</p>
+
+<p>One instant earlier, the door from the kitchen stairs had cautiously
+opened, and a man had darted into the laundry. He had just had time to
+cast a glance of boundless relief about the empty, moonlit room, when
+Patty and the pie catapulted against him. They went down together in a
+whirl of waving wings. Patty being on top picked her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>self up first. She
+still clutched her pie&mdash;at least what was left of it; the white meringue
+was spread over the man's hair and face; but the lemon part was still
+intact. The man sat up dazedly, rubbed the meringue from his eyes, cast
+one look at his assailant, and staggered to his feet. He flattened
+himself against the wall with arms thrown wide for support.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy gee!" he choked. "What in hell uv I got into?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty excused his language, as he did not appear to know that he was
+addressing a lady. He seemed to be laboring under the impression that
+she was the devil.</p>
+
+<p>Her pillow slip by now was very much askew; one ear pointed northward,
+the other southeast, and she could only see out of one eye. It was very
+hot inside and she was gasping for breath. For a palpitating moment they
+merely stared and panted. Then Patty's mind began to work.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose," she suggested, "you are the burglar they are screaming
+about?"</p>
+
+<p>The man leaned back limply and stared,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> his wide, frightened eyes
+shining through a fringe of meringue.</p>
+
+<p>"I," said Patty, completing the introduction, "am the ghost."</p>
+
+<p>He muttered something under his breath. She could not make out whether
+he was praying or swearing.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid," she added kindly. "I won't hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a bloomin' insane asylum?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just a girl's school."</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh!" he observed.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Patty. "They're coming this way now!"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while
+bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former
+tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost
+regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual
+danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied
+his face as it showed through the interstices of the meringue. He had
+honest blue eyes and yellow curls. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> suddenly stretched out a hand
+and grasped him by an elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! They'll be here in a minute. I know a place to hide. Come with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him unresisting down a passage and into a storeroom, boarded
+off from the main cellar, where the scenery of the dramatic society was
+kept.</p>
+
+<p>"Get down on your hands and knees and follow me," she ordered, as she
+stooped low and dived behind a pile of canvas.</p>
+
+<p>The man crawled after. They emerged at the farther end into a small
+recess behind some canvas trees. Patty sat on a stump and offered a
+wooden rock to her companion.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll never think of looking here," she whispered. "Martin's too fat
+to crawl through."</p>
+
+<p>A small barred window let in some faint moonlight and they had an
+opportunity to study each other more at leisure. The man did not yet
+seem comfortable in Patty's presence; he was occupying the farthest
+possible corner of his rock. Presently he rubbed his coat sleeve over
+his head and looked long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> and earnestly at the meringue. He was
+evidently at a loss to identify the substance; in the rush of events he
+had taken no note of the pie.</p>
+
+<p>Patty brought her one eye to bear down upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm simply melting!" she whispered. "Do you think you could untie that
+knot?"</p>
+
+<p>She bent her head and presented the back of her neck.</p>
+
+<p>The man by now was partially reassured as to the humanness of his
+companion, and he obediently worked at the knot but with hands that
+trembled. At last it came loose, and Patty with a sigh of relief emerged
+into the open. Her hair was somewhat tousled and her face was streaked
+with burnt cork, but her blue eyes were as honest as his own. The sight
+reassured him.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" he muttered in a wave of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep still!" Patty warned.</p>
+
+<p>The hunt was growing nearer. There was the sound of tramping feet in the
+laundry and they could hear the men talking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"A ghost and a burglar!" said Martin, in fine scorn. "That's a likely
+combination, ain't it now?"</p>
+
+<p>They made an obligatory and superficial search through the coal cellar.
+Martin jocularly inquiring:</p>
+
+<p>"Did ye look in the furnace, Mike? Here Osaki, me lad, ye're small. Take
+a crawl oop the poipes and see if the ghost ain't hidin' there."</p>
+
+<p>They opened the door of the property-room and glanced inside. The
+burglar ducked his head and held his breath, while Patty struggled with
+an ill-timed desire to giggle. Martin was in a facetious mood. He
+whistled in the manner of calling a dog.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Ghostie! Here, Burgie! Come here, old fellow!"</p>
+
+<p>They banged the door shut and their footsteps receded. Patty was rocking
+back and forth in a species of hysterics, stuffing the corner of the
+sheet into her mouth to keep from laughing audibly. The burglar's teeth
+were chattering.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p><p>"Lord!" he breathed. "It may be funny for you, Miss. But it means the
+penitentiary for me."</p>
+
+<p>Patty interrupted her hysterics and regarded him with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>"It would mean expulsion for me, or at least something awfully
+unpleasant. But that's no reason for going all to pieces. You're a nice
+sort of a burglar! Brace up and be a sport!"</p>
+
+<p>He mopped his brow and removed another portion of icing.</p>
+
+<p>"You must be an awful amateur to break into a house like this," she said
+contemptuously. "Don't you know the silver's plated?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know nuthin' about it," he said sullenly. "I see the window
+open over the shed roof and I clum up. I was hungry and was lookin' for
+somethin' to eat. I ain't had nothin' since yesterday mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>Patty reached to the floor beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Have some pie."</p>
+
+<p>The man ducked aside as it was poked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"W-what's that?" he gasped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was as nervous as a mouse in a cage.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemon pie. It looks a little messy but it's all right. The only thing
+the matter with it is that it has lost its meringue top. That's mostly
+on your head. The rest of it is spread over me and the laundry floor and
+Evalina Smith's bed and the clothes chute."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he murmured in evident relief, as he rubbed his hand over his hair
+for the fourth time. "I was wonderin' what the blame stuff was."</p>
+
+<p>"But the lemon's all here," she urged. "You'd better eat it. It's quite
+nourishing, I believe."</p>
+
+<p>He accepted the pie and fell to eating it with an eagerness that carried
+out the truth of his assertion as to yesterday's breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Patty watched him, her natural curiosity struggling with her acquired
+politeness. The curiosity triumphed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mind telling me how you came to be a burglar? You make such a
+remarkably bad one, that I should think you would have chosen almost any
+other profession."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He told his story between bites. To one more experienced in police
+records, it might have sounded a trifle fishy, but he had an honest face
+and blue eyes, and it never entered her head to doubt him. The burglar
+commenced it sullenly; no one had ever believed him yet and he wasn't
+expecting her to. He would like to have invented something a little more
+plausible, but he lacked the imagination to tell a convincing lie. So,
+as usual, he lamely told the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Patty listened with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by
+lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but
+she managed to get the gist of it.</p>
+
+<p>By rights he was a gardener. In the last place where he worked he used
+to sleep in the attic, because the gentleman he was away a lot, and the
+lady she was afraid not to have a man in the house. And a gas-fitter,
+that he had always thought was his friend, give him some beer one night
+and got him drunk, and took away the key of the back door. And while he
+(the gardener) was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> sound asleep on the children's sand pile under the
+apple tree in the back yard, the gas-fitter entered the house and stole
+an overcoat and a silver coffee-pot and a box of cigars and a bottle of
+whisky and two umbrellas. And they proved it on him (the gardener) and
+he was sent up for two years. And when he come out, no one wouldn't give
+him no work.</p>
+
+<p>"An' ye can't make me believe," he added bitterly, "that that beer
+wasn't doped!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but it was terrible of you to get drunk!" said Patty, shocked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas an accident," he insisted.</p>
+
+<p>"If you are <i>sure</i> that you'll never do it again," she said, "I'll get
+you a job. But you must promise, on your word of honor as a gentleman.
+You know I couldn't recommend a drunkard."</p>
+
+<p>The man grinned feebly.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess ye'll not be findin' anybody that will be wantin' a jailbird."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I will! I know exactly the man. He's a friend of mine, and he
+likes jailbirds. He realizes that it's only luck that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span> made him a
+millionaire instead of a convict. He always gives a man a chance to
+start again. He used to have a murderer in charge of his greenhouses,
+and a cattle thief to milk the cows. I'm sure he'll like you. Come with
+me, and I'll write you a letter of introduction."</p>
+
+<p>Patty gathered her sheets about her and prepared to crawl out.</p>
+
+<p>"What are ye doin'?" he demanded quickly. "Y' aren't goin' to hand me
+over?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it likely?" She regarded him with scorn. "How could I hand you over,
+without handing myself over at the same time?"</p>
+
+<p>The logic of this appealed to him, and he followed meekly on hands and
+knees. She approached the laundry door and listened warily; the search
+had withdrawn to other quarters. She led the way along a passage and up
+a flight of stairs and slipped into the deserted kindergarten room.</p>
+
+<p>"We're safe here," she whispered. "They've already searched it."</p>
+
+<p>She cast about for writing materials. No<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span> ink was to be found, but she
+discovered a red crayon pencil, and tore a sheet of paper from a copy
+book. "Honesty is the best policy," was inscribed in flowing characters
+at the top.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated with her crayon poised.</p>
+
+<p>"If I get you a nice job in charge of onions and orchids and things,
+will you promise never again to drink any beer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," he agreed, but without much enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>There was a light of uneasiness in his eye. Nothing in his past
+experience tallied with to-night's adventure; and he suspected an
+ambush.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," said Patty, "it would be awfully embarrassing for me if you
+did get drunk. I should never dare recommend another burglar."</p>
+
+<p>She wrote her note on the window ledge, by moonlight, and read it aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">"<i>Dear Mr. Weatherby</i>,&mdash;<br />
+
+<p>"Do you remember the conversation we had the day I
+ran away and dropped into your onion garden? You
+said you thought criminals were often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> quite as
+good as the rest of us, and that you would find a
+job for any convict friend I might present. This
+is to introduce a burglar of my acquaintance who
+would like to secure a position as gardener. He
+was trained to be a gardener and much prefers it
+to burglaring, but finds it difficult to find a
+place because he has been in prison. He is
+faithful, honest and industrious, and promises to
+be sober. I shall appreciate any favor you may
+show him. </p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-right: 6em;">"Sincerely yours,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">"Patty Wyatt</span>."<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>"P. S.&mdash;Please excuse this red crayon. I am
+writing at midnight, by moonlight in the
+kindergarten room, and the ink's all locked up.
+The burglar will explain the circumstances, which
+are too complicated to write. </p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">"Yours ever,<br /></span>
+"P. W."<br />
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She enclosed her note in a large manila envelope that had contained
+weaving mats, and addressed it to Silas Weatherby, Esq. The man received
+it gingerly. He seemed to think that it might go off.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" said Patty. "Are you afraid of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're sure," he asked suspiciously, "that Silas Weatherby ain't a
+cop?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's a railroad president."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" The burglar looked relieved.</p>
+
+<p>Patty unlocked the window, then paused for a final moral lecture.</p>
+
+<p>"I am giving you a chance to begin again. If you are game, and present
+this letter, you'll get a job. If you're a coward, and don't dare
+present it, you can keep on being a burglar for the rest of your life
+for all I care&mdash;and a mighty poor one you'll make!"</p>
+
+<p>She opened the window and waved her hand invitingly toward the outside
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, Miss," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by," said Patty cordially. "And good luck!"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, half in, half out, for a last reassurance.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're sure it's on the straight, Miss? Y' ain't pitchin' me no curve?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's on the straight." She pledged her word. "I ain't pitchin' you no
+curve."</p>
+
+<p>Patty crept upstairs the back way, and by a wide detour avoided the
+excited crowd still gathered in the East Wing. A fresh hub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>-bub had
+arisen, for Evalina Smith had found a monkey-wrench on the floor of her
+room. It was shown to the scoffing Martin as visible proof that the
+burglar had been there.</p>
+
+<p>"An it's me own wrench!" he cried in wide-eyed amazement. "Now, what do
+ye think of his nerve?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty hurriedly undressed and tumbled into a kimono. Sleepily rubbing
+her eyes, she joined the assemblage in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"What's happened?" she asked, blinking at the lights. "Has there been a
+fire?"</p>
+
+<p>A chorus of laughter greeted the question.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a burglar!" said Conny, exhibiting the wrench.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>why</i> didn't you wake me?" Patty wailed. "I've wanted all my life
+to see a burglar."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Two weeks later, a groom arrived on horseback with a polite note for the
+Dowager.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Weatherby presented his compliments to Mrs. Trent, and desired the
+pleasure of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> showing the young ladies of the Senior class through his
+art gallery on Friday next at four o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>The Dowager was at a loss to account for this gratuitous courtesy on the
+part of her hitherto unneighborly neighbor. After a moment of
+deliberation, she decided to meet him half way; and the groom rode back
+with an equally polite acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>On Friday next, as the school hearse turned in at the gates of Weatherby
+Hall, the owner stood on the portico waiting to welcome his guests. If
+there were a shade more <i>empressement</i> in his greeting to Patty than to
+her companions, the Dowager did not notice it.</p>
+
+<p>He made an exceptionally attentive host. In person he conducted them
+through the gallery and pointed out the famous Botticelli. Tea was
+served at little tables set on the western terrace. Each girl found a
+gardenia at her plate and a silver bonbonni&egrave;re with the St. Ursula
+monogram on the cover. After tea their host suggested a visit to the
+Italian garden. As they strolled through the paths,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> Patty found herself
+walking beside him and the Dowager. His conversation was addressed to
+Mrs. Trent, but an occasional amused glance was directed toward Patty.
+They turned a corner behind a marble pavilion, and came upon a fountain
+and a gardener man, intent upon a border of maiden-hair ferns.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a very remarkable new Swedish gardener," Mr. Weatherby casually
+remarked to the Dowager. "The man is a genius at making plants grow. He
+came highly recommended. Oscar!" he called. "Bring the ladies some of
+those tulips."</p>
+
+<p>The man dropped his watering-can, and approached, hat in hand. He was a
+golden-haired, blue-eyed young chap with an honest smile. He presented
+his flowers, first to the elder lady and then to Patty. As he caught her
+interested gaze, a light of comprehension suddenly leaped to his eyes.
+Her costume and make-up to-day were so very dissimilar to those which
+she had assumed on the occasion of their first meeting, that recognition
+on his part had not been instantaneous.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Patty fell back a step to receive her flowers and the others strolled
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to thank ye, Miss," he said gratefully, "for the finest job I
+ever had. It's all right!"</p>
+
+<p>"You know now," Patty laughed, "that I didn't pitch you no curves?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<h3>The Gypsy Trail</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 99px;">
+<img src="images/h.png" width="99" height="100" alt="H" title="H" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='p2'>EELS together. Hips firm, one, two, three, four&mdash;Irene McCullough!
+<i>Will</i> you keep your shoulders back and your stomach in? How many times
+must I tell you to stand straight? That's better! We'll start again.
+One, two, three, four."</div>
+
+<p>The exercise droned on. Some twenty of the week's delinquents were
+working off demerits. It was uncongenial work for a sunny Saturday. The
+twenty pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head&mdash;across ropes and
+rings and parallel bars&mdash;toward the green tree tops and the blue sky;
+and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> on edge. She snapped out her
+orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty
+waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium
+suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any
+of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined.
+No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter
+discipline.</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three, four&mdash;Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It
+isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class
+when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when
+nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order,
+"Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt.
+Break ranks."</p>
+
+<p>With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as
+they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent
+insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same.
+She's so&mdash;so sort of <i>spirited</i>, you know&mdash;like a skittish horse."</p>
+
+<p>"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the
+upper hand of Jelly once, and <i>just make her toe the mark!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into
+your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky
+mixture in the wash bowl.</p>
+
+<p>The fancy-dress lawn f&ecirc;te, which St. Ursula's School held on the last
+Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon
+the girls were redonning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> their costumes to make a trip to the village
+photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space
+for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven
+down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the
+trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery
+dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing
+at the school. They had gone as Gypsies&mdash;not comic opera Gypsies, but
+real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the
+room with their costumes for a week before the f&ecirc;te.) Patty wore one
+brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf.
+Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped.
+Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were
+the last word in realism.</p>
+
+<p>They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and
+hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a
+worn-out pack of cards,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> and they clattered down the tin-covered back
+stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings,
+clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never
+held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary
+indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.</p>
+
+<p>"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."</p>
+
+<p>She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet
+petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the
+tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."</p>
+
+<p>"You impudent little ragamuffins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the
+shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your
+faces?"</p>
+
+<p>"Washed 'em in black coffee."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a disgrace to the school!" she pronounced. "Don't let any
+policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Patty! Conny!&mdash;Hurry up. The hearse is starting."</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla appeared in the doorway and waved her gridiron frantically.
+Priscilla, late about finding a costume, at the last moment had
+blasphemously gone as St. Laurence, draped in a sheet, with the kitchen
+broiler under her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"We're coming! Tell him to wait." Patty dashed out.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want a coat?" Conny shrieked after her.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;come on&mdash;we don't need coats."</p>
+
+<p>The two raced down the drive after the wagonette&mdash;Martin never waited
+for laggards; he let them run and catch up. They sprang onto the rear
+step; and half-a-dozen outstretched hands hauled them in, head first.</p>
+
+<p>They found the photographer's waiting-room a scene of the maddest
+confusion. When sixty excited people occupy the normal space of twelve,
+the effect is not restful.</p>
+
+<p>"Did anyone bring a button-hook?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lend me some powder."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's <i>my</i> safety-pin!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you put the burnt cork?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is my hair a perfect sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fasten me up&mdash;please!"</p>
+
+<p>"Does my petticoat show?"</p>
+
+<p>Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, let's get out of this&mdash;I'm simply roasting!"</p>
+
+<p>St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the
+vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a
+shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.</p>
+
+<p>"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying
+on a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked the others, with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the
+electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about
+all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the
+Christmas vacation. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> used to go walking together&mdash;and without any
+chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful
+fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss
+Jellings treated that man&mdash;it was <i>per-fect-ly dreadful!</i> The way she
+jumps on Irene McCullough is <i>nothing</i> to the way she jumped on him."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said
+Conny simply.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't stand it any more."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I&mdash;sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the
+Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly
+and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any
+attention to them at first&mdash;I'd just got to the place where the
+detective says, 'Is that the mark of a <i>human</i> hand?'&mdash;but pretty soon
+they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort
+of embarrassed about interrupting."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her
+apologies.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something,
+and she wouldn't listen to a word he said&mdash;she was <i>perfectly horrid</i>.
+You know,&mdash;the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I
+don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on
+Saturday for extra gymnasium.'&mdash;Well, they kept that up for fifteen
+minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat
+and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back&mdash;<i>I've</i> never
+seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever
+since."</p>
+
+<p>"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she <i>can</i>," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see
+that man come back, and show her her place!"</p>
+
+<p>The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day
+commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller
+groups disentangled themselves and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> posed separately, while those who
+were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly
+be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And
+will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep
+your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count
+three. One, two, three&mdash;thank you very much!"</p>
+
+<p>He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.</p>
+
+<p>It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and
+her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground
+of superior numbers, and they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies
+politely stood aside.</p>
+
+<p>Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's&mdash;each playing
+the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins&mdash;made up the group. It was to be
+a symbolical picture, Keren explained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to
+catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front.
+It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety;
+she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with
+white basting thread.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and
+tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with
+appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but
+these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering
+on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was
+about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle
+slung from three sticks&mdash;when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding
+quiet that had settled on the place.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is everybody?"</p>
+
+<p>She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided
+between consternation and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Patty! The hearse has gone!&mdash;And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> the street-car people are waiting on
+the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three
+sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer,
+who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."</p>
+
+<p>"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us
+in the car in these clothes."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll have to," said Patty simply. "She can't leave us on the corner."</p>
+
+<p>They clattered downstairs, but wavered an instant in the <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'freindly'">friendly</ins>
+darkness of the doorway; there was no time, however, for maidenly
+hesitations, and taking their courage in both hands, they plunged into
+the Saturday afternoon crowd that thronged Main Street.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mama! Quick! Look at the Gypsies," a little boy squealed as the two
+pushed past.</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens!" Conny whispered. "I feel like a circus parade."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hurry!" Patty panted, taking her by the hand and beginning to run. "The
+car's stopped and they're getting in&mdash;Wait! Wait!" She frenziedly waved
+the tambourine above her head.</p>
+
+<p>An express wagon at the crossing blocked their progress. The last of the
+Eleven Thousand Virgins climbed aboard, without once glancing over her
+shoulder; and the car, unheeding, clanged away, and became a yellow spot
+in the distance. The two Gypsies stood on the corner and stared at one
+another in blank interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't a cent&mdash;have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not one."</p>
+
+<p>"How are we going to get home?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't an idea."</p>
+
+<p>Patty felt her elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew
+Dominick Murphy, a prot&eacute;g&eacute; of the school, and an intimate acquaintance
+of her own, regarding her with impish delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, youse! Give us a song and dance."</p>
+
+<p>"At least our friends don't recognize us,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> said Conny, drawing what
+comfort she could from her incognito.</p>
+
+<p>Quite a crowd had gathered by now, and it was rapidly growing larger.
+Pedestrians had to make a detour into the street in order to get past.</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't take us long," said Patty, a spark of mischief breaking
+through the blankness of her face, "to earn money enough for a
+carriage&mdash;you thump the tambourine and I'll dance the sailor's
+hornpipe."</p>
+
+<p>"Patty! Behave yourself." Conny for once brought a dampening supply of
+common sense to bear on her companion. "We're going to graduate in
+another week. For goodness' sake, <i>don't</i> let's get expelled first."</p>
+
+<p>She grasped her by the elbow and shoved her insistently down a side
+street. John Drew Murphy and his friends followed for several blocks,
+but having gazed their fill, and perceiving that the Gypsies had no
+entertainment to offer, they gradually dropped away.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what shall we do?" asked Conny<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> when they had finally shaken off
+the last of the small boys.</p>
+
+<p>"I s'pose we could walk."</p>
+
+<p>"Walk!" Conny exhibited her flapping sole. "You don't expect me to walk
+three miles in that shoe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Patty. "What <i>shall</i> we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"We might go back to the photographer's and borrow some car-fare."</p>
+
+<p>"No! I'm not going to parade myself the length of Main Street again with
+<i>that</i> hole in my stocking."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," Conny shrugged. "Think of something."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we could go to the livery stable and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's on the other side of town&mdash;I can't flap all that distance. Every
+time I take a step, I have to lift my foot ten inches high."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well." It was Patty's turn to shrug. "Perhaps you can think of
+something better?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think the simplest way would be to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> take a car, and ask the conductor
+to charge it to us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;and explain for the benefit of all the passengers that we belong
+at St. Ursula's School? It would be all over town by night, and the
+Dowager would be furious."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well&mdash;what shall we do?"</p>
+
+<p>They were standing at the moment before a comfortable frame house with
+three children romping on the veranda. The children left off their play
+to come to the top of the steps and stare.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on!" Patty urged. "We'll sing the 'Gypsy Trail.'" (This was the
+latest song that had swept the school.) "I'll play an accompaniment on
+the tambourine, and you can flap your sole. Maybe they'll give us ten
+cents. It would be a beautiful lark to earn our car-fare home&mdash;I'm
+<i>sure</i> it's worth ten cents to hear me sing."</p>
+
+<p>Conny glanced up and down the deserted street. No policeman was in
+sight. She grudgingly allowed herself to be drawn up the walk, and the
+music began. The children applauded loudly; and the two were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> just
+congratulating themselves on a very credible performance, when the door
+opened and a woman appeared&mdash;a first cousin to Miss Lord.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop that noise immediately! There's somebody sick inside."</p>
+
+<p>The tone also was reminiscent of Latin. They turned and ran as fast as
+Conny's flapping sole would take her. When they had put three good
+blocks between themselves and the Latin woman, they dropped down on a
+friendly stepping-stone, and leaned against each other's shoulders and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>A man rounded the corner of the house before them, pushing a mowing
+machine.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, you!" he ordered. "Move on."</p>
+
+<p>They got up, meekly, and moved on several blocks further. They were
+going in exactly the opposite direction from St. Ursula's school, but
+they couldn't seem to hit on anything else to do, so they kept on moving
+mechanically. They had arrived in the outskirts of the village by now,
+and they presently found themselves face to face with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> tall chimney
+and a group of low buildings set in a wide enclosure&mdash;the water-works
+and electric plant.</p>
+
+<p>A light of hope dawned in Patty's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you! We'll go and ask Mr. Gilroy to take us home in his
+automobile."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him?" Conny asked dubiously. She had received so many
+affronts that she was growing timid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I know him <i>intimately</i>. He was under foot every minute during the
+Christmas vacation. We had a snow fight one day. Come on! He'll love to
+run us out. It will give him an excuse to make up with Jelly."</p>
+
+<p>They passed up a narrow tarred walk toward the brick building labeled
+"Office." Four clerks and a typewriter girl in the outer office
+interrupted their work to laugh as the two apparitions appeared in the
+door. The young man nearest them whirled his chair around in order to
+get a better view.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, girls!" he said with cheerful familiarity. "Where'd you spring
+from?"</p>
+
+<p>The typewriter, meanwhile, was making<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> audible comments upon the
+discrepancies in Patty's hosiery.</p>
+
+<p>Patty's face flushed darkly under the coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"We have called to see Mr. Gilroy," she said with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Gilroy's busy day," the young man grinned. "Wouldn't you
+rather talk to me?"</p>
+
+<p>Patty drew herself up haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"Please tell Mr. Gilroy&mdash;<i>at once</i>&mdash;that we are waiting to speak to
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! I <i>beg</i> your pardon." The young man sprang to his feet with
+an air of elaborate politeness. "Will you kindly give me your cards?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't happen to have a card with me to-day. Just say that two ladies
+wish to speak with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes. One moment, please&mdash;Won't you be seated?"</p>
+
+<p>He offered his own chair to Patty, and bringing forward another,
+presented it to Conny with a Chesterfieldian bow. The clerks tittered
+delightedly at this bit of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> comedy acting, but the Gypsies did not
+condescend to think it funny. They accepted the chairs with a frigid,
+"Thank you," and sat stiffly upright staring at the wastebasket in their
+most distant society manner. While the deferential young man was
+conveying the message to the private office of his chief, public comment
+advanced from Patty's stockings to Conny's shoes. He returned presently,
+and with unruffled politeness invited them please to step this way. He
+ushered them in with a bow.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy was writing, and it was a second before he glanced up. His
+eyes widened with astonishment&mdash;the clerk had delivered the message
+verbatim. He leaned back in his chair and studied the ladies from head
+to foot, then emitted a curt:</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>There was not a trace of recognition in his glance.</p>
+
+<p>Patty's only intention had been to announce their identity, and invite
+him to deliver them at St. Ursula's door, but Patty was incapable of
+approaching any matter by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> the direct route when a labyrinth was also
+available. She drew a deep breath, and to Conny's consternation, plunged
+into the labyrinth.</p>
+
+<p>"You Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy?" she dropped a curtsy. "I come find-a you."</p>
+
+<p>"So I see," said Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, dryly. "And now that you've
+found me, what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want tell-a your fortune," Patty glibly dropped into the lingo she
+and Conny had practised on the school the night before. "You cross-a my
+hand with silver&mdash;I tell-a your fortune."</p>
+
+<p>This was no situation of Conny's choosing, but she was always staunchly
+game.</p>
+
+<p>"Nice-a fortune," she backed Patty up. "Tall young lady. Ver'
+beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of all the nerve!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy leaned back in his chair and regarded them severely, but with
+a gleam of amusement flickering through.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get my name?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Patty waved her hand <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'airly'">airily</ins> toward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> open window and the distant
+horizon&mdash;as it showed between the coal sheds and the dynamo building.</p>
+
+<p>"Gypsy peoples, dey learn <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'sings'">signs</ins>," she explained lucidly. "Sky, wind,
+clouds&mdash;all talk&mdash;but you no understand. I get message for you&mdash;Mr.
+Laurence K. Gilroy&mdash;and we come from long-a way off to tell-a your
+fortune." With a pathetic little gesture, she indicated their damaged
+foot gear. "Ver' tired. We travel far."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy put his hand in his pocket and produced two silver half
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's your money. Now be honest! What sort of a bunco game is this?
+And where in thunder did you get my name?"</p>
+
+<p>They pocketed the money, dropped two more curtsies, and evaded
+inconvenient questions.</p>
+
+<p>"We tell-a your fortune," said Conny, with business-like directness. She
+brought out the pack of cards, plumped herself cross-legged on the
+floor, and dealt them out in a wide circle. Patty seized the gentleman's
+hand in her two coffee-stained little paws, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> turned it palm up for
+inspection. He made an embarrassed effort to draw away, but she clung
+with the tenacious grip of a monkey.</p>
+
+<p>"I see a lady!" she announced with promptitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Tall young lady&mdash;brown eyes, yellow hair, ver' beautiful," Conny echoed
+from the floor, as she leaned forward and intently studied the queen of
+hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"But she make-a you lot of trouble," Patty added, frowning over a
+blister on his hand. "I see li'l' quarrel."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy's eyes narrowed. In spite of himself, he commenced to be
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"You like-a her very much," pronounced Conny from below.</p>
+
+<p>"But you never see her any more," chimed in Patty.
+"One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four months, you no see her, no spik with her." She
+looked up into his startled eyes. "<i>But you think about her every day!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He made a quick movement of withdrawal, and Patty hastily added a
+further detail.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat tall young lady, she ver' unhappy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> too. She no laugh no more like
+she used."</p>
+
+<p>He arrested the movement and waited with a touch of anxious curiosity to
+hear what was coming next.</p>
+
+<p>"She feel ver' bad&mdash;ver' cross, ver' unhappy. She thinks always 'bout
+that li'l' quarrel. Four months she sit and wait&mdash;but you never come
+back."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy rose abruptly and strode to the window.</p>
+
+<p>His unexpected visitors had dropped from the sky at the psychological
+moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his
+desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English,
+were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, and make
+another plea for justice? St. Ursula's vacation was at hand; in a few
+days more she would be gone&mdash;and very possibly she would never come
+back. The world at large was full of men, and Miss Jellings had a taking
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Conny continued serenely to study her cards.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"One&mdash;More&mdash;Chance!" She spoke with the authority of a Grecian sibyl.
+"You try again, you win. No try, you lose."</p>
+
+<p>Patty leaned over Conny's shoulder, eager to supply a salutary bit of
+advice.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat tall young lady too much&mdash;" she hesitated a moment for fitting
+expression&mdash;"too much head in air. Too <i>bossy</i>. You make-a her mind?
+Understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Conny, gazing at the round-faced, chubby Jack of Diamonds, had received
+a new idea.</p>
+
+<p>"I see 'nother man," she murmured. "Red hair and&mdash;and&mdash;<i>fat</i>. Not too
+good-looking but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Very dangerous!</i>" interpolated Patty. "You have no time to waste. He
+comes soon."</p>
+
+<p>Now, they had fabricated this detail out of nothing in the world but
+pure fancy and the Jack of Diamonds, but as it happened, they had
+touched an open wound. It was an exact description of a certain rich
+young man in the neighboring city, who loaded Miss Jellings with favors,
+and whom Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> Gilroy detested from the bottom of his soul. All that
+afternoon, mixed in with his promptings and hesitations and travail of
+spirit, had loomed large, the fair, plump features of his fancied rival.
+Mr. Gilroy was a common-sense young business man, as free as most from
+superstition; but when a man's in love he is open to omens.</p>
+
+<p>He stared fixedly about the familiar office and out at the coal sheds
+and dynamo, to make sure that he was still on solid earth. His gaze came
+back to his visitors from the sky in absolute, anxious, pleading
+bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>They were studying the cards again in a frowning endeavor to wrest a few
+further items from their overtaxed imaginations. Patty felt that she had
+already given him fifty cents' worth, and was wondering how to bring the
+interview to a graceful end. She realized that they had carried the
+farce too impertinently far, ever to be able to announce their identity
+and suggest a ride home. The only course now, was to preserve their
+incognito, make good their escape, and get back as best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> they could&mdash;at
+least they had a dollar to aid in the journey!</p>
+
+<p>She glanced up, mentally framing a peroration.</p>
+
+<p>"I see good-a fortune," she commenced, "if&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her glance passed him to the open window, and her heart missed a beat.
+Mrs. Trent and Miss Sarah Trent, come to complain about the new electric
+lights, were serenely descending from their carriage, not twenty feet
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Patty's hand clutched Conny's shoulder in a spasmodic grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Sallie and the Dowager!" she hissed in her ear. "Follow me!"</p>
+
+<p>With a sweep of her hand, Patty scrambled the cards together and rose.
+There would be no chance to escape by the door; the Dowager's voice was
+already audible in the outer office.</p>
+
+<p>"Goo' by!" said Patty, springing to the window. "Gypsies call. We must
+go."</p>
+
+<p>She scrambled over the sill and dropped eight feet to the ground. Conny
+followed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> They were both able pupils of Miss Jellings.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, open-mouthed, stood staring at the spot where
+they had been. The next instant, he was bowing courteously to the
+principals of St. Ursula's, and striving hard to concentrate a dazed
+mind upon the short-circuit in the West Wing.</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Conny left the car&mdash;and a number of interested passengers&mdash;at
+the corner before they reached the school. Circumnavigating the wall,
+until they were opposite the stables, they approached the house modestly
+by the back way. They had the good fortune to encounter no one more
+dangerous than the cook (who gave them some gingerbread) and they
+ultimately reached their home in Paradise Alley none the worse for the
+adventure&mdash;and ninety cents to the good.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the long, light evenings came, St. Ursula's no longer filled in the
+interim between dinner and evening study with indoor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> dancing, but
+romped about on the lawn outside. To-night, being Saturday, there was no
+evening study to call them in, and everybody was abroad. The school year
+was almost over, the long vacation was at hand&mdash;the girls were as full
+of bubbling spirits as sixty-four young lambs. Games of blindman's-buff,
+and pussy-wants-a-corner, and cross-tag were all in progress at once. A
+band of singers on the gymnasium steps was drowning out a smaller band
+on the porte-coch&egrave;re; half-a-dozen hoop-rollers were trotting around the
+oval, and scattered groups of strollers, meeting in the narrow paths,
+were hailing each other with cheerful calls.</p>
+
+<p>Patty and Conny and Priscilla, washed and dressed and chastened, were
+wandering arm in arm through the summer twilight, talking&mdash;a trifle
+soberly&mdash;of the long-looked-forward-to future that was now so
+oppressively close upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," Patty spoke with a sort of frightened gulp&mdash;"in another week
+we'll be <i>grown-up!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>They stopped and silently looked back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> toward the gay crowd romping on
+the lawn, toward the big brooding house, that through four <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'tempestous'">tempestuous</ins>,
+hilarious, care-free years had sheltered them so kindly. Grown-upness
+seemed a barren state. They longed to stretch out their hands and clutch
+the childhood that they had squandered with so little thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's horrible!" Conny breathed with sudden fierceness. "<i>I want to
+stay young!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>In this unsocial mood, they refused an offered game of hare-and-hounds,
+and evading the singers on the gymnasium steps&mdash;the song was the "Gypsy
+Trail"&mdash;they sauntered on down the pergola to the lane, sprinkled with
+fallen apple blossoms. At the end of the lane, they came suddenly upon
+two other solitary strollers, and stopped short with a gasp of
+unbelieving wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Jelly!" Conny whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr. Gilroy," Patty echoed.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we run?" asked Conny, in a panic.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Patty, "pretend not to notice him at all."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three advanced with eyes discreetly bent upon the ground, but Miss
+Jellings greeted them gaily as she passed. There was an intangible,
+excited, happy thrill about her manner&mdash;something <i>electric</i>, Patty
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, you bad little Gypsies!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a peculiarly infelicitous salutation, but she was smilingly
+unconscious of any slip.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Gypsies?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gilroy repeated the word, and his benumbed faculties began to work.
+He stopped and scanned the trio closely. They were clothed in dainty
+muslin, three as sweet young girls as one would ever meet. But Patty and
+Conny, even in the failing light, were still noticeably brunette&mdash;it
+takes boiling water to get out coffee stain.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew a deep breath of enlightenment, while many emotions struggled
+for supremacy in his face. Conny dropped her gaze embarrassedly to the
+ground; Patty threw back her head and faced him. He and she eyed each
+other for a silent instant. In that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span> glance, each asked the other not to
+tell&mdash;and each mutely promised.</p>
+
+<p>The breeze brought the chorus of the "Gypsy Trail"; and as they
+sauntered on, Miss Jellings fell softly to humming the words in tune
+with the distant singers:</p>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood">
+<tr><td align='left'>"And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ever the wide world over.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ever the wide world over, lass,</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ever the trail held true</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Over the world and under the world</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And back at the last to you.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Follow the Romany patteran&mdash;"</span></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>The words died away in the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>Conny and Patty and Priscilla stood hand in hand and looked after them.</p>
+
+<p>"The school has lost Jelly!" Patty said, "and I'm afraid that we're to
+blame, Con, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad of it!" Conny spoke with feeling. "She's much too nice to
+spend her whole life telling Irene McCullough to stand up straight and
+keep her stomach held in."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Anyway," Patty added, "he has no right to be angry, because&mdash;without
+us&mdash;he never would have dared."</p>
+
+<p>They kept on across the meadow till they came to the pasture bars, where
+they leaned in a row with their heads tipped back, scanning the
+darkening sky. Miss Jellings's mood was somehow catching; the little
+contretemps had stirred them strangely. They felt the thrill of the
+untried future, with Romance waiting around the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"You know," Conny broke silence after a long pause&mdash;"I think, after all,
+maybe it will be sort of interesting."</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Priscilla.</p>
+
+<p>She stretched out her arm in a wide gesture that comprised the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, everything!"</p>
+
+<p>Priscilla nodded understandingly, and presently added with an air of
+challenge:</p>
+
+<p>"I've changed my mind. I don't believe I'll go to college."</p>
+
+<p>"Not go to college!" Patty echoed blankly. "Why not?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think&mdash;I'll get married instead."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Patty laughed softly. "<i>I</i> am going to do both!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections.
+Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
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@@ -0,0 +1,7141 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Just Patty
+
+Author: Jean Webster
+
+Illustrator: C. M. Relyea
+
+Release Date: April 12, 2007 [EBook #21048]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUST PATTY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I want a new room-mate"]
+
+
+
+
+Just Patty
+
+By
+Jean Webster
+
+          Author of
+          When Patty Went to College
+          Daddy Long Legs, Etc.
+
+          Illustrated by
+          C. M. Relyea
+
+[Illustration]
+
+THE CENTURY CO.
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+          Copyright, 1911, by
+          THE CENTURY CO.
+          Copyright, 1911, by THE
+          CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Published, October, 1911_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED IN U. S. A.
+
+MADE AT INNISFREE
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+          CHAPTER                                           PAGE
+
+             I REFORM                                          3
+
+            II THE ROMANTIC HISTORY OF CUTHBERT ST. JOHN      33
+
+           III THE VIRGIL STRIKE                              65
+
+            IV THE THIRD MAN FROM THE END                     99
+
+             V THE FLANNIGAN HONEYMOON                       119
+
+            VI THE SILVER BUCKLES                            149
+
+           VII "UNCLE BOBBY"                                 181
+
+          VIII THE SOCIETY OF ASSOCIATED SIRENS              199
+
+            IX THE REFORMATION OF KID MCCOY                  229
+
+             X ONIONS AND ORCHIDS                            247
+
+            XI THE LEMON PIE AND THE MONKEY-WRENCH           273
+
+           XII THE GYPSY TRAIL                               309
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+
+  "I want a new room-mate!"                             _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Patty just had time to snatch the box                        88
+
+  Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair   174
+
+  Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her neck   286
+
+
+
+
+Just Patty
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Reform
+
+
+"It's a shame!" said Priscilla.
+
+"It's an outrage!" said Conny.
+
+"It's an insult!" said Patty.
+
+"To separate us now after we've been together three years--"
+
+"And it isn't as though we were _awfully_ bad last year. Lots of girls
+had more demerits."
+
+"Only our badness was sort of conspicuous," Patty admitted.
+
+"But we were _very_ good the last three weeks," reminded Conny.
+
+"And you should see my new room-mate!" wailed Priscilla.
+
+"She can't be any worse than Irene McCullough."
+
+"She is!--Her father's a missionary, and she was brought up in China.
+Her name is Keren-happuch Hersey, after Job's youngest daughter. And
+she doesn't think it's funny!"
+
+"Irene," said Conny gloomily, "gained twenty pounds through the summer.
+She weighs--"
+
+"But you should see mine!" cried Patty, in exasperation. "Her name is
+Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale."
+
+"Keren studies every second; and expects me to walk on tiptoe so she can
+concentrate."
+
+"You should hear Mae Mertelle talk! She said her father was a financier,
+and wanted to know what mine was. I told her he was a reform judge, and
+that he spent his time putting financiers in prison. She says I'm an
+impertinent child," Patty grinned feebly.
+
+"How old is she?"
+
+"She's nineteen, and has been proposed to twice."
+
+"Mercy! Whatever made her choose St. Ursula's?"
+
+"Her father and mother ran away and got married when they were
+nineteen, and they're afraid she inherited the tendency. So they picked
+out a good, strict, church school. Mae doesn't know how she's ever going
+to fix her hair without a maid. She's awfully superstitious about
+moonstones. She never wears anything but silk stockings and she can't
+stand hash. I'll have to teach her how to make a bed. She always crosses
+on the White Star Line."
+
+Patty scattered these details at random. The others listened
+sympathetically, and added a few of their own troubles.
+
+"Irene weighs a hundred and fifty-nine pounds and six ounces, not
+counting her clothes," said Conny. "She brought two trunks _loaded_ with
+candy. She has it hidden all over the room. The last sound I hear at
+night, is Irene crunching chocolates--and the first sound in the
+morning. She never says anything; she simply chews. It's like rooming
+with a cow. And I have a sweet collection of neighbors! Kid McCoy's
+across the hall, and she makes more noise than half-a-dozen cowboys.
+There's a new French girl next door--you know, the pretty little one
+with the two black braids."
+
+"She looks rather desirable," said Patty.
+
+"She might be if she could talk, but she only knows about fifty words.
+Harriet Gladden's rooming with her, as limp and mournful as an oyster,
+and Evalina Smith's at the end of the corridor. You know what a
+_perfect_ idiot Evalina is."
+
+"Oh, it's beastly!" they agreed.
+
+"Lordy's to blame," said Conny. "The Dowager never would have separated
+us if she hadn't interfered."
+
+"And I've got her!" wailed Patty. "You two have Mam'selle and Waddams,
+and they're nice, sweet, unsuspicious lambs; but the girls in the East
+Wing simply can't sneeze but Lordy--"
+
+"Sh!" Conny warned. "Here she comes."
+
+The Latin teacher, in passing, paused on the threshold. Conny
+disentangled herself from the mixture of clothes and books and sofa
+cushions that littered the bed, and politely rose to her feet. Patty
+slid down from the white iron foot-rail, and Priscilla descended from
+the top of the trunk.
+
+"Ladies don't perch about on the furniture."
+
+"No, Miss Lord," they murmured in unison, gazing back from three pairs
+of wide, uplifted eyes. They knew, from gleeful past experience, that
+nothing so annoyed her as smiling acquiescence.
+
+Miss Lord's eyes critically studied the room. Patty was still in
+traveling dress.
+
+"Put on your uniform, Patty, and finish unpacking. The trunks go down
+to-morrow morning."
+
+"Yes, Miss Lord."
+
+"Priscilla and Constance, why aren't you out of doors with the other
+girls, enjoying this beautiful autumn weather?"
+
+"But we haven't seen Patty for such a long time, and now that we are
+separated--" commenced Conny, with a pathetic droop of her mouth.
+
+"I trust that your lessons will benefit by the change. You, Patty and
+Priscilla, are going to college, and should realize the necessity of
+being prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that you lay here depends
+your success for the next four years--for your whole lives, one might
+say. Patty is weak in mathematics and Priscilla in Latin. Constance
+_could_ improve her French. Let us see what you can do when you really
+try."
+
+She divided a curt nod between the three and withdrew.
+
+"We are happy in our work and we dearly love our teachers," chanted
+Patty, with ironical emphasis, as she rummaged out a blue skirt and
+middy blouse with "St. U." in gold upon the sleeve.
+
+While she was dressing, Priscilla and Conny set about transferring the
+contents of her trunk to her bureau, in whatever order the articles
+presented themselves--but with a carefully folded top layer. The
+overworked young teacher, who performed the ungrateful task of
+inspecting sixty-four bureaus and sixty-four closets every Saturday
+morning, was happily of an unsuspicious nature. She did not penetrate
+below the crust.
+
+"Lordy needn't make such a fuss over my standing," said Priscilla,
+frowning over an armful of clothes. "I passed everything except Latin."
+
+"Take care, Pris! You're walking on my new dancing dress," cried Patty,
+as her head emerged from the neck of the blouse.
+
+Priscilla automatically stepped off a mass of blue chiffon, and resumed
+her plaint.
+
+"If they think sticking me in with Job's youngest daughter is going to
+improve my prose composition--"
+
+"I simply _can't_ study till they take Irene McCullough out of my room,"
+Conny echoed. "She's just like a lump of sticky dough."
+
+"Wait till you get acquainted with Mae Mertelle!" Patty sat on the floor
+in the midst of the chaos, and gazed up at the other two with wide,
+solemn eyes. "She brought five evening gowns cut low, and all her shoes
+have French heels. And she _laces_--my dears! She just holds in her
+breath and pulls. But that isn't the worst." She lowered her voice to a
+confidential whisper. "She's got some red stuff in a bottle. She says
+it's for her finger nails, but I _saw_ her putting it on her face."
+
+"Oh!--not really?" in a horrified whisper from Conny and Priscilla.
+
+Patty shut her lips and nodded.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"Awful!" Conny shuddered.
+
+"I say, let's mutiny!" cried Priscilla. "Let's _make_ the Dowager give
+us back our old rooms in Paradise Alley."
+
+"But how?" inquired Patty, two parallel wrinkles appearing on her
+forehead.
+
+"Tell her that unless she does, we won't stay."
+
+"That would be sensible!" Patty jeered. "She'd ring the bell and order
+Martin to hitch up the hearse and drive us to the station for the
+six-thirty train. I should think you'd know by this time that you can't
+bluff the Dowager."
+
+"There's no use threatening," Conny agreed. "We must appeal to her
+feeling of--of--"
+
+"Affection," said Patty.
+
+Conny stretched out a hand and brought her up standing.
+
+"Come on, Patty, you're good at talking. We'll go down now while our
+courage is up.--Are your hands clean?"
+
+The three staunchly approached the door of Mrs. Trent's private study.
+
+"I'll use diplomacy," Patty whispered, as she turned the knob in
+response to the summons from within. "You people nod your heads at
+everything I say."
+
+Patty did use all the diplomacy at her command. Having dwelt touchingly
+upon their long friendship, and their sorrow at being separated, she
+passed lightly to the matter of their new room-mates.
+
+"They are doubtless very nice girls," she ended politely, "only, you
+see, Mrs. Trent, they don't match us; and it is extremely hard to
+concentrate one's mind upon lessons, unless one has a congenial
+room-mate."
+
+Patty's steady, serious gaze suggested that lessons were the end of her
+existence. A brief smile flitted over the Dowager's face, but the next
+instant she was grave again.
+
+"It is very necessary that we study this year," Patty added. "Priscilla
+and I are going to college, and we realize the necessity of being
+prepared. Upon the thorough foundation that we lay here, depends our
+success for the next four years--for our whole lives you might say."
+
+Conny jogged her elbow warningly. It was too patently a crib from Miss
+Lord.
+
+"And besides," Patty added hastily, "all my things are blue, and Mae has
+a purple screen and a yellow sofa cushion."
+
+"That is awkward," the Dowager admitted.
+
+"We are used to living in Paradise Al--I mean, the West Wing--and we
+shall--er--miss the sunsets."
+
+The Dowager allowed an anxious silence to follow, while she thoughtfully
+tapped the desk with her lorgnette. The three studied her face with
+speculative eyes. It was a mask they could not penetrate.
+
+"The present arrangement is more or less temporary," she commenced in
+equable tones. "I may find it expedient to make some changes, and I may
+not. We have an unusual number of new girls this year; and instead of
+putting them together, it has seemed wisest to mix them with the old
+girls. You three have been with us a long time. You know the traditions
+of the school. Therefore--" The Dowager smiled, a smile partially tinged
+with amusement--"I am sending you as missionaries among the newcomers. I
+wish you to make your influence felt."
+
+Patty straightened her back and stared.
+
+"Our influence?"
+
+"Your new room-mate," Mrs. Trent continued imperturbably, "is too
+grown-up for her years. She has lived in fashionable hotels, and under
+such conditions, it is inevitable that a girl should become somewhat
+affected. See if you cannot arouse in Mae an interest in girlish sports.
+
+"And you, Constance, are rooming with Irene McCullough. She is, as you
+know, an only child, and I fear has been a trifle spoiled. It would
+please me if you could waken her to a higher regard for the spiritual
+side of life, and less care for material things."
+
+"I--I'll try," Conny stammered, dazed at so suddenly finding herself
+cast in the unfamiliar role of moral reformer.
+
+"And you have next to you the little French girl, Aurelie Deraismes. I
+should be pleased, Constance, if you would assume an oversight of her
+school career. She can help you to a more idiomatic knowledge of
+French--and you can do the same for her in English.
+
+"You, Priscilla, are rooming with--" She adjusted her lorgnette and
+consulted a large chart.--"Ah, yes, Keren Hersey, a very unusual girl.
+You two will find many subjects of mutual interest. The daughter of a
+naval officer should have much in common with the daughter of a
+missionary. Keren bids fair to become an earnest student--almost, if
+such a thing were possible, too earnest. She has never had any girl
+companions, and knows nothing of the give and take of school life. She
+can teach you, Priscilla, to be more studious, and you can teach her to
+be more, shall I say, flexible?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Trent," Priscilla murmured.
+
+"And so," the Dowager finished, "I am sending you out in my place, as
+moral reformers. I want the older girls to set an example to the
+newcomers. I wish to have the real government of the school a strong,
+healthy Public Opinion. You three exert a great deal of influence. See
+what you can do in the directions I have indicated--and in others that
+may occur to you as you mix with your companions. I have watched you
+carefully for three years, and in your fundamental good sense, I have
+the greatest confidence."
+
+She nodded dismissal, and the three found themselves in the hall again.
+They looked at one another for a moment of blank silence.
+
+"Moral reformers!" Conny gasped.
+
+"I see through the Dowager," said Patty, "She thinks she's found a new
+method of managing us."
+
+"But I don't see that we're getting back to Paradise Alley," Priscilla
+complained.
+
+Patty's eyes suddenly brightened. She seized them each by an elbow and
+shoved them into the empty schoolroom.
+
+"We'll do it!"
+
+"Do what?" asked Conny.
+
+"Pitch right in and reform the school. If we just keep at
+it--steady--you'll see! We'll be back in Paradise Alley at the end of
+two weeks."
+
+"Um," said Priscilla, thoughtfully. "I believe we might."
+
+"We'll commence with Irene," said Conny, her mind eagerly jumping to
+details, "and make her lose that twenty pounds. That's what the Dowager
+meant when she said she wanted her less material."
+
+"We'll have her thin in no time," Patty nodded energetically. "And we'll
+give Mae Mertelle a dose of bubbling girlishness."
+
+"And Keren," interposed Priscilla, "we'll teach her to become frivolous
+and neglect her lessons."
+
+"But we won't just confine ourselves to those three," said Conny. "The
+Dowager said to make our influence felt over the whole school."
+
+"Oh, yes!" Patty agreed, rising to enthusiasm as she called the school
+roll. "Kid McCoy uses too much slang. We'll teach her manners. Rosalie
+doesn't like to study. We'll pour her _full_ of algebra and Latin.
+Harriet Gladden's a jelly fish, Mary Deskam's an awful little liar,
+Evalina Smith's a silly goose, Nancy Lee's a telltale--"
+
+"When you stop to think about it, there's something the matter with
+everybody," said Conny.
+
+"Except us," amended Priscilla.
+
+"Y--yes," Patty agreed in thoughtful retrospection, "I can't think of a
+thing the matter with us--I don't wonder they chose us to head the
+reform!"
+
+Conny slid to her feet, a bundle of energy.
+
+"Come on! We'll join our little playmates and begin the good
+work--Hooray for the great Reform Party!"
+
+They scrambled out of the open window, in a fashion foreign to the
+dictates of Thursday evening manner class. Crowds of girls in blue middy
+blouses were gathered in groups about the recreation ground. The three
+paused to reconnoiter.
+
+"There's Irene, still chewing." Conny nodded toward a comfortable bench
+set in the shade by the tennis courts.
+
+"Let's have a circus," Patty proposed. "We'll make Irene and Mae
+Mertelle roll hoops around the oval. That will kill 'em both with one
+stone--Irene will get thin, and Mae Mertelle girlish."
+
+Hoop-rolling was a speciality of St. Ursula's. The gymnasium instructor
+believed in teaching girls to run. Eleven times around the oval
+constituted a mile, and a mile of hoop-rolling freed one for the day
+from dumb-bells and Indian clubs. The three dived into the cellar, and
+returned with hoops as tall as themselves. Patty assumed command of the
+campaign and issued her orders.
+
+"Conny, you take a walk with Keren and shock her as much as possible; we
+must break her of being precise. And Pris, you take charge of Mae
+Mertelle. Don't let her put on any grown-up airs. If she tells you she's
+been proposed to twice, tell her you've been proposed to so many times
+that you've lost count. Keep her snubbed all the time. I'll be elephant
+trainer and start Irene running; she'll be a graceful gazelle by the
+time I finish."
+
+They parted on their several missions. St. Ursula's peace had ended. She
+was in the throes of reform.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Friday evening two weeks later, an unofficial faculty meeting was
+convened in the Dowager's study. "Lights-out" had rung five minutes
+before, and three harried teachers, relieved of duty for nine blessed
+hours while their little charges slept, were discussing their troubles
+with their chief.
+
+"But just what have they done?" inquired Mrs. Trent, in tones of
+judicial calm, as she vainly tried to stop the flood of interjections.
+
+"It is difficult to put one's finger on the precise facts," Miss
+Wadsworth quavered. "They have not broken any rules so far as I can
+discover, but they have--er--created an atmosphere--"
+
+"Every girl in my corridor," said Miss Lord, with compressed lips, "has
+come to me separately, and begged to have Patty moved back to the West
+Wing with Constance and Priscilla."
+
+"Patty! _Mon Dieu!_" Mademoiselle rolled a pair of speaking eyes to
+heaven. "The things that child thinks of! She is one little imp."
+
+"You remember," the Dowager addressed Miss Lord, "I said when you
+suggested separating them, that it was a very doubtful experiment.
+Together, they exhaust their effervescence on each other; separated--"
+
+"They exhaust the whole school!" cried Miss Wadsworth, on the verge of
+tears. "Of course they don't mean it, but their unfortunate
+dispositions--"
+
+"Don't mean it!" Miss Lord's eyes snapped. "Their heads are together
+planning fresh escapades every moment they are not in class."
+
+"But what have they done?" persisted Mrs. Trent.
+
+Miss Wadsworth hesitated a moment in an endeavor to choose examples from
+the wealth of material that presented itself.
+
+"I found Priscilla deliberately stirring up the contents of Keren's
+bureau drawers with a shinny stick, and when I asked what she was doing,
+she replied without the least embarrassment, that she was trying to
+teach Keren to be less exact; that Mrs. Trent had asked her to do it."
+
+"Um," mused the Dowager, "that was not my precise request, but no
+matter."
+
+"But the thing that has really troubled me the most," Miss Wadsworth
+spoke diffidently, "is a matter almost a blasphemy. Keren has a very
+religious turn of mind, but an unfortunate habit of saying her prayers
+out loud. One night, after a peculiarly trying day, she prayed that
+Priscilla might be forgiven for being so aggravating. Whereupon
+Priscilla knelt before her bed, and prayed that Keren might become less
+self-righteous and stubborn, and more ready to join in the sports of her
+playmates with generosity and openness of spirit. They carried
+on--well, really, one might almost call it a praying match."
+
+"Shocking!" cried Miss Lord.
+
+"And little Aurelie Deraismes--they have been drilling the child
+in--er--idiomatic English. The phrase that I overheard her repeating,
+seemed scarcely the expression that a lady would use."
+
+"What was it?" inquired the Dowager, with a slightly expectant note.
+
+"I'll be _gum-swizzled_!"
+
+Miss Wadsworth colored a deep pink. It was foreign to her nature even to
+repeat so doubtful an expression.
+
+The Dowager's lips twitched. It was a fact, deplored by her assistants,
+that her sense of humor frequently ran away with her sense of justice. A
+very naughty little girl, if she managed to be funny, might hope to
+escape; whereas an equally naughty little girl, who was not funny, paid
+the full penalty of her crime. Fortunately, however, the school at large
+had not discovered this vulnerable spot in the Dowager's armor.
+
+"Their influence," it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the
+school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room
+any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know what the trouble is, but--"
+
+"I know it!" said Mademoiselle. "The whole school laughs. It is touching
+the question of a _sweetch_."
+
+"Of what?" The Dowager cocked her head. Mademoiselle's English was at
+times difficult. She mixed her languages impartially.
+
+"A sweetch--some hair--to make pompadour. Last week when they have
+tableaux, Patty has borrowed it and has dyed it with blueing to make a
+beard for Bluebeard. But being yellow to start, it has become green, and
+the color will not wash out. The sweetch is ruin--entirely ruin--and
+Patty is desolate. She has apologize. She thought it would wash, but
+since it will not wash, she has suggest to Mae that she color her own
+hair to match the sweetch, and Mae lose her temper and call names. Then
+Patty has pretend to cry, and she put the green hair on Mae's bed with
+a wreath of flowers around, and she hang a stocking on the door for
+crape, and invite the girls to come to the funeral, and everybody laugh
+at Mae."
+
+"It's just as well," said the Dowager, unmoved. "I do not wish to favor
+the wearing of false hair."
+
+"It's the principle of the thing," said Miss Lord.
+
+"And that poor Irene McCullough," Mademoiselle continued the tale, "she
+dissolves herself in tears. Those three insist that she make herself
+thin, and she has no wish to become thin."
+
+"They take away her butter-ball," corroborated Miss Wadsworth, "before
+she comes to the table; they make her go without dessert, and they do
+not allow her to eat sugar on her oatmeal. They keep her exercising
+every moment, and when she complains to me, they punish her."
+
+"I should think," the Dowager spoke with a touch of sarcasm, "that Irene
+were big enough to take care of herself."
+
+"She has three against her," reminded Miss Lord.
+
+"I called Patty to my room," said Miss Wadsworth, "and demanded an
+explanation. She told me that Mrs. Trent thought that Irene was too fat,
+and wished them to reduce her twenty pounds! Patty said that it was hard
+work, they were getting thin themselves, but they realized that they
+were seniors and must exert an influence over the school. I really think
+she was sincere. She talked very sweetly about moral responsibility, and
+the necessity of the older girls setting an example."
+
+"It is her impudence," said Miss Lord, "that is so exasperating."
+
+"That's--just Patty!" the Dowager laughed. "I must confess that I find
+all three of them amusing. It's good, healthy mischief and I wish there
+were more of it. They don't bribe the maids to mail letters, or smuggle
+in candy, or flirt with the soda-water clerk. They at least can be
+trusted."
+
+"Trusted!" gasped Miss Lord.
+
+"To break every minor rule with cheerful unconcern," nodded the
+Dowager, "but never to do the slightest thing dishonorable. They have
+kind hearts and the girls all love them--"
+
+A knock sounded on the door with startling suddenness, and before anyone
+could reply, the door burst open and Keren-happuch appeared on the
+threshold. She was clutching with one hand the folds of a brilliant
+Japanese kimono, the other she reserved for gestures. The kimono was
+sprinkled with fire-eating dragons as large as cats; and to the
+astonished spectators, Keren's flushed face and disheveled hair seemed
+to carry out the decorative scheme. The Dowager's private study was a
+sacred spot, reserved for interviews of formality; never had a pupil
+presented herself in such unceremonious garb.
+
+"Keren!" cried Miss Wadsworth. "What has happened?"
+
+"I want a new room-mate! I can't stand Priscilla any longer. She's been
+having a birthday party in my room--"
+
+"A birthday party?" Mrs. Trent turned questioningly to Miss Wadsworth.
+
+She nodded unhappily.
+
+"Yesterday was Priscilla's birthday, and she received a box from her
+aunt. This being Friday night, I gave her permission--"
+
+"Certainly." The Dowager turned to the tragic figure in the center of
+the floor. "It is Priscilla's room as much as yours and--"
+
+Keren plunged into a sea of words. The four leaned forward in a strained
+endeavor to pluck some sense from the torrent.
+
+"They used my bed for a table because it wasn't against the wall, and
+Patty tipped a pot of chocolate over in the middle of it. She said it
+was an accident--but she did it on purpose--I know she did! And because
+I objected, Priscilla said it wasn't polite to notice when a guest
+spilled anything, and she tipped a glass of current jelly on my pillow,
+to make Patty feel comfortable. That was the polite thing for a hostess
+to do, she said; they learned it last year in manner class. And the
+chocolate soaked right through, and Conny Wilder said it was fortunate I
+was thin, because I could sleep in a curve around it; if it had happened
+to Irene McCullough, she would have had to sleep in it, because she's
+so big she takes up the whole bed. And Priscilla said I could be
+thankful to-morrow's Saturday when we get clean sheets; it might have
+happened so that I would have had to sleep in that puddle of chocolate a
+whole week. And then the "Lights-out" rang, and they left me to clean
+up, and the housekeeper's gone to bed, and I can't get any fresh bed
+clothes, and I _won't_ sleep that way! I'm not used to sleeping in
+chocolaty sheets. I don't like America and I _hate_ girls."
+
+Tears were dripping from Keren's cheeks onto the fire-breathing dragons
+below. The Dowager, without comment, rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Katie," she said, as the maid on duty appeared at the door, "some fresh
+sheets for Miss Keren, please, and remake her bed. That will do for
+to-night, Keren. Get to sleep as quickly as possible, and don't talk.
+You mustn't disturb the other girls. We can see about changing
+room-mates to-morrow."
+
+Katie and the outraged dragons withdrew.
+
+A silence followed, while Miss Wadsworth and Mademoiselle exchanged
+glances of despair, and Miss Lord buckled on her war armor.
+
+"You see!" she said, with a suggestion of triumph, "when they get to the
+point of persecuting a poor little--"
+
+"In my experience of school life," said Mrs. Trent judicially, "it is a
+girl's own fault when she is persecuted. Their methods are crude, but to
+the point. Keren is a hopeless little prig--"
+
+"But at least you can't allow her to suffer--"
+
+"Oh, no, I shall do what I can toward peace. To-morrow morning, Keren
+can move in with Irene McCullough, and Patty and Conny and Priscilla go
+back to their old rooms in the West Wing. You, Mademoiselle, are
+somewhat inured--"
+
+"I do not mind them together. They are just--what you
+say?--exhilarating. It is when they are spread out that it is
+difficult."
+
+"You mean," Miss Lord stared--"that you are going to _reward_ their
+disgraceful conduct? It is exactly what they have been working for."
+
+"You must acknowledge," smiled the Dowager, "that they have worked hard.
+Perseverance deserves success."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, Patty and Conny and Priscilla, their arms running over
+with dresses and hats and sofa cushions, gaily two-stepped down the
+length of "Paradise Alley" while a relieved school assisted at the
+flitting. As they caught sight of Miss Lord hovering in the offing, they
+broke into the chorus of a popular school song:
+
+          "We like to go to chapel
+           And listen to the preachers,
+           We are happy in our work,
+           And we dearly love our teachers.
+              Daughters of Saint Ur-su-la!"
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+The Romantic History of Cuthbert St. John
+
+
+"The Dowager" had a very sensible theory that boarding-school girls
+should be kept little girls, until their school life was over, and they
+stepped out, fresh and eager and spontaneous, to greet the grown-up
+world. Saint Ursula's was a cloister, in fact, as in name. The masculine
+half of the human species was not supposed to count.
+
+Sometimes a new girl was inclined to turn up her nose at the youthful
+pastimes that contented her companions. But in the end she would be
+drawn irresistibly into the current. She would learn to jump rope and
+roll hoops; to participate in paper chases 'cross country; to skate and
+coast and play hockey on winter afternoons, to enjoy molasses-candy
+pulls and popcorn around the big open fire on Saturday nights, or
+impromptu masquerades, when the school raided the trunks in the attic
+for costumes. After a few weeks' time, the most spoiled little worldling
+lost her consciousness of calls outside of "bounds," and surrendered to
+the spirit of the youthful sisterhood.
+
+But the girls in their teens answer readily to the call of ROMANCE. And
+occasionally, in the twilight hour between afternoon study and the
+dressing bell, as they gathered in the window-seat with faces to the
+western sky, the talk would turn to the future--particularly when
+Rosalie Patton was of the group. Pretty, dainty, inconsequential little
+Rosalie was preeminently fashioned for romance; it clung to her golden
+hair and looked from her eyes. She might be extremely hazy as to the
+difference between participles and supines, she might hesitate on her
+definition of a parallelopiped, but when the subject under discussion
+was one of sentiment, she spoke with conviction. For hers was no mere
+theoretical knowledge; it was gained by personal experience. Rosalie
+had been proposed to!
+
+She confided the details to her most intimate friends, and they confided
+them to their most intimate friends, until finally, the whole school
+knew the entire romantic history.
+
+Rosalie's preeminence in the field of sentiment was held entirely
+fitting. Priscilla might excel in basket-ball, Conny Wilder in
+dramatics, Keren Hersey in geometry and Patty Wyatt in--well, in
+impudence and audacity--but Rosalie was the recognized authority in
+matters of the heart; and until Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale came, nobody
+thought of questioning her position.
+
+Mae Mertelle spent an uncomfortable month shaking into place in the
+school life. The point in which she was accustomed to excel was
+_clothes_, but when she and her four trunks arrived, she found to her
+disgust that clothes were not useful at St. Ursula's. The school uniform
+reduced all to a dead level in the matter of fashion. There was another
+field, however, in which she might hope for supremacy. Her own
+sentimental history was vivid, compared to the colorless lives of most,
+and she proceeded to assert her claims.
+
+One Saturday evening in October, half-a-dozen girls were gathered in
+Rosalie's room, on piled-up sofa cushions, with the gas turned low and
+the light of the hunter's moon streaming through the window. They had
+been singing softly in a minor key, but gradually the singing turned to
+talk. The talk, in accordance with the moonlight and flying clouds, was
+in a sentimental vein; and it ended, naturally, with Rosalie's Great
+Experience. Between maidenly hesitations and many promptings she retold
+the story--the new girls had never heard it, and to the old girls it was
+always new.
+
+The stage setting had been perfect--a moonlit beach, and lapping waves
+and rustling pine trees. When Rosalie chanced to omit any detail, her
+hearers, already familiar with the story, eagerly supplied it.
+
+"And he held your hand all the time he was talking," Priscilla
+prompted.
+
+"Oh, Rosalie! Did he?" in a shocked chorus from the newcomers.
+
+"Y--yes. He just sort of took hold of it and forgot to let go, and I
+didn't like to remind him."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said he couldn't live without me."
+
+"And what did you say?"
+
+"I said I was awfully sorry, but he'd have to."
+
+"And then what happened?"
+
+"Nothing happened," she was obliged to confess. "I s'pose something
+might have happened if I'd accepted him, but you see, I didn't."
+
+"But you were very young at the time," suggested Evalina Smith. "Are you
+sure you knew your own mind?"
+
+Rosalie nodded with an air of melancholy regret.
+
+"Yes. I knew I couldn't ever love him, because, he--well, he had an
+awfully funny nose. It started to point in one direction, and then
+changed its mind and pointed in the other."
+
+Her hearers would have preferred that she had omitted this detail; but
+Rosalie was literal-minded and lacked the story-teller's instinct for
+suppression.
+
+"He asked if there wasn't any hope that I would change," she added
+pensively. "I told him that I could never love him enough to marry him,
+but that I would always respect him."
+
+"And then what did he say?"
+
+"He said he wouldn't commit suicide."
+
+A profound hush followed, while Rosalie gazed at the moon and the others
+gazed at Rosalie. With her gleaming hair and violet eyes, she was
+entirely their ideal of a storybook heroine. They did not think of
+envying her; they merely wondered and admired. She was crowned by
+natural right, Queen of Romance.
+
+Mae Van Arsdale, who had listened in silence to the recital, was the
+first to break the spell. She rose, fluffed up her hair, straightened
+her blouse, and politely suppressed a yawn.
+
+"Nonsense, Rosalie! You're a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing.--Good-night, children. I'm going to bed now."
+
+She sauntered toward the door, but paused on the threshold to drop the
+casual statement. "_I've_ been proposed to three times."
+
+A shocked gasp arose from the circle at this _lese-majeste_. The
+disdainful condescension of a new girl was more than they could brook.
+
+"She's a horrid old thing, and I don't believe a word she says!"
+Priscilla declared stoutly, as she kissed poor crushed little Rosalie
+goodnight.
+
+This slight _contretemps_ marked the beginning of strained relations.
+Mae Mertelle gathered her own adherents, and Rosalie's special coterie
+of friends rallied to the standard of their queen. They intimated to
+Mae's followers that the quality of the romance was quite different in
+the two cases. Mae might be the heroine of any number of commonplace
+flirtations, but Rosalie was the victim of a _grande passion_. She was
+marked with an indelible scar that she would carry to the grave. In the
+heat of their allegiance, they overlooked the crookedness of the hero's
+nose and the avowed fact that Rosalie's own affections had not been
+engaged.
+
+But Mae's trump card had been withheld. Whispers presently spread about
+under the seal of confidence. She was hopelessly in love. It was not a
+matter of the past vacation, but of the burning present. Her room-mate
+wakened in the night to hear her sobbing to herself. She had no
+appetite--her whole table could testify to that. In the middle of
+dessert, even on ice-cream nights, she would forget to eat, and with her
+spoon half-raised, would sit staring into space. When reminded that she
+was at the table, she would start guiltily and hastily bolt the rest of
+the meal. Her enemies unkindly commented upon the fact that she always
+came to before the end, so she got as much as anybody else.
+
+The English classes at St. Ursula's were weekly drilled in the
+old-fashioned art of letter writing. The girls wrote letters home,
+minutely descriptive of school life. They addressed imaginary girl
+friends, and grandmothers and college brothers and baby sisters. They
+were learning the great secret of literary forcefulness--to suit their
+style to their audience. Ultimately, they arrived at the point of
+thanking imaginary young men for imaginary flowers. Mae listened to the
+somewhat stilted phraseology of these polite and proper notes with a
+supercilious smile. The class, covertly regarding her, thrilled anew.
+
+Gradually, the details of the romance spread abroad. The man was
+English--Mae had met him on the steamer--and some day when his elder
+brother died (the brother was suffering from an incurable malady that
+would carry him off in a few years) he would come into the title; though
+just what the title was, Mae had not specifically stated. But in any
+case, her father was a staunch American; he hated the English and he
+hated titles. No daughter of his should ever marry a foreigner. If she
+did, she would never receive a dollar from him. However, neither Mae nor
+Cuthbert cared about the money. Cuthbert had plenty of his own. His name
+was Cuthbert St. John. (Pronounced Sinjun.) He had four names in all,
+but those were the two he used the most. He was in England now, having
+been summoned by cable, owing to the critical condition of his brother's
+health, but the crisis was past, and Cuthbert would soon be returning.
+Then--Mae closed her lips in a straight line and stared defiantly into
+space. Her father should see!
+
+Before the throbbing reality of this romance, Rosalie's poor little
+history paled into nothing.
+
+Then the plot began to thicken. Studying the lists of incoming steamers,
+Mae announced to her room-mate that he had landed. He had given his word
+to her father not to write; but she knew that in some way she should
+hear. And sure enough! The following morning brought a nameless bunch of
+violets. There had been doubters before--but at this tangible proof of
+devotion, skepticism crumbled.
+
+Mae wore her violets to church on Sunday. The school mixed its responses
+in a shocking fashion--nobody pretended to follow the service; all eyes
+were fixed on Mae's upturned face and far-off smile. Patty Wyatt pointed
+out that Mae had taken special pains to seat herself in the light of a
+stained-glass window, and that occasionally the rapt eyes scanned the
+faces of her companions, to make sure that the effect was reaching
+across the footlights. But Patty's insinuation was indignantly
+repudiated by the school.
+
+Mae was at last triumphantly secure in the role of leading lady. Poor
+insipid Rosalie no longer had a speaking part.
+
+The affair ran on for several weeks, gathering momentum as it moved. In
+the European Travel Class that met on Monday nights, "English Country
+Seats" was the subject of one of the talks, illustrated by the
+stereopticon. As a stately, terraced mansion, with deer cropping grass
+in the foreground, was thrown upon the screen, Mae Mertelle suddenly
+grew faint. She vouchsafed no reason to the housekeeper who came with
+hot-water bottles and cologne; but later, she whispered to her room-mate
+that that was the house where he was born.
+
+Violets continued to arrive each Saturday, and Mae became more and more
+_distrait_. The annual basket-ball game with Highland Hall, a near-by
+school for girls, was imminent. St. Ursula's had been beaten the year
+before; it would mean everlasting disgrace if defeat met them a second
+time, for Highland Hall was a third their size. The captain harangued
+and scolded an apathetic team.
+
+"It's Mae Mertelle and her beastly violets!" she disgustedly grumbled to
+Patty. "She's taken all the fight out of them."
+
+The teachers, meanwhile, were uneasily aware that the atmosphere was
+overcharged. The girls stood about in groups, thrilling visibly when Mae
+Mertelle passed by. There was a moonlight atmosphere about the school
+that was not conducive to high marks in Latin prose composition. The
+matter finally became the subject of an anxious faculty meeting. There
+was no actual data at hand; it was all surmise, but the source of the
+trouble was evident. The school had been swept before by a wave of
+sentiment; it was as catching as the measles. The Dowager was inclined
+to think that the simplest method of clearing the atmosphere would be to
+pack Mae Mertelle and her four trunks back to the paternal fireside, and
+let her foolish mother deal with the case. Miss Lord was
+characteristically bent upon fighting it out. She would stop the
+nonsense by force. Mademoiselle, who was inclined to sentiment, feared
+that the poor child was really suffering. She thought sympathy and
+tact--But Miss Sallie's bluff common-sense won the day. If the sanity of
+Saint Ursula's demanded it, Mae Mertelle must go; but she thought, by
+the use of a little diplomacy, both St. Ursula's sanity and Mae Mertelle
+might be preserved. Leave the matter to her. She would use her own
+methods.
+
+Miss Sallie was the Dowager's daughter. She managed the practical end of
+the establishment--provided for the table, ruled the servants, and ran
+off, with the utmost ease, the two hundred acres of the school farm.
+Between the details of horseshoeing and haying and butter-making, she
+lent her abilities wherever they were needed. She never taught; but she
+disciplined. The school was noted for unusual punishments, and most of
+them originated in Miss Sallie's brain. Her title of "Dragonette" was
+bestowed in respectful admiration of her mental qualities.
+
+The next day was Tuesday, Miss Sallie's regular time for inspecting the
+farm. As she came downstairs after luncheon drawing on her driving
+gloves, she just escaped stepping on Conny Wilder and Patty Wyatt who,
+flat on their stomachs, were trying to poke out a golf ball from under
+the hat-rack.
+
+"Hello, girls!" was her cheerful greeting. "Wouldn't you like a little
+drive to the farm? Run and tell Miss Wadsworth that you are excused from
+afternoon study. You may stay away from Current Events this evening,
+and make it up."
+
+The two scrambled into hats and coats in excited delight. A visit to
+Round Hill Farm with Miss Sallie, was the greatest good that St.
+Ursula's had to offer. For Miss Sallie--out of bounds--was the funniest,
+most companionable person in the world. After an exhilarating five-mile
+drive through a brown and yellow October landscape, they spent a couple
+of hours romping over the farm, had milk and ginger cookies in Mrs.
+Spence's kitchen; and started back, wedged in between cabbages and eggs
+and butter. They chatted gaily on a dozen different themes--the
+Thanksgiving masquerade, a possible play, the coming game with Highland
+Hall, and the lamentable new rule that made them read the editorials in
+the daily papers. Finally, when conversation flagged for a moment, Miss
+Sallie dropped the casual inquiry:
+
+"By the way, girls, what _has_ got into Mae Van Arsdale? She droops
+about in corners and looks as dismal as a molting chicken."
+
+Patty and Conny exchanged a glance.
+
+"Of course," Miss Sallie continued cheerfully, "it's perfectly evident
+what the trouble is. I haven't been connected with a boarding-school for
+ten years for nothing. The little idiot is posing as the object of an
+unhappy affection. You know that I never favor talebearing, but, just as
+a matter of curiosity, is it the young man who passes the plate in
+church, or the one who sells ribbon in Marsh and Elkins's?"
+
+"Neither." Patty grinned. "It's an English nobleman."
+
+"What?" Miss Sallie stared.
+
+"And Mae's father hates English noblemen," Conny explained, "and has
+forbidden him ever to see her again."
+
+"Her heart is broken," said Patty sadly. "She's going into a decline."
+
+"And the violets?" inquired Miss Sallie.
+
+"He promised not to send her any letters, but violets weren't
+mentioned."
+
+"H'm, I see!" said Miss Sallie; and, after a moment of thought, "Girls,
+I am going to leave this matter in your hands. I want it stopped."
+
+"In our hands?"
+
+"The school can't be stirred up any longer; but the matter's too silly
+to warrant the teachers taking any notice of it. This is a thing that
+ought to be regulated by public opinion. Suppose you see what you can
+do--I will appoint you a committee to bring the school back to a solid
+basis of common sense. I know that I can trust you not to talk."
+
+"I don't exactly see what we can do," said Patty, dubiously.
+
+"You are usually not without resourcefulness," Miss Sallie returned with
+a flickering smile. "You may have a _carte blanche_ to choose your own
+methods."
+
+"And may we tell Priscilla?" Conny asked. "We must tell her because we
+three--"
+
+"Hunt together?" Miss Sallie nodded. "Tell Priscilla, and let it stop at
+that."
+
+The next afternoon, when Martin drove into the village to accomplish
+the daily errands, he dropped Patty and Priscilla at the florists,
+empowered by the school to purchase flowers for the rector's wife and
+new baby. They turned inside, their minds entirely occupied with the
+rival merits of red and white roses. They ordered their flowers,
+inscribed the card, and then waited aimlessly till Martin should return
+to pick them up. Passing down the counter, they came upon a
+bill-sticker, the topmost item being, "Violets every Saturday to Miss
+Mae Van Arsdale, St. Ursula's School."
+
+They stopped and stared for a thoughtful moment. The florist followed
+their gaze.
+
+"Do you happen to know the young lady who ordered them vi'lets?" he
+inquired. "She didn't leave any name, and I'd like to know if she wants
+me to keep on sending 'em. She only paid up to the first, and the price
+is going up."
+
+"No, I don't know who it was," said Patty, with well-assumed
+indifference. "What did she look like?"
+
+"She--she had on a blue coat," he suggested. As all sixty-four of the
+St. Ursula girls wore blue coats, his description was not helpful.
+
+"Oh," Patty prompted, "was she quite tall with a lot of yellow hair
+and--"
+
+"That's her!"
+
+He recognized the type with some assurance.
+
+"It's Mae herself!" Priscilla whispered excitedly.
+
+Patty nodded and commanded silence.
+
+"We'll tell her," she promised. "And by the way," she added to
+Priscilla, "I think it would be nice for us to send some flowers to Mae,
+from our--er--secret society. But I'm afraid the treasury is pretty low
+just now. They'll have to be cheaper than violets. What are your
+cheapest flowers?" she inquired of the man.
+
+"There's a kind of small sunflower that some people likes for
+decoration. 'Cut-and-come-again' they're called. I can give you a
+good-sized bunch for fifty cents. They make quite a show."
+
+"Just the thing! Send a bunch of sunflowers to Miss Van Arsdale with
+this card." Patty drew a blank card toward her, and in an upright back
+hand traced the inscription, "Your disconsolate C. St. J."
+
+She sealed it in an envelope, then regarded the florist sternly.
+
+"Are you a Mason?" she asked, her eye on the crescent in his buttonhole.
+
+"Y--yes," he acknowledged.
+
+"Then you understand the nature of an oath of secrecy? You are not to
+divulge to anyone the sender of these flowers. The tall young lady with
+the yellow hair will come in here and try to make you tell who sent
+them. You are not to remember. It may even have been a man. You don't
+know anything about it. This secret society at Saint Ursula's is so very
+much more secret than the Masonic Society, that it is even a secret that
+it exists. Do you understand?"
+
+"I--yes, ma'am," he grinned.
+
+"If it becomes known," she added darkly, "I shall not be responsible for
+your life."
+
+She and Priscilla each contributed a quarter for the flowers.
+
+"It's going to be expensive," Patty sighed. "I think we'll have to ask
+Miss Sallie for an extra allowance while this committee is in session."
+
+Mae was in her room, surrounded by an assemblage of her special
+followers, when the flowers arrived. She received the box in some
+bewilderment.
+
+"He's sending flowers on Wednesdays as well as Saturdays!" her room-mate
+cried. "He must be getting desperate."
+
+Mae opened the box amid an excited hush.
+
+"How perfectly lovely!" they cried in chorus, though with a slightly
+perfunctory undertone. They would have preferred crimson roses.
+
+Mae regarded the offering for a moment of stupefied amazement. She had
+been pretending so long, that by now she almost believed in Cuthbert
+herself. The circle was waiting, and she rallied her powers to meet this
+unexpected crisis.
+
+"I wonder what sunflowers mean?" she asked softly. "They must convey
+some message. Does anybody know the language of flowers?"
+
+Nobody did know the language of flowers; but they were relieved at the
+suggestion.
+
+"Here's a card!" Evalina Smith plucked it from among the bristling
+leaves.
+
+Mae made a motion to examine it in private, but she had been so generous
+with her confidences heretofore, that she was not allowed to withdraw
+them at this interesting point. They leaned over her shoulder and read
+it aloud.
+
+"'Your disconsolate C. St. J.'--Oh, Mae, think how he must be
+suffering!"
+
+"Poor man!"
+
+"He simply couldn't remain silent any longer."
+
+"He's the soul of honor," said Mae. "He wouldn't write a real letter
+because he promised not to, but I suppose--a little message like this--"
+
+Patty Wyatt passing the door, sauntered in. The card was exhibited in
+spite of a feeble protest from Mae.
+
+"That handwriting shows a lot of character," Patty commented.
+
+This was considered a concession; for Patty, from the first, had held
+aloof from the cult of Cuthbert St. John. She was Rosalie's friend.
+
+The days that followed, were filled with bewildering experiences for Mae
+Mertelle. Having accepted the first installment of sunflowers, she could
+not well refuse the second. Once having committed herself, she was lost.
+Candy and books followed the flowers in horrifying profusion. The candy
+was of an inexpensive variety--Patty had discovered the ten-cent
+store--but the boxes that contained it made up in decorativeness what
+the candy lacked; they were sprinkled with Cupids and roses in vivid
+profusion. A message in the same back hand accompanied each gift, signed
+sometimes with initials, and sometimes with a simple "Bertie." Parcels
+had never before been delivered with such unsuspicious promptitude. Miss
+Sallie was the one through whose hands they went. She glanced at the
+outside, scrawled a "deliver," and the maid would choose the most
+embarrassing moments to comply--always when Mae Mertelle was surrounded
+by an audience.
+
+Mae's Englishman, from an object of sentiment, in a few days' time
+became the joke of the school. His taste in literature was as impossible
+as his taste in candy. He ran to titles which are supposed to be the
+special prerogative of the kitchen. "Loved and Lost," "A Born Coquette,"
+"Thorns among the Orange Blossoms." Poor Mae repudiated them, but to no
+avail; the school had accepted Cuthbert--and was bent upon eliciting all
+the entertainment possible from his British vagaries. Mae's life became
+one long dread of seeing the maid appear with a parcel. The last straw
+was the arrival of a complete edition--in paper--of Marie Corelli.
+
+"He--he never sent them!" she sobbed. "Somebody's just trying to be
+funny."
+
+"You mustn't mind, Mae, because they aren't just the sort that an
+American man would choose," Patty offered comfort. "You know that
+Englishmen have queer tastes, particularly in books. _Everybody_ reads
+Marie Corelli over there."
+
+The next Saturday, a party of girls was taken to the city for shopping
+and the matinee. Among other errands, the art class visited a photograph
+dealer's, to purchase some early Italian masters. Patty's interest in
+Giotto and his kind was not very keen, and she sauntered off on a tour
+of inspection. She happened upon a pile of actors and actresses, and her
+eye brightened as she singled out a large photograph of an unfamiliar
+leading man, with curling mustache and dimpled chin and large appealing
+eyes. He was dressed in hunting costume and conspicuously displayed a
+crop. The picture was the last word in Twentieth Century Romance. And,
+most perfect touch of all, it bore a London mark!
+
+Patty unobtrusively deflected the rest of the committee from a
+consideration of Fra Angelico, and the three heads bent delightedly over
+the find.
+
+"It's perfect!" Conny sighed. "But it costs a dollar and fifty cents."
+
+"We'll have to go without soda water _forever_!" said Priscilla.
+
+"It is expensive," Patty agreed, "but--" as she restudied the liquid,
+appealing eyes--"I really think it's worth it."
+
+They each contributed fifty cents, and the picture was theirs.
+
+Patty wrote across the front, in the bold back hand that Mae had come to
+hate, a tender message in French, and signed the full name, "Cuthbert
+St. John." She had it wrapped in a plain envelope and requested the
+somewhat wondering clerk to mail it the following Wednesday morning, as
+it was an anniversary present and must not arrive before the day.
+
+The picture came on the five-o'clock delivery, and was handed to Mae as
+the girls trooped out from afternoon study. She received it in sulky
+silence and retired to her room. Half a dozen of her dearest friends
+followed at her heels; Mae had worked hard to gain a following, and now
+it couldn't be shaken off.
+
+"Open it, Mae quick!"
+
+"What do you s'pose it is?"
+
+"It can't be flowers or candy. He must be starting something new."
+
+"I don't care what it is!" Mae viciously tossed the parcel into the
+wastebasket.
+
+Irene McCullough fished it out and cut the string.
+
+"Oh, Mae, it's his photograph!" she squealed. "And he's per-fect-ly
+beau-ti-ful!"
+
+"Did you ever see such eyes!"
+
+"Does he curl his mustache, or it is natural?"
+
+"Why didn't you tell us he had a dimple in his chin?"
+
+"Does he always wear those clothes?"
+
+Mae was divided between curiosity and anger. She snatched the photograph
+away, cast one glance at the languishing brown eyes, and tumbled it,
+face downward, into a bureau drawer.
+
+"Don't ever mention his name to me again!" she commanded, as, with
+compressed lips, she commenced brushing her hair for dinner.
+
+On the next Friday afternoon--shopping day in the village--Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla dropped in at the florist's to pay a bill.
+
+"Two bunches of sunflowers, one dollar," the man had just announced in
+ringing tones from the rear of the store, when a step sounded behind
+them, and they faced about to find Mae Mertelle Van Arsdale, bent on a
+similar errand.
+
+"Oh!" said Mae, fiercely, "I might have known it was you three."
+
+She stared for a moment in silence, then she dropped into a rustic seat
+and buried her head on the counter. She had shed so many tears of late
+that they flowed automatically.
+
+"I suppose," she sobbed, "you'll tell the whole school, and everybody
+will laugh and--and--"
+
+The three regarded her with unbending mien. They were not to be moved by
+a few tears.
+
+"You said that Rosalie was a silly little goose to make such a fuss over
+nothing," Priscilla reminded her.
+
+"And at least he was a live man," said Patty, "even if he did have a
+crooked nose."
+
+"Do you still think she was a silly goose?" Conny inquired.
+
+"N--no!"
+
+"Don't you think you've been a great deal more silly?"
+
+"Y--yes."
+
+"And will you apologize to Rosalie?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"It will make quite a funny story," Patty ruminated, "the way we'll tell
+it."
+
+"I think you're perfectly horrid!"
+
+"Will you apologize to Rosalie?" Priscilla asked again.
+
+"Yes--if you'll promise not to tell."
+
+"We'll promise on one condition--you're to break your engagement to
+Cuthbert St. John, and never refer to it again."
+
+Cuthbert sailed for England on the _Oceanic_ the following Thursday; St.
+Ursula's plunged into a fever of basket-ball, and the atmosphere became
+bracingly free of Romance.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+The Virgil Strike
+
+
+"I'm tired of Woman's Rights on Friday afternoons," said Patty
+disgustedly. "I prefer soda water!"
+
+"This makes the third time they've taken away our holiday for the sake
+of a beastly lecture," Priscilla grumbled, as she peered over Patty's
+shoulder to read the notice on the bulletin board, in Miss Lord's
+perpendicular library hand.
+
+It informed the school that instead of the usual shopping expedition to
+the village, they would have the pleasure that afternoon of listening to
+a talk by Professor McVey of Columbia University. The subject would be
+the strike of the women laundry workers. Tea would be served in the
+drawing-room afterwards, with Mae Van Arsdale, Harriet Gladden, and
+Patty Wyatt as hostesses.
+
+"It's not my turn!" objected Patty, as she noted the latter item. "I was
+hostess two weeks ago."
+
+"That's because you wrote an essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie
+thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show
+him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only
+superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual
+problems of--"
+
+"And I did want to go shopping!" Patty mourned. "I need some new
+shoe-strings. I've been tying a knot in my old ones every day for a
+week."
+
+"Here she comes," whispered Priscilla. "Look happy or she'll make you
+translate the whole--Good morning, Miss Lord! We were just noticing
+about the lecture. It sounds extremely interesting."
+
+The two smiled a perfunctory greeting, and followed their teacher to the
+morning's Latin.
+
+Miss Lord was the one who struck the modern note at St. Ursula's. She
+believed in militant suffragism and unions and boycotts and strikes; and
+she labored hard to bring her little charges to her own advanced
+position. But it was against a heavy inertia that she worked. Her little
+charges didn't care a rap about receiving their rights, in the dim
+future of twenty-one; but they were very much concerned about losing a
+present half-holiday. On Friday afternoons, they were ordinarily allowed
+to draw checks on the school bank for their allowances, and march in a
+procession--a teacher forming the head and tail--to the village stores,
+where they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water
+and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly
+stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village
+and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of
+six days of bounds.
+
+But every cloud has its silver lining.
+
+Miss Lord preceded the Virgil recitation that morning by a discussion of
+the lecture to come. The laundry strike, she told them, marked an epoch
+in industrial history. It proved that women, as well as men, were
+capable of standing by each other. The solidarity of labor was a point
+she wished her girls to grasp. Her girls listened with grave attention;
+and by eagerly putting a question, whenever she showed signs of running
+down, they managed to stave off the Latin recitation for three quarters
+of an hour.
+
+The professor, a mild man with a Van Dyke beard, came and lectured
+exhaustively upon the relations of employer and employed. His audience
+listened with politely intelligent smiles, but with minds serenely
+occupied elsewhere. The great questions of Capital and Labor, were not
+half so important to them, as the fact of the lost afternoon, or the
+essays that must be written for to-morrow's English, or even that this
+was ice-cream night with dancing class to follow. But Patty, on the
+front seat, sat with wide, serious eyes fixed on the lecturer's face.
+She was absorbing his arguments--and storing them for use.
+
+Tea followed according to schedule. The three chosen ones received
+their guests with the facility of long-tried hostesses. The fact that
+their bearing was under inspection, with marks to follow, did not
+appreciably diminish their case. They were learning by the laboratory
+method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger
+world. Harriet and Mae presided at the tea table, while Patty engaged
+the personage in conversation. He commented later, to Miss Lord, upon
+the students' rare understanding in economic subjects.
+
+Miss Lord replied with some complaisance that she endeavored to have her
+girls think for themselves. Sociology was a field in which lessons could
+not be taught by rote. Each must work out her own conclusions, and act
+upon them.
+
+Ice-cream and dancing restored the balance of St. Ursula's, after the
+mental exertions of the afternoon. At half-past nine--the school did not
+retire until ten on dancing nights--Patty and Priscilla dropped their
+goodnight courtesy, murmured a polite "_Bon soir, Mam'selle_," and
+scampered upstairs, still very wide awake. Instead of preparing for bed
+with all dispatch, as well-conducted school girls should, they engaged
+themselves in practising the steps of their new Spanish dance down the
+length of the South Corridor. They brought up with a pirouette at
+Rosalie Patton's door.
+
+Rosalie, still in the pale blue fluffiness of her dancing frock, was
+sitting cross-legged on the couch, her yellow curls bent over the open
+pages of a Virgil, tears spattering with dreary regularity on the lines
+she was conning.
+
+The course of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by
+blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing,
+deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone
+teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably
+predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra
+feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed--when she ought to
+have been concentrating upon Latin grammar--of that happy future state
+in which smiles and kisses would take the place of gerunds and
+gerundives.
+
+"You silly little muff!" cried Patty. "Why on earth are you bothering
+with Latin on a Friday night?"
+
+She landed herself with a plump on Rosalie's right, and took away the
+book.
+
+"I have to," Rosalie sobbed. "I'd never finish if I didn't begin. I
+don't see any sense to it. I can't do eighty lines in two hours. Miss
+Lord always calls on me for the end, because she knows I won't know
+that."
+
+"Why don't you begin at the end and read backwards?" Patty practically
+suggested.
+
+"But that wouldn't be fair, and I can't do it so fast as the others. I
+work more than two hours every day, but I simply never get through. I
+know I shan't pass."
+
+"Eighty lines is a good deal," Patty agreed.
+
+"It's easy for you, because you know all the words, but--"
+
+"I worked more than two hours on mine yesterday," said Priscilla, "and I
+can't afford it either. I have to save some time for geometry."
+
+"_I just simply can't do it_," Rosalie wailed. "And she thinks I'm
+stupid because I don't keep up with Patty."
+
+Conny Wilder drifted in.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked, viewing Rosalie's tear-streaked face.
+"Cry on the pillow, child. Don't spoil your dress."
+
+The Latin situation was explained.
+
+"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend
+every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She--"
+
+"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all,"
+sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled,
+"and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put
+them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."
+
+Patty emerged from a moment of revery.
+
+"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that
+something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord told us to apply it
+to our everyday problems."
+
+Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.
+
+"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in
+an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty
+lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn--particularly Rosalie.
+And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day
+by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or
+else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the
+solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each
+other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of
+the class to stand by Rosalie."
+
+"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.
+
+"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."
+
+"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.
+
+"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.
+
+"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.
+
+"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.
+
+"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and
+apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.
+
+"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.
+
+"But what if she doesn't give in?"
+
+"We'll call out the Cicero and Caesar classes in a sympathetic strike."
+
+"Hooray!" cried Conny.
+
+"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see
+the justice of it."
+
+"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly
+like the laundry workers--in the position of dependents, and the only
+way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If
+Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the
+whole class does, Lordie will _have_ to give in."
+
+"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.
+
+"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she
+had grasped some basic principles.
+
+"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run
+and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out
+Nancy Lee--she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here,
+Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody
+can sit down."
+
+Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.
+
+"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.
+
+"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."
+
+The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman,
+outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a
+working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the
+regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to
+read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved
+insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.
+
+The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly
+accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union
+had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution.
+Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her
+name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature,
+Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more
+feminine methods.
+
+Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who
+looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of
+St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene
+suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully
+refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny
+produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the
+chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates--and poor
+harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and
+dessert, sullenly added her signature.
+
+"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went
+to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired
+and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the
+Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the
+actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief
+address.
+
+"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last
+lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, _don't_ look so
+scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all
+the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs
+down now is a COWARD!"
+
+Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the
+fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy walking
+boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught
+the enemy's eye.
+
+"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask,
+Patty--?"
+
+"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't
+go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the
+effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically
+surveyed it.
+
+"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord
+acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."
+
+The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a
+visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they
+waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the
+sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead was virgin jungle.
+This was the point for the Union to declare itself; and the burden, true
+to her forebodings, fell upon poor trembling little Rosalie.
+
+She cast an imploring glance toward Patty's sternly waiting countenance,
+stammered, hesitated, and miserably plunged into a sight translation.
+Rosalie never had the slightest luck at sight translations; even after
+two hours of patient work with a dictionary, she was still extremely
+hesitant as to meanings. Now, she blindly forged ahead,--amid a profound
+hush--attributing to the Pious AEneas a most amazing set of actions. She
+finished; and the slaughter commenced. Miss Lord spent three minutes in
+obliterating Rosalie; then passed the lines to Irene McCullough.
+
+Irene drew a deep breath--she felt Conny encouragingly patting her on
+the back, while Patty and Priscilla, at either hand, jogged her elbow
+with insistent touch. She opened her mouth to declare the principles
+that had been foisted upon her over night; then she caught the cold
+gleam of Miss Lord's eye. Rosalie's sobs filled the room. And she fell.
+Irene was fairly good at Latin--her sight translation was at least
+intelligible. Miss Lord's comment was merely sarcastic, as she passed
+to Florence Hissop. By this time the panic had swept through the ranks.
+Florence would like to have been true to her pledged troth, but the
+instinct of self-preservation is strong. She improved on Irene's
+performance.
+
+"Take the next ten lines, Patty, and endeavor to extract a glimmering of
+sense. Please bear in mind that we are reading poetry."
+
+Patty raised her head and faced her superior in the manner of a
+Christian martyr.
+
+"I only prepared the first sixty lines, Miss Lord."
+
+"Why did you not finish the lesson that I gave out?" Miss Lord inquired
+sharply.
+
+"We have decided that eighty lines are more than we can do in a day. It
+takes too much time away from our other lessons. We are perfectly
+willing to do sixty lines, and do them thoroughly, but we can't consider
+any more."
+
+Miss Lord for a moment simply stared. Never had she known such a
+flagrant case of insubordination. And it was purely insubordination,
+for Patty was the most capable person in the class.
+
+"What do you mean?" she gasped at last.
+
+"We have formed a Virgil Union," Patty gravely explained. "You, Miss
+Lord, will appreciate the fairness of our demands better than any of the
+other teachers, because you believe in unions. Now, the girls in this
+class feel that they are overworked and underpa--er--that is, I mean the
+lessons are too long."
+
+Patty fetched a deep breath and started again.
+
+"Eighty lines a day doesn't leave us any time for recreation, so we have
+determined to join together and demand our rights. We occupy the
+position of skilled laborers. You can get all the girls you want for
+Caesar and beginning Latin, but you can't find anybody but us to read
+Virgil. It's like the laundry trade. We are not just plain boilers and
+starchers; we are fancy ironers. If you want to have a Virgil class, you
+have _got_ to have us. You can't call in scab labor. Now, we aren't
+trying to take advantage because of our superior strength. We are
+perfectly willing to do an honest day's work, but we can't allow
+ourselves to be--er--to be--"
+
+Patty fumbled a moment for her word, but in the end she brought it out
+triumphantly.
+
+"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for
+you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of
+us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the
+others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against
+the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men.
+But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of
+Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will
+be obliged to go out on strike."
+
+Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.
+
+A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down
+in hopeless, abject terror before the storm. Miss Lord's icy sarcasm
+was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish
+ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely
+eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a
+CAUSE. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be
+saved--the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed,
+would fight and win.
+
+Miss Lord finally drew breath.
+
+"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she
+has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read
+them after luncheon."
+
+The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while
+Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to
+hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:
+
+"Scabs!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard
+the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered
+back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She
+had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at
+eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not
+quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the
+morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis
+the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause
+was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed
+until she learned the Latin--very well--she would leave her bones
+bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.
+
+An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle,
+to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry
+window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone
+slab of turkey.
+
+"Leave plate in wastebasket, Missy," he whispered hoarsely.
+
+Patty, for an instant, struggled with dignity and martyrdom, but hunger
+and a love of intrigue triumphed. She tiptoed over and received the
+offering. There was no knife or fork, but primitive methods suffice in a
+case of real starvation. She finished the turkey and buried the plate
+beneath a pile of algebra papers. It was Osaki's daily business to empty
+the wastebasket; the plate in due course would be restored to its shelf.
+
+A few moments later a scurrying footfall sounded at the door, and a
+little Junior A. darted to Patty's side. She cast a conspiratorial
+glance over her shoulder as she drew from a bulging blouse two buttered
+rolls.
+
+"Take 'em quick!" she panted. "I must hurry back, or they'll suspect. I
+asked to be excused to get a handkerchief. Keep up your courage. We
+won't let you starve. It's splendid!"
+
+She thrust the rolls into Patty's lap and vanished.
+
+Patty found it comforting to know that the school was with her. The
+attractions of martyrdom are enhanced by the knowledge of an audience.
+Also, the rolls were a grateful addition to the turkey; her five-hour
+appetite was still insistent. She finished one of them and was about to
+begin on the second, when furtive footfalls sounded behind her, and one
+of the maids slipped a paper plate over her shoulder.
+
+"Here's some fresh gingerbread, Miss Patty. Cook says--"
+
+The sound of a closing door startled her, and she scurried off like a
+detected thief.
+
+Patty placed her second roll in the wastebasket in company with the
+turkey plate, and was just starting on the gingerbread, when a
+scrambling sounded at the end window. A blue hat appeared momentarily
+over the sill, its owner boosted from below, and an unidentified hand
+sent an orange rolling down the center aisle. Patty hastily intercepted
+its course and dropped it into the wastebasket. Luncheon would be over
+momentarily, and a visit from Miss Lord was imminent. This influx of
+supplies was growing embarrassing.
+
+She heard the rising flood of talk as the girls poured from the
+dining-room. She knew that sympathetic groups were viewing her from the
+open doors behind. Judging from the ceaseless shuffle of footsteps, all
+Saint Ursula's had errands that led past the schoolroom door. Patty did
+not cast a glance behind, but with rigid shoulders stared into space.
+Presently a rattling sounded above her head. She raised startled eyes to
+a register set in the ceiling, and saw Irene McCullough's anxious face
+peering through the opening.
+
+"You can live for days on chocolates," came in a stage whisper. "I'm
+awfully sorry there's only half a pound; I ate the rest last night."
+
+The register was lifted out, and a box was swiftly lowered by a string.
+Irene was chief of the scabs.
+
+"Thank you, Irene," Patty returned in a haughty stage whisper. "I do not
+care to accept any--"
+
+Miss Lord's voice became audible in the hall.
+
+"I thought, young ladies, that afternoon recreation was to be spent out
+of doors?"
+
+Patty just had time to snatch the box and drop it in her lap, with an
+open essay book above, when Miss Lord advanced into the room. Patty's
+face assumed an air of suffering stoicism, as she stared ahead, in the
+profound hope that Irene would have sense enough to remove eight feet of
+dangling string. Miss Lord was followed by Osaki, carrying a tray with
+two slices of dry bread and a glass of water.
+
+"Have you finished your Latin, Patty?"
+
+"No, Miss Lord."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am going to do to-morrow's lesson in afternoon study hour."
+
+Patty's tone was respectful, but her meaning was clear. She emphasized
+slightly the word "to-morrow."
+
+"You will do the twenty lines immediately."
+
+A speaking silence from Patty.
+
+"Do you hear me?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Lord."
+
+"Well?" The monosyllable was sharp enough to cut.
+
+"I stand by my principles," said Patty. "I am not a scab."
+
+[Illustration: Patty just had time to snatch the box]
+
+"You may sit here until those twenty lines are finished."
+
+"Very well, Miss Lord."
+
+"I do not wish you to suffer. Here is bread and water."
+
+She motioned Osaki to set down the tray.
+
+Patty waved it aside.
+
+"I am not a convict," she said with dignity. "I refuse to eat until I am
+served properly at the dining-room table."
+
+A fleeting grin replaced for a moment Osaki's Oriental calm. Miss Lord
+set the bread on a neighboring desk, and the two withdrew.
+
+All through recreation and afternoon study, Patty sat at her desk, the
+plate of bread conspicuously untouched at her elbow. Then the
+five-o'clock bell rang, and the girls trooped out and dispersed on their
+various businesses. The hour between afternoon study and dressing bell,
+was the one hour of the day entirely their own. Patty could hear them
+romping up the back stairs, and racing through the corridors. Kid McCoy
+was conducting a pillow fight in Paradise Alley above her head. Groups
+passed the schoolroom window with happy calls and laughter. Pepper and
+Tabasco, the two riding horses, were saddled and brought out. She could
+see the girls taking turns in galloping around the oval, while Martin,
+as ringmaster, waved his whip and urged them on. Martin now was bent
+with rheumatism, but in his far-off reckless youth he had been a cowboy,
+and when he taught the girls to ride, it was with a disregard of broken
+bones that dismayed even the adventurous gymnasium teacher. Patty was
+his star pupil; she could stick on Red Pepper's back with nothing but a
+blanket to hold her. It was only very occasionally, when Martin was in a
+propitious mood, that the horses were saddled for mere public amusement.
+Patty's heart was sore as she watched Priscilla and Conny, her two
+dearest friends, disport themselves regardless of their incarcerated
+mate.
+
+It grew dusk; nobody came to furnish a light, and Patty sat in the
+semi-darkness, her head bent wearily on her arms. Finally she heard
+footsteps in the hall, and Miss Sallie entered and closed the door
+behind her. Patty braced herself anew; one needed keen wits to match the
+"Dragonette."
+
+Miss Sallie had been talking with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to
+think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her
+practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with
+business-like directness.
+
+"See here, Patty, what is the meaning of all this nonsense?"
+
+Patty raised reproachful eyes.
+
+"Nonsense, Miss Sallie?"
+
+"Yes, nonsense! Miss Lord says that you refused to learn the lesson that
+she assigned, and that you incited the rest of the girls to mutiny. You
+are one of the most able pupils in the class, and your failure to finish
+the lesson is nothing in the world but stubbornness. If it were Rosalie
+Patton now, there might be some sense in it."
+
+"I don't think you understand," said Patty gently.
+
+"It might be well for you to explain," suggested Miss Sallie.
+
+"I must stand by my principles."
+
+"By all means!" Miss Sallie affably agreed. "And what are your
+principles?"
+
+"To hold out for sixty lines of Virgil. It isn't because I _want_ to
+strike, Miss Sallie. It would be much easier for me to do the eighty
+lines, but that wouldn't be fair to Rosalie. The working day should not
+be gaged by the capacity of the strongest. Miss Lord will flunk Rosalie
+if the rest of us don't take care of her. Upon the solidarity of labor
+depends the welfare of the individual worker. It is the fight of the
+oppressed against the encroachments of--of--er--organized authority."
+
+"Um--I see!--I really begin to believe that you listened to that
+lecture, Patty."
+
+"Of course I listened," Patty nodded, "and I must say that I am awfully
+disappointed in Miss Lord. She _told_ us to apply our knowledge of
+sociology to the problems of our daily lives, and when we do, she backs
+down. But anyway, we intend to maintain the strike, until she is ready
+to meet our just demands. It isn't through selfish motives that I am
+acting, Miss Sallie. I should a lot rather have something to eat and go
+horseback riding. I am fighting for the cause of my suffering sisters."
+
+The ceiling above shook at the impact, as four of her suffering sisters
+came down on top of one another, while the walls resounded with their
+shrieks and laughter.
+
+Miss Sallie's lip twitched, but she controlled herself and spoke with
+serious gravity.
+
+"Very well, Patty, I am glad to know that this unprecedented behavior is
+caused by charitable motives. I am sure that when Miss Lord fully
+understands the case she will feel gratified. Suppose I act as
+intermediary and lay the matter before her? We may be able to arrive at
+an--er--compromise."
+
+The half hour that followed dinner was usually devoted to dancing in the
+big square hall, but to-night the girls were inclined to stand about in
+groups with furtive glances toward the schoolroom. A conference was
+going on inside. Miss Lord, the Dowager and the Dragonette had passed in
+and shut the door. Kid McCoy, returning from Paradise Alley, where she
+had been stretched on her stomach with her face to the register,
+reported that Patty had fainted through lack of food, that the Dowager
+had revived her with whiskey, and that she had come to, still cheering
+for the Union. Kid McCoy's statements, however, were apt to be touched
+by imagination. The school was divided in its opinion of Patty's course.
+The scabs were inclined to make light of her achievement, but Conny and
+Priscilla staunchly fanned enthusiasm.
+
+Finally, the schoolroom door opened, and the faculty emerged and passed
+into the Dowager's private study, while the dancing commenced with
+sudden fervor. No one to-day liked to be caught by Miss Lord whispering
+in a corner.
+
+Patty followed alone. Her face was pale, and there were weary circles
+about her eyes, but in them shone the light of victory.
+
+"Patty!"
+
+"Are you dead?"
+
+"How'd it come out?"
+
+"It was perfectly splendid!"
+
+"Was she furious?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"We arbitrated the question and have settled on a compromise," Patty
+replied with quiet dignity. "Hereafter the lesson will be seventy lines.
+The Virgil strike is declared off."
+
+They pressed about her eager for details, but she separated herself, and
+kept on toward the dining-room door. There was an aloofness about her,
+an air of having experienced the heights alone. She was not quite ready
+to rub shoulders with common humanity.
+
+The school settled itself to evening study, and Patty to her dinner.
+They could see her across the court, through the lighted window, as she
+sat in state at the end of a long table. Osaki on one side, tendered
+preserved strawberries, and Maggie on the other, frosted cakes. The
+rewards of martyrdom, in Patty's case, were solidly substantial.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The Third Man from the End
+
+
+"Oh, Patty! Did you bring us some wedding cake?"
+
+"Did you have any adventures?"
+
+Conny and Priscilla, with the dexterity of practice, sprang upon the
+rear step of the hearse as it turned in at the school gate, and rolled
+up the curving drive to the porte-cochere. The "hearse" was the popular
+name for the black varnished wagonette which conveyed the pupils of St.
+Ursula's from church and station. It was planned to accommodate twenty.
+Patty and her suit-case, alone in the capacious interior, were jolting
+about like two tiny peas in a very big pod.
+
+"Adventures!" she called back excitedly. "_Wait till you hear!_"
+
+As they came to a stop, they were besieged by a crowd of blue-coated
+girls. It was afternoon recreation, and the whole school was abroad. The
+welcome that she received, would have led an onlooker to infer that
+Patty had been gone three months instead of three days. She and her two
+postilions descended, and Martin gathered up his reins.
+
+"Come on, youse! All who wants a ride to the stables," was his
+hospitable invitation.
+
+It inundated him with passengers. They crowded inside--twice as many as
+the hearse would hold--they swarmed over the driver's seat and the
+steps; and two equestriennes even perched themselves on the horses'
+backs.
+
+"What's the adventure?" demanded Conny and Priscilla in a breath, as the
+cavalcade rattled off.
+
+Patty waved her hand toward the suit-case.
+
+"There it is. Take it upstairs. I'll be with you as soon as I've
+reported."
+
+"But that isn't your suit-case."
+
+Patty shook her head mysteriously.
+
+"If you tried a thousand years you'd never guess who owns it."
+
+"Who?"
+
+Patty laughed.
+
+"Looks like a man's," said Conny.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Oh, Patty! Don't be so exasperating. Where'd you get it?"
+
+"Just a little souvenir that I picked up. I'll tell you as soon as I've
+interviewed the Dowager. Hurry, and slip in while Jelly isn't looking."
+
+They cast a quick glance over their shoulders toward the gymnasium
+instructor, who was arguing fat Irene McCullough into faster movements
+on the tennis court. Miss Jellings was insistent that "recreation"
+should be actively pursued out of doors. The two could easily have
+obtained permission to greet Patty's return inside; but it was the
+policy of the trio never to ask permission in minor matters. It wasted
+one's credit unnecessarily.
+
+Priscilla and Conny turned upstairs lugging the suit-case between them,
+while Patty approached the principal's study. Ten minutes later she
+joined her companions in Seven, Paradise Alley. They were sitting on the
+bed, their chins in their hands, studying the suit-case propped on a
+chair before them.
+
+"Well?" they inquired in a breath.
+
+"She says she's glad to see me back, and hopes I didn't eat too much
+wedding cake. If my lessons show any falling off--"
+
+"_Who_ owns it?"
+
+"The man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the
+funny songs third from the end on the right hand side."
+
+"Jermyn Hilliard, Junior?" Priscilla asked breathlessly.
+
+"Not really?" Conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh.
+
+"Truly and honest!" Patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on
+the end. "J. H., Jr."
+
+"It _is_ his!" cried Priscilla.
+
+"Where on earth did you get it, Patty?"
+
+"Is it locked?"
+
+"Yes," Patty nodded, "but my key will open it."
+
+"What's in it?"
+
+"Oh, a dress suit, and collars, and--and things."
+
+"Where'd you get it?"
+
+"Well," said Patty languidly, "it's a long story. I don't know that I
+have time before study hour--"
+
+"Oh, tell us, please. I think you're beastly!"
+
+"Well--the glee club was last Thursday night."
+
+They nodded impatiently at this useless piece of information.
+
+"And it was Friday morning that I left. As I was listening to the
+Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting
+credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that
+Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the
+station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we
+got in, it was _cram_ full of men. The entire Yale Glee Club was going
+to the station! There were so many of them that they were sitting in
+each other's laps. The whole top layer rose, and said perfectly gravely
+and politely: 'Madame, take my seat.'
+
+"Mam'selle was outraged. She said in French, which of course they all
+understood, that she thought American college boys had disgraceful
+manners; but I smiled a little--I couldn't help it, they were so funny.
+And then two of the bottom ones offered their seats, and we sat down.
+And you'll never believe it, but the third man from the end was sitting
+right next to me!"
+
+"Not really?"
+
+"Oh, Patty!"
+
+"Is he as good-looking near to, as he was on the stage?"
+
+"Better."
+
+"Are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked?"
+
+"They looked real but I couldn't examine them closely."
+
+"Of course they're real!" said Conny indignantly.
+
+"And what do you think?" Patty demanded. "They were going on my train.
+Did you ever hear of such a coincidence?"
+
+"What did Mam'selle think of that?"
+
+"She was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in
+charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt
+like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the
+smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me right
+into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite."
+
+"Patty!" they cried in shocked chorus. "You surely didn't speak to him?"
+
+"Of course not. I looked out of the window and pretended he wasn't
+there."
+
+"Oh!" Conny murmured disappointedly.
+
+"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.
+
+"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the
+automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't
+see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went
+straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my
+suit-case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack.
+That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to
+death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.
+
+"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very
+jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the
+time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't
+understand."
+
+Conny nodded feelingly.
+
+"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown
+people have horrid manners."
+
+"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought
+me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to
+obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time,
+what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."
+
+"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.
+
+"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for
+dinner, the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her
+head.
+
+"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'
+
+"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with
+it?'
+
+"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And
+there it was, wide open!"
+
+Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back
+the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a
+box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles
+filling in the interstices.
+
+"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.
+
+"They belong to him," Conny murmured fervently.
+
+Patty nodded.
+
+"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He
+telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I
+didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't
+telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle Tom lives five miles from town, and there
+simply wasn't anything we could do that night."
+
+"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert,
+and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested
+Priscilla.
+
+"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.
+
+"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to
+fit."
+
+"I hope it looked all right?"
+
+"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon.
+I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."
+
+"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?"
+asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the
+dressmaker's.
+
+"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply
+wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me
+herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it--just like all my dancing
+dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash.
+I hated it anyway."
+
+"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until--"
+
+"Just wait till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of
+her dresses--one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to
+wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It
+was white crepe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was
+long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came
+and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet,
+and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I
+looked perfectly beautiful--I did, honestly--you wouldn't have known me.
+I looked _at least_ twenty!
+
+"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out
+for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And
+he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as
+though I were flirting with my grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it
+isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a
+good time--if you're pretty."
+
+Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed
+her chronicle.
+
+"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table.
+Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the
+whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with
+the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the
+program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across
+from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper--the man next
+to me--said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life;
+that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."
+
+"But about the suit-case," they prompted. "Didn't you do anything more?"
+
+"Uncle Tom telephoned again in the morning, and the station agent said
+he'd got the party on the wire as had the young lady's case. And he was
+coming back here in two days, and I was to leave his suit-case with the
+baggage man at the station, and he would leave mine."
+
+"But you didn't leave it."
+
+"I came on the other road. I'm going to send it down."
+
+"And what did you wear at the wedding?"
+
+"Louise's clothes. It didn't matter a bit, my not matching the other
+bridesmaids, because I was maid of honor, and ought to dress differently
+anyway. I've been grown up for three days--and I just wish Miss Lord
+could have seen me with my hair on the top of my head talking to men!"
+
+"Did you tell the Dowager?"
+
+"Yes, I told her about getting the wrong suit-case; I didn't mention the
+fact that it belonged to the third man from the end."
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"She said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's
+luggage; and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely. She
+telephoned to the baggage man that it was here, but she couldn't send
+Martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some
+eggs."
+
+Recreation was over, and the girls came trooping in to gather books and
+pads and pencils for the approaching study hour. Everyone who passed
+number Seven dropped in to hear the news. Each in turn received the
+story of the suit-case, and each in turn gasped anew at sight of the
+contents.
+
+"Doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish?" said Rosalie Patton,
+sniffing.
+
+"Oh, there's a button loose!" cried Florence Hissop, the careful
+housewife. "Where's some black silk, Patty?"
+
+She threaded a needle and secured the button. Then she daringly tried on
+the coat. Eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch.
+It was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present. Even
+Irene McCullough found it baggy.
+
+"He had awfully broad shoulders," said Rosalie, stroking the satin
+lining.
+
+They peered daintily at the other garments.
+
+"Oh!" squealed Mae Mertelle. "He wears blue silk suspenders."
+
+"And something else blue," chirped Edna Hartwell, peering over her
+shoulder. "They're pajamas!"
+
+"And to think of such a thing happening to Patty!" sighed Mae Mertelle.
+
+"Why not?" bristled Patty.
+
+"You're so young and so--er--"
+
+"Young!--Wait till you see me with my hair done up."
+
+"I wonder what the end will be?" asked Rosalie.
+
+"The end," said Mae unkindly, "will be that the baggage man will deliver
+the suit-case, and Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, will never know--"
+
+A maid appeared at the door.
+
+"If you please," she murmured, her amazed eyes on Irene who was still
+wearing the coat, "Mrs. Trent would like to have Miss Patty Wyatt come
+to the drawing-room, and I am to take the suit-case down. The gentleman
+is waiting."
+
+"Oh, Patty!" a gasp went around the room.
+
+"Do your hair up--quick!"
+
+Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head,
+while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and
+relocked the suit-case.
+
+They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a
+perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the
+drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by
+an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close,
+with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the
+walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man
+of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They
+gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty
+as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her
+that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head
+against the railing and laughed.
+
+"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale
+grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to
+make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't
+mind at all not having his dress-suit--never feels comfortable in it
+anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it
+on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study
+bell."
+
+Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a
+further detail:
+
+"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+The Flannigan Honeymoon
+
+
+The Murphy family, with a judicious eye to the buttered side of the
+bread, had adopted Saint Ursula as their patron saint. The
+family--consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy, eleven little Murphys
+and "Gramma" Flannigan--occupied a five-room cottage close to the gates
+of St. Ursula's school. They subsisted on the vicarious charity of
+sixty-four girls, and the intermittent labor of Murphy _pere_, who, in
+his sober intervals, was a sufficiently efficient stone-cutter and
+mason.
+
+He had built the big entrance gates, and the long stone wall that
+enclosed the ten acres of "bounds." He had laid the foundation of the
+new west wing--known as Paradise Alley--and had constructed all the
+chimneys and driveways and tennis courts on the place. The school was a
+monument to his long and leisurely career.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Murphy, with an unusual display of foresight, had
+christened their first baby after the school. Ursula Murphy may not be a
+euphuistic combination, but the child was amply repaid for carrying such
+a name, by receiving the cast-off clothes of generations of St. Ursula
+girls. There was danger, for a time, that the poor little thing would be
+buried beneath a mountain of wearing apparel; but her parents
+providentially discovered a second-hand clothes man, who relieved her of
+a part of the burden.
+
+After Ursula, had come other little Murphys in regular succession; and
+it had grown to be one of the legendary privileges of the school to
+furnish the babies with names and baptismal presents. Mrs. Murphy was
+not entirely mercenary in her yearly request. She appreciated the
+artistic quality of the names that the girls provided. They had a
+distinction, that she herself, with her lack of literary training, would
+never have been able to give. The choosing of the names had come to be a
+matter involving politics almost as complicated as the election of the
+senior president. Different factions proposed different names;
+half-a-dozen tickets would be in the field, and the balloting was
+conducted with rousing speeches.
+
+There was one hampering restriction. Every baby must have a patron
+saint. Upon this point, the Murphys stood firm. However, by a careful
+study of early Christian martyrs, the girls had managed to unearth a
+list of recondite saints with fairly unusual and picturesque names.
+
+So far, the roll of the Murphy offspring read:
+
+Ursula Marie, Geraldine Sabina, Muriel Veronica and Lionel Ambrose
+(twins), Aileen Clotilda, John Drew Dominick, Delphine Olivia, Patrick
+(he had been born in the summer vacation, and the long-suffering priest
+had insisted that the boy be named for his father), Sidney Orlando
+Boniface, Richard Harding Gabriel, Yolanda Genevieve. This completed
+the list, until one morning early in December, Patrick Senior presented
+himself at the kitchen door, with the news that another name--a
+boy's--would be seasonable.
+
+The school immediately went into a committee of the whole. Several names
+had been put up, and the discussion was growing heated, when Patty Wyatt
+jumped to her feet with the proposal of "Cuthbert St. John." The
+suggestion was met with cheers; and Mae Van Arsdale indignantly left the
+room. The name was carried by unanimous vote.
+
+Cuthbert St. John Murphy was christened the following Sunday, and
+received a gold-lined porridge spoon in a green plush box.
+
+So delighted was the school at Patty's felicitous suggestion, that, by
+way of reward, they elected her chairman of the Christmas Carnival
+Committee. The Christmas Carnival was a charitable institution
+contemporaneous with the founding of the school. St. Ursula's scheme of
+education was broad; it involved growth in a wide variety of womanly
+virtues, and the greatest of these was charity. Not the modern,
+scientific, machine-made charity, but the comfortable, old-fashioned
+kind that leaves a pleasant glow of generosity in the heart of the
+giver. Every year at Christmastide a tree was decked, a supper laid, and
+the poor children of the neighborhood bidden to partake. The poor
+children were collected by the school girls, who drove about from house
+to house, in bob-sleighs or hay-wagons, according to the snow. The girls
+regarded it as the most diverting festival of the school year; and even
+the poor children, when they had overcome their first embarrassment,
+found it fairly diverting.
+
+The original scheme had been for each girl to have an individual
+protege, that she might call upon the family and come into personal
+relations with a humbler class. She was to learn the special needs of
+her child, and give something really useful, such as stockings or
+trousers or flannel petticoats.
+
+It was an admirable scheme on paper, but in actual practice it fell
+down. St. Ursula's was situated in an affluent district given over to
+the estates of the idle rich, and the proletarian who clung to the
+skirts of these estates was amply provided with an opportunity to work.
+In the early days, when the school was small, there had been sufficient
+poor children to go round; but as St. Ursula's had grown, the poor
+seemed to have diminished, until now the school was confronted by an
+actual scarcity. But the Murphys, at least, they had always with them.
+They yearly offered thanks for this.
+
+Patty accepted her chairmanship and appointed sub-committees to do the
+actual work. For herself and Conny and Priscilla she reserved the
+privilege of choosing the recipients of St. Ursula's bounty. This
+entailed several exhilarating afternoons out of bounds. A walk abroad is
+as inspiring to the inmates of a prison as a trip through Europe to
+those at large. They spent the better part of a week canvassing the
+neighborhood, only to reveal the embarrassing fact that there were nine
+possible children, aside from the Murphy brood, and that none of these
+nine were from homes that one could conscientiously term poor. The
+children's sober industrious parents could well supply their temperate
+Christmas demands.
+
+"And there are only six Murphys the right age," Conny grumbled, as they
+turned homewards in the cold twilight of a wintry day, after an
+unprofitable two hours' tramp.
+
+"That makes about one child to every five girls," Priscilla nodded
+dismally.
+
+"Oh, this charity business makes me tired!" Patty burst out. "It's fun
+for the girls, and nothing else. The way we dole out stuff to perfectly
+nice people, is just plain insulting. If anybody poked a pink tarlatan
+stocking full of candy at me, and said it was because I'd been a good
+little girl, I'd throw it in their face."
+
+In moments of intensity, Patty's English was not above reproach.
+
+"Come on, Patty," Priscilla slipped a soothing hand through her arm,
+"we'll stop in at the Murphys' and count 'em over again. Maybe there's
+one we overlooked."
+
+"The twins are only fifteen," said Conny hopefully. "I think they'll
+do."
+
+"And Richard Harding's nearly four. He's old enough to enjoy a tree. The
+more Murphys we can get the better. They always love the things we
+give."
+
+"I know they do!" Patty growled. "We're teaching the whole lot of them
+to be blooming beggars--I shall be sorry I ever used any slang, if we
+can't put the money to better use than this."
+
+The funds for the carnival were yearly furnished by a tax on slang. St.
+Ursula demanded a fine of one cent for every instance of slang or bad
+grammar let fall in public. Of course, in the privacy of one's own room,
+in the bosom of one's chosen family, the rigor was relaxed. Your dearest
+friends did not report you--except in periods of estrangement. But your
+acquaintances and enemies and teachers did, and even, in moments of
+intense honorableness, you reported yourself. In any case, the slang
+fund grew. When the committee had opened the box this year, they found
+thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents.
+
+Patty allowed herself, after some slight protest, to be drawn to the
+door of the Murphy domicile. She was not in an affable mood, and a call
+upon the Murphys required a great deal of conversation. They found the
+family hilariously assembled in an over-crowded kitchen. The entire
+dozen children babbled at once, shriller and shriller, in a vain
+endeavor to drown each other out. A cabbage stew, in progress on the
+stove, filled the room with an odorous steam. Shoved into a corner of
+the hearth, was poor old Gramma Flannigan, surrounded by noisy, pushing
+youngsters, who showed her gray hairs but scant consideration. The girls
+admired the new baby, while Yolanda and Richard Harding crawled over
+their laps with sticky hands. Mrs. Murphy, meanwhile, discanted in a
+rich brogue upon the merits of "Coothbert St. Jawn" as a name. She liked
+it, she declared, as well as any in the list. It sure ought to bring
+luck to a child to carry the name of two saints. She thanked the young
+ladies kindly.
+
+Patty left Conny and Priscilla to carry off the social end of the call,
+while she squeezed herself onto the woodbox by Gramma Flannigan's chair.
+Mrs. Murphy's mother was a pathetic old body, with the winning speech
+and manners of Ireland a generation ago. Patty found her the most
+remunerative member of the household, so far as interest went. She
+always liked to get her started with stories of her girlhood, when she
+had been a lady's maid in Lord Stirling's castle in County Clare, and
+young Tammas Flannigan came and carried her off to America to help make
+his fortune. Tammas was now a bent old man with rheumatism, but in his
+keen blue eyes and Irish smile, Gramma still saw the lad who had courted
+her.
+
+"How's your husband this winter?" Patty asked, knowing that she was
+taking the shortest road to the old woman's heart.
+
+She shook her head with a tremulous smile.
+
+"I'm not hearin' for four days. Tammas ain't livin' with us no more."
+
+"It's a pity for you to be separated!" said Patty, with quick sympathy,
+not realizing on how sore a subject she was touching.
+
+The flood gates of the old woman's garrulity broke down.
+
+"With Ursuly an' Ger-r-aldine growin' oop an' havin' young min to wait
+on thim, 'twas needin' a parlor they was, an' they couldn't spare the
+room no longer for me'n Tammas. So they put me in the garret with the
+four gurrls, an' Tammas, he was sint oop the road to me son Tammas.
+Tammas's wife said as Tammas could sleep in the kitchen to pay for
+carryin' the wood an' watter, but she couldn't take us both because she
+takes boarders."
+
+Patty cocked her head for a moment of silence, as she endeavored to
+pluck sense from this tangle of Tammases.
+
+"It's too bad!" she comforted, laying a sympathetic hand on the old
+woman's knee.
+
+Gramma Flannigan's eyes filled with the ready tears of old age.
+
+"I'm not complainin', for it's the way o' the world. The owld must step
+off, an' make room for the young. But it's lonely I am without him!
+We've lived together for forty-seven years, an' we know each other's
+ways."
+
+"But your son doesn't live very far away." Patty offered what solace she
+might. "You must see Thomas very often."
+
+"That an' I don't! You might as well have a husband dead, as a mile an'
+a half away an' laid oop with rheumatism."
+
+The clock pointed to a quarter of six, and the visitors rose. They had
+still to walk half a mile and dress before dinner.
+
+The old woman clung to Patty's hand at parting. She seemed to find more
+comfort in the little stray sympathy that Patty had offered, than in all
+her exuberant brood of grandchildren.
+
+"Isn't it dreadful to be old, and just sit around waiting to die?" Patty
+shuddered, as they faced the cold darkness outside.
+
+"Dreadful!" Conny cordially agreed. "Hurry up! Or we'll be late for
+dinner, and this is chicken night."
+
+They turned homeward at a jog trot that left little breath for speech;
+but Patty's mind was working as fast as her legs.
+
+"I've got a perfectly splendid idea," she panted as she turned in at the
+gate and trotted up the driveway toward the big lighted house that
+spread wide wings to receive them.
+
+"What?" they asked.
+
+The quick insistent clang of the gong floated out to meet them, and on
+the instant, hurrying figures flitted past the windows--the summons to
+meals brought a readier response than the summons to study.
+
+"I'll tell you after dinner. No time now," Patty returned as she peeled
+off her coat.
+
+They were unlacing their blouses as they clattered up the back stairs,
+and pulling them over their heads in the upper hall.
+
+"Go slow--please!" they implored of the down-going procession whose
+track they crossed. Dinner was the only meal which might be approached
+by the front stairs, which were carpeted instead of tinned.
+
+Their evening frocks were fortunately in one piece, and they dove into
+them with little ceremony. The three presented themselves flushed of
+cheek and somewhat rumpled as to hair, but properly gowned and
+apologetic, just as grace was ended. To be late for grace only meant one
+demerit; the first course came higher, and the second higher still.
+Punishment increased by geometrical progression.
+
+During the half hour's intermission before evening study, the three
+separated themselves from the dancers in the hall, and withdrew to a
+corner of the deserted schoolroom.
+
+Patty perched herself on a desk, and loudly stated her feelings.
+
+"I'm tired of having the Dowager get up at prayers, and make a speech
+about the beautiful Christmas spirit, and how sweet it is to make so
+many little children happy, when she knows perfectly well that it's
+just a lark for us. I'm chairman this year and I can do as I please.
+I've had enough of this fake charity; and I'm not going to have any
+Christmas tree!"
+
+"No Christmas tree?" Conny echoed blankly.
+
+"But what are you going to do with the thirty-seven dollars and
+eight-four cents?" asked Priscilla, the practical.
+
+"Listen!" Patty settled to her argument. "There aren't any children
+around here who need a blessed thing, but Gramma and Granpa Flannigan
+do. That poor old woman, who is just as nice as she can be, is crowded
+in with all those horrid, yelling, sticky little Murphys; and Granpa
+Flannigan is poked into Tammas Junior's kitchen, running errands for
+Tammas Junior's wife, who is a per-fect-ly _terrible_ woman. She throws
+kettles when she gets mad. Gramma worries all the time for fear he has
+rheumatism, and nobody to rub on liniment, or make him wear the right
+underclothes. They're exactly as fond of each other as any other
+husband and wife, and just because Ursula wants to have callers, I say
+it's a mean shame for them to be separated!"
+
+"It is too bad," Conny agreed impartially. "But I don't see that we can
+help it."
+
+"Why, yes! Instead of having a Christmas tree, we'll rent that empty
+little cottage down by the laurel walk, and mend the chimney--Patrick
+can do that for nothing--and put in new windows, and furnish it, and set
+them up in housekeeping."
+
+"Do you think we can do it for thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four
+cents?" Priscilla asked.
+
+"That's where the charity comes in! Every girl in school will go without
+her allowance for two weeks. Then we'll have more than a hundred
+dollars, and you can furnish a house perfectly beautifully for that. And
+it would be real charity to give up our allowances, because they are
+particularly useful at Christmas time."
+
+"But will the girls want to give their allowances?"
+
+"We'll fix it so they'll have to," said Patty. "We'll call a mass
+meeting and make a speech. Then everybody will file past and sign a
+paper. No one will dare refuse with the school looking on."
+
+Patty's fire kindled an answering flame in the other two.
+
+"It is a good idea!" Conny declared.
+
+"And it would be a lark, fixing the house," said Priscilla. "Almost as
+much fun as getting married ourselves."
+
+"Exactly," Patty nodded. "Those poor old things haven't had a chance to
+see each other alone for years. We'll give 'em a honeymoon all over
+again."
+
+Patty was outwardly occupied with geometry the next hour, but her mind
+was busy hemming sheets and towels and tablecloths. It being Thursday
+evening, the hour between eight and nine was occupied with "manners."
+The girls took turns in coming gracefully downstairs, entering the
+drawing-room, announced by Claire du Bois in the role of footman, and
+shaking hands with their hostesses--Conny Wilder, as dowager mama, and
+towering above her, as debutante daughter, Irene McCullough, the
+biggest girl in the school. The gymnasium teacher who assigned the
+roles, had a sense of humor. An appropriate remark was expected from
+each guest, the weather being barred.
+
+"Mrs. Wilder!" Priscilla gushed, advancing with outstretched hand, "and
+dear little Irene! It doesn't seem possible that the child is actually
+grown. It was only yesterday that she was a mite of a thing toddling
+about--"
+
+Priscilla was shoved on by Patty.
+
+"Me dear Mrs. Wilder," she inquired in a brogue that would have put the
+Murphys to shame, "have ye heard the news that's goin' round? Mr. and
+Mrs. Tammas Flannigan have taken the Laurel Cottage for the season. They
+are thinkin' of startin' a salon. They will be at home ivery afternoon
+during recreation hour--and will serve limonade and gingerbread in
+summer, and soup and sandwiches in winter. Ye must take Irene to call on
+thim."
+
+The moment "manners" was over, the three withdrew to the seclusion of
+Patty's and Conny's room in Paradise Alley, and closed the door against
+callers. Between nine and nine-thirty was the fashionable calling hour
+at St. Ursula's. The time was supposed to be occupied in getting ready
+for bed, but if one were clever about undressing in the dark, one might
+devote the thirty minutes to social purposes.
+
+"Gone to sleep! Don't disturb us!" the placard read that they impaled
+upon the door, but the clatter of tongues inside belied the words.
+
+"Isn't my idea fine about the lemonade and soup?" Patty demanded.
+
+"The great thing about charity is not to make it charity. You must keep
+people self-supporting," Priscilla quoted from their last lesson in
+sociology.
+
+"We'll fix little tables under the apple tree in summer and in the
+parlor in winter," Patty planned, "and all the school girls and
+automobiles will stop for lemonade. We'll charge the girls five cents a
+glass and the automobiles ten."
+
+"And I say, let's make Patrick and Tammas each contribute a dollar a
+week toward their support," Conny proposed. "They must eat up a dollar's
+worth of potatoes as they are living now."
+
+They continued planning in whispers until long after "lights-out" had
+rung; and Priscilla, in a laudable desire to be inconspicuous, was
+obliged to crawl on hands and knees past Mademoiselle's open door,
+before she gained her own room at the end of the corridor.
+
+The moment recreation sounded the next afternoon, they obtained
+permission to be out of bounds, and set off at a brisk trot. It was
+their business-like intention to have all the statistics complete,
+before submitting the matter to the assembled school.
+
+"We'll first call on Patrick and Tammas and make 'em promise the
+dollar," said Patty.
+
+Patrick readily promised his dollar--Patrick was always strong in
+promises--and the girls proceeded gaily to Tammas Junior's. They found
+Granpa on the back doorstep anxiously wiping his feet; he was a
+tremulous reed that bowed before every blast of the daughter-in-law's
+tongue. Tammas Junior, after being taken aside and told the project,
+thought he could manage two dollars a week. An expression of relief
+momentarily took the hunted look from his eyes. He was clearly glad to
+rescue his father from the despotic rule of his wife.
+
+The girls turned away with their minds made up. It only remained to
+secure the cottage, coerce the school, and hem the sheets.
+
+"You go and price furniture and wall paper," Patty issued her orders,
+"while I see about the rent. We'll meet at the soda-water fountain."
+
+She found the real-estate man who owned the cottage established in an
+office over the bank; and by what she considered rare business ability,
+beat him down from nine dollars a month to seven. This stroke
+accomplished, she intimated her readiness for the lease.
+
+"A lease will not be necessary," he said. "A month to month verbal
+agreement will do for me."
+
+"I can't consider it without a lease," said Patty, firmly. "You might
+sell or something, and then we'd have to move out."
+
+The gentleman amusedly filled in the form, and signed as party of the
+first part. He passed the pen to Patty and indicated the space reserved
+for the signature of the party of the second part.
+
+"I must first consult my partners," she explained.
+
+"Oh, I see! Have them sign here, and then bring the lease back."
+
+"All of them?" she asked, dubiously scanning the somewhat cramped
+quarters. "I'm afraid there won't be room."
+
+"How many partners have you?"
+
+"Sixty-three."
+
+He stared momentarily, then as his eye fell on the embroidered "St. U."
+on Patty's coat sleeve, he threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" he apologized, "but I was a bit staggered for a
+moment. I am not used to doing business on such a large scale. In order
+to be legal," he gravely explained, "the paper will have to be signed by
+all the parties to the contract. If there is not enough room, you might
+paste on an er--"
+
+"Annex?" suggested Patty.
+
+"Exactly," he agreed and with grave politeness bowed her out.
+
+As the bell rang that indicated the end of study that evening, Patty and
+Conny and Priscilla jumped to their feet, and called a mass meeting of
+the school. The door was closed after the retreating Miss Jellings, and
+for half an hour the three made speeches separately and in unison. They
+were persuasive talkers and they carried the day. The allowance was
+voted with scarcely a dissenting voice, and the school filed past and
+signed the lease.
+
+For two weeks St. Ursula's was a busy place--and also Laurel Cottage.
+Bounds were practically enlarged to include it. The girls worked in
+gangs during every recreation hour. The cellar was whitewashed by a
+committee of four, who went in blue, and came out speckled like a
+plover's egg. Tammas Junior had volunteered for this job, but it was one
+the girls could not relinquish. They did allow him to kalsomine the
+ceilings and hang the wall paper; but they painted the floors and lower
+reaches of woodwork themselves. The evening's hour of recreation no
+longer found them dancing, but sitting in a solid phalanx on the stairs
+hemming sheets and tablecloths. The house was to be furnished with a
+completeness that poor Mrs. Flannigan, in all her married life, had
+never known before.
+
+When everything was finished, the day before the holidays, the school in
+a body wiped its feet on the door-mat and tiptoed through on a last
+visit of inspection. The cottage contained three rooms, with a cellar
+and woodshed besides. The wall paper and chintz hangings of the parlor
+were flaming pink peonies with a wealth of foliage--a touch of
+flamboyant for some tastes, but Granpa's and Gramma's eyes were failing,
+and they liked strong colors. Also, crafty questioning had elicited the
+fact that "pinies" were Gramma's favorite flower. The kitchen had
+turkey-red curtains with a cheerful strip of rag carpet and two
+comfortable easy chairs before the hearth. The cellar was generously
+stocked from the school farm--Miss Sallie's contribution--with potatoes
+and cabbages and carrots and onions, enough to make Irish stew for three
+months to come. The woodbin was filled, and even a five-gallon can of
+kerosene. Sixty-four pairs of eyes had scanned the rooms minutely to
+make sure that no essential was omitted.
+
+Both the Murphy and Flannigan households had been agog for days over the
+proposed flitting of the pair. Even Mrs. Tammas had volunteered to wash
+the windows of the new cottage, and for a week she had scarcely been
+cross. The old man was already wondering at life. When the time arrived,
+Mrs. Murphy secretly packed Gramma's belongings and dressed her in her
+best, under the pretext that she was to be taken in a carriage to a
+Christmas party to have supper with her husband. The old woman was in a
+happy flutter at the prospect. Granpa was prepared for the journey by
+the same simple strategy.
+
+Patty and Conny and Priscilla, as originators of the enterprise, had
+been appointed to install the old couple; but with tactful forbearance,
+they delegated the right to the son and daughter. They saw that the
+fires were burning, the lamps lighted, and the cat--there was even a
+cat--asleep on the hearth rug; then when the sound of carriage wheels in
+front told them that Martin had arrived with his passengers, they
+quietly slipped out the back way and jogged home to dinner through the
+snowy dusk.
+
+They were met by a babel of questions.
+
+"Was Gramma pleased with the parlor clock?"
+
+"Did she know what to do with the chaffing-dish?"
+
+"Were they disappointed at not having a feather bed?"
+
+"Did they like the cat, or would they rather have had a parrot?" (The
+school had been torn asunder on this important point.)
+
+At the dinner table that night--such of the school as was
+left--chattered only of Laurel Cottage. They were as excited over Gramma
+and Granpa's happiness, as over their own approaching holiday. All
+sixty-four were planning to drink tea, on the first day of their return,
+from Gramma's six cups.
+
+Toward nine o'clock, Patty and Priscilla, by a special dispensation that
+allowed late hours in vacation, received permission to accompany Conny
+and ten other dear friends to the station for the western express.
+Driving back alone in the "hearse," still bubbling with the hilarity of
+Christmas farewells, they passed the Laurel Cottage.
+
+"I believe they're still up!" said Priscilla. "Let's stop and wish 'em a
+Merry Christmas, just to make sure they like it."
+
+Martin was readily induced to halt; his discipline also was relaxed in
+vacation. They approached the door, but hesitated at sight of the
+picture revealed by the lighted window. To interrupt with the boisterous
+greetings of the season, seemed like rudely breaking in upon the
+seclusion of lovers. Only a glance was needed to tell them that the
+house-warming was successful. Gramma and Granpa were sitting before the
+fire in their comfortable red-cushioned rocking-chairs; the lamp shed a
+glow on their radiant faces, as they held each other's hands and smiled
+into the future.
+
+Patty and Priscilla tiptoed away and climbed back into the hearse, a
+touch sobered and thoughtful.
+
+"You know," Patty pondered, "they are just as contented as if they lived
+in a palace with a million dollars and an automobile! It's funny, isn't
+it, what a little thing makes some people happy?"
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The Silver Buckles
+
+
+"To be cooped up for three weeks with the two stupidest girls in the
+school--"
+
+"Kid McCoy isn't so bad," said Conny consolingly.
+
+"She's a horrid little tomboy."
+
+"But you know she's entertaining, Patty."
+
+"She never says a word that isn't slang, and _I_ think she's the limit!"
+
+"Well, anyway, Harriet Gladden--"
+
+"Is perfectly dreadful and you know it. I would just as soon spend
+Christmas with a weeping angel on a tombstone."
+
+"She is pretty mournful," Priscilla agreed. "I've spent three
+Christmases with her. But anyway, you'll have fun. You can be late for
+meals whenever you want, and Nora lets you make candy on the kitchen
+stove."
+
+Patty sniffed disdainfully as she commenced the work of resettling her
+room, after the joyous upheaval of a Christmas packing. The other two
+assisted in silent sympathy. There was after all not much comfort to be
+offered. School in holiday time was a lonely substitute for home.
+Priscilla, whose father was a naval officer, and whose home was a
+peripatetic affair, had become inured to the experience; but this
+particular year, she was gaily setting out to visit cousins in New
+York--with three new dresses and two new hats! And Patty, whose home was
+a mere matter of two hours in a Pullman car, was to be left behind; for
+six-year old Thomas Wyatt had chosen this inopportune time to come down
+with scarlet fever. The case was of the lightest; Master Tommy was
+sitting up in bed and occupying himself with a box of lead soldiers. But
+the rest of the family were not so comfortable. Some were quarantined
+in, and the others out. Judge Wyatt had installed himself in a hotel and
+telegraphed the Dowager to keep Patty at St. Ursula's during the
+holidays. Poor Patty had been happily packing her trunk when the news
+arrived; and as she unpacked it, she distributed a few excusable tears
+through the bureau drawers.
+
+Ordinarily, a number remained for the holidays,--girls whose homes were
+in the West or South, or whose parents were traveling abroad or getting
+divorces--but this year the assortment was unusually meager. Patty was
+left alone in "Paradise Alley." Margarite McCoy, of Texas, was stranded
+at the end of the South Corridor, and Harriet Gladden of Nowhere, had a
+suite of eighteen rooms at her disposal in "Lark Lane." These and four
+teachers made up the household.
+
+Harriet Gladden had been five years straight at St. Ursula's--term time
+and vacations without a break. She came a lanky little girl of twelve,
+all legs and arms, and she was now a lanky big girl of seventeen, still
+all legs and arms. An invisible father, at intervals mentioned in the
+catalogue, mailed checks to Mrs. Trent; and beyond this made no sign.
+Poor Harriet was a mournful, silent, neglected child; entirely out of
+place in the effervescing life that went on around her.
+
+She never had any birthday boxes from home, never any Christmas
+presents, except those that came from the school. While the other girls
+were clamoring for mail, Harriet stood in the background silent and
+unexpectant. Miss Sallie picked out her clothes, and Miss Sallie's
+standards were utilitarian rather than aesthetic. Harriet, with no
+exception, was the worst dressed girl in the school. Even her school
+uniform, which was an exact twin of sixty-three other uniforms, hung
+upon her with the grace of a meal-bag. Miss Sallie, with provident
+foresight, always ordered them a size too large in order to allow her to
+grow and Harriet invariably wore them out, before she had established a
+fit.
+
+"What on earth becomes of Harriet Gladden during vacation?" Priscilla
+once wondered on the opening day.
+
+"They keep her on ice through the summer," was Patty's opinion, "and she
+never gets entirely thawed out."
+
+As a matter of fact this was, as nearly as possible, what they did do
+with her. Miss Sallie picked out a quiet, comfortable, healthy
+farmhouse, and installed Harriet in charge of the farmer's wife. By the
+end of three months she was so desperately lonely, that she looked
+forward with pleasurable excitement to the larger isolation of term
+time.
+
+Patty, one day, had overheard two of the teachers discussing Harriet,
+and her reported version had been picturesque.
+
+"Her father hasn't seen her for years and years. He just chucks her in
+here and pays the bills."
+
+"I don't wonder he doesn't want her at home!" said Priscilla.
+
+"There isn't any home. Her mother is divorced, and married again, and
+living in Paris. That was the reason Harriet couldn't go abroad with the
+school party last year. Her father was afraid that when she got to
+Paris, her mother would grab her--not that either of them really wants
+her, but they like to spite each other."
+
+Priscilla and Conny sat up interestedly. Here was a tragic intrigue,
+such as you expect to meet only in novels, going on under their very
+noses.
+
+"You girls who have had a happy home life, cannot imagine the loneliness
+of a childhood such as Harriet's," said Patty impressively.
+
+"It's dreadful!" Conny cried. "Her father must be a perfect _Beast_ not
+to take any notice of her."
+
+"Harriet has her mother's eyes," Patty explained. "Her father can't bear
+to look at her, because she reminds him of the happy past that is dead
+forever."
+
+"Did Miss Wadsworth say that?" they demanded in an interested chorus.
+
+"Not in exactly those words," Patty confessed. "I just gathered the
+outline."
+
+This story, with picturesque additions, lost no time in making the
+rounds of the school. Had Harriet chosen to play up to the romantic and
+melancholy role she was cast for, she might have attained popularity of
+a sort; but Harriet did not have the slightest trace of the histrionic
+in her make-up. She merely moped about, and continued to be heavy and
+uninteresting. Other more exciting matters demanded public attention;
+and Harriet and her blasted childhood were forgotten.
+
+Patty stood on the veranda waving good-by to the last hearseful of
+Christmas travelers, then turned indoors to face an empty three weeks.
+As she was listlessly preparing to mount the stairs, Maggie waylaid her
+with the message:
+
+"Mrs. Trent would like to speak to you in her private study, Miss
+Patty."
+
+Patty turned back, wondering for just which of her latest activities she
+was to be called to account. A visit to the Dowager's private study
+usually meant that a storm was brewing. She found the four left-behind
+teachers cosily gathered about the tea table, and to her surprise, was
+received with four affable smiles.
+
+"Sit down, Patty, and have some tea."
+
+The Dowager motioned her to a chair, while she mingled an inch of tea
+with three inches of hot water. Miss Sallie furnished a fringed napkin,
+Miss Jellings presented buttered toast, and Miss Wadsworth, salted
+almonds. Patty blinked dazedly and accepted the offerings. To be waited
+on by four teachers was an entirely new experience. Her spirits rose
+considerably as she mentally framed the story for Priscilla's and
+Conny's delectation. When she had ceased to wonder why she was being
+thus honored, the reason appeared.
+
+"I am sorry, Patty," said the Dowager, "that none of your special
+friends are to be here this year; but I am sure that you and Margarite
+and Harriet will get on very happily. Breakfast will be half an hour
+later than usual, and the rules about bounds will be somewhat
+relaxed--only of course we must always know where to find you. I shall
+try to plan a matinee party in the city, and Miss Sallie will take you
+to spend a day at the farm. The ice is strong enough now for you to
+skate, and Martin will get out the sleds for you to coast. You must be
+in the open air as much as possible; and I shall be very pleased if you
+and Margarite can interest Harriet in out-of-door sports. Speaking of
+Harriet--"
+
+The Dowager hesitated momentarily, and Patty's acute understanding
+realized that at last they were getting at the kernel of the interview.
+The tea and toast had been merely wrapping. She listened with a touch of
+suspicion, while the Dowager lowered her voice with an air of
+confidence.
+
+"Speaking of Harriet, I should like to enlist your sympathy, Patty. She
+is very sweet and genuine. A girl that anyone might be proud to have for
+a friend. But through an accident, such as sometimes happens in a
+crowded, busy, selfish community, she has been overlooked and left
+behind. Harriet has never seemed to adjust herself so readily as most
+girls; and I fear that the poor child is often very lonely. It would be
+highly gratifying to me if you would make an effort to be friendly with
+her. I am sure that she will meet your advances half way."
+
+Patty murmured a few polite phrases and retired to dress for dinner,
+stubbornly resolved to be as distant with Harriet as possible. Her
+friendship was not a commodity to be bought with tea and buttered toast.
+
+The three girls had dinner alone at a little candle-lit table set in a
+corner of the dining-room, while the four teachers occupied a
+conveniently distant table in the opposite corner.
+
+Patty commenced the meal by being as monosyllabic as possible; but it
+was not her natural attitude toward the world, and by the time the veal
+had arrived (it was Wednesday night) she was laughing whole-heartedly at
+Kid's ingenuous conversation. Miss McCoy's vocabulary was rich in the
+vernacular of the plains, and in vacation she let herself go. During
+term time she was forced to curb her discourse, owing to the penny tax
+on slang. Otherwise, her entire allowance would have gone to swell the
+public coffers.
+
+It was a relief to let dinner-table conversation flow where it listed;
+usually, with a teacher in attendance and the route marked out, there
+was a cramped formality about the meal. French conversation was supposed
+to occupy the first three courses five nights in the week, and every
+girl must contribute at least two remarks. It cannot be said that on
+French nights the dining-room was garrulous. Saturday night was devoted
+to a discussion (in English) of current events, gleaned from a study of
+the editorials in the morning paper. Nobody at St. Ursula's had much
+time for editorials, and even on an English Saturday conversation
+languished. But the school made up for it on Sunday. This day, being
+_festa_, they could talk about anything they chose; and sixty-four
+magpies chattering their utmost, would have been silence in comparison
+to St. Ursula's at dinner time on Sunday.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The four days preceding Christmas passed with unexpected swiftness. A
+snow-storm marked the first, followed by three days of glistening
+sunshine. Martin got out the bobs, and the girls piled in and rode to
+the wood-lot for evergreens. There were many errands in the village, and
+the novelty of not always having a teacher at one's heels, proved in
+itself diverting.
+
+Patty found the two companions which circumstances had forced upon her
+unexpectedly companionable. They skated and coasted and had snow fights;
+and Harriet, to Patty's wide-eyed astonishment, assumed a very
+appreciable animation. On Christmas Eve they had been out with Martin
+delivering Christmas baskets to old time proteges of the school; and on
+the way home, through pure overflowing animal spirits, for a mile or
+more they had "caught on" the back of the bob, and then tumbled out and
+run and caught on again, until they finally dove head foremost into the
+big piled-up drift by the porte-cochere. They shook the snow from their
+clothes, like puppies from a pond, and laughing and excited trooped
+indoors. Harriet's cheeks were red from contact with the snow, her
+usually prim hair was a tangled mass about her face, her big dark eyes
+had lost their mournful look. They were merry, mischievous, girlish
+eyes. She was not merely pretty, but beautiful, in a wild, unusual
+gypsyish way that compelled attention.
+
+"I say," Patty whispered to Kid McCoy as they divested themselves of
+rubbers and leggins in the lower hall. "Look at Harriet! Isn't she
+pretty?"
+
+"Golly!" murmured the Kid. "If she knew enough to play up to her looks,
+she'd be the ravingest beauty in all the school."
+
+"Let's make her!" said Patty.
+
+At the top of the stairs they met Osaki with a hammer and chisel.
+
+"I open two box," he observed. "One Mees Margarite McCoy. One Mees Patty
+Wyatt."
+
+"Hooray!" cried the Kid, starting at a gallop for her room in the South
+Wing.
+
+A Christmas box to Kid McCoy meant a lavish wealth of new possessions
+out of all proportion to her desserts. She owned a bachelor guardian who
+was subject to fits of such erratic generosity that the Dowager had
+regularly to remind him that Margarite was but a school girl with simple
+tastes. Fortunately he always forgot this warning before the next
+Christmas--or else he knew Kid too well to believe it--and the boxes
+continued to come.
+
+Patty had also started without ceremony for Paradise Alley, when she
+became aware of deserted Harriet, slowly trailing down the dim length
+of Lark Lane. She ran back and grasped her by an elbow.
+
+"Come on, Harry! And help me open my box."
+
+Harriet's face flushed with sudden pleasure; it was the first time, in
+the five and a half years of her school career, that she had ever
+achieved the dignity of a nickname. She accompanied Patty with some
+degree of eagerness. The next best thing to receiving a Christmas box of
+your own, is to be present at the reception of a friend's.
+
+It was a big square wooden box, packed to the brim with smaller boxes
+and parcels tied with ribbon and holly, and tucked into every crevice
+funny surprises. You could picture, just from looking at it, the kind of
+home that it came from, filled with jokes and nonsense and love.
+
+"It's the first Christmas I've ever spent away from home," said Patty,
+with the suggestion of a quiver in her voice.
+
+But her momentary soberness did not last; the business of exploration
+was too absorbing to allow any divided emotion. Harriet sat on the edge
+of the bed and watched in silence, while Patty gaily strewed the floor
+with tissue paper and scarlet ribbon. She unpacked a wide assortment of
+gloves and books and trinkets, each with a message of love. Even the
+cook had baked a Christmas cake with a fancy top. And little Tommy, in
+wobbly uphill printing, had labeled an elephant filled with candy, "FOR
+DERE CISTER FROM TOM."
+
+Patty laughed happily as she plumped a chocolate into her mouth, and
+dropped the elephant into Harriet's lap.
+
+"Aren't they dears to go to such a lot of trouble? I tell you, it pays
+to stay away sometimes, they think such a lot more of you! This is from
+Mother," she added, as she pried off the cover of a big dressmaker's
+box, and lifted out a filmy dancing frock of pink crepe.
+
+"Isn't it perfectly sweet?" she demanded, "and I didn't need it a bit!
+Don't you love to get things you don't need?"
+
+"I never do," said Harriet.
+
+Patty was already deep in another parcel.
+
+"From Daddy, with all the love in the world," she read. "Dear old Dad!
+What on earth do you s'pose it is? I hope Mother suggested something.
+He's a perfect idiot about choosing presents, unless--Oh!" she squealed.
+"Pink silk stockings and slippers to match; and look at those perfectly
+lovely buckles!"
+
+She offered for Harriet's inspection a pink satin slipper adorned with
+the daintiest of silver buckles, and with heels dizzily suggestive of
+France.
+
+"Isn't my father a lamb?" Patty gaily kissed her hand toward a
+dignified, judicial-looking portrait on the bureau. "Mother suggested
+the slippers, of course, but the buckles and French heels were his own
+idea. She likes me sensible, and he likes me frivolous."
+
+She was deep in the absorbing business of holding the pink frock before
+the glass to make sure that the color was becoming, when she was
+suddenly arrested by the sound of a sob, and she turned to see Harriet
+throw herself across the bed and clutch the pillow in a storm of
+weeping. Patty stared with wide-open eyes; she herself did not indulge
+in such emotional demonstrations, and she could not imagine any possible
+cause. She moved the pink satin slippers out of reach of Harriet's
+thrashing feet, gathered up the fallen elephant and scattered
+chocolates, and sat down to wait until the cataclysm should pass.
+
+"What's the matter?" she mildly inquired, when Harriet's sobs gave place
+to choking gasps.
+
+"My father never sent me any s-silver b-buckles."
+
+"He's way off in Mexico," said Patty, awkwardly groping for consolation.
+
+"He never sends me anything! He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't
+recognize me if he met me on the street."
+
+"Oh, yes, he would," Patty assured her with doubtful comfort. "You
+haven't changed a bit in four years."
+
+"And he wouldn't like me if he did know me. I'm not pretty, and my
+clothes are never nice, and--" Harriet was off again.
+
+Patty regarded her for a moment of thoughtful silence, then she decided
+on a new tack. She stretched out a hand and shook her vigorously.
+
+"For goodness' sake, stop crying! That's what's the matter with your
+father. No man can stand having tears dripped down his neck all the
+time."
+
+Harriet arrested her sobs to stare.
+
+"If you could see the way you look when you cry! Sort of streaked. Come
+here!" She took her by the shoulder and faced her before the mirror.
+"Did you ever see such a fright? And I was just thinking, before you
+began, about how pretty you looked. I was, honestly. You could be as
+pretty as any of the rest of us, if you'd only make up your mind--"
+
+"No, I couldn't! I'm just as ugly as I can be. Nobody likes me and--"
+
+"It's your own fault!" said Patty sharply. "If you were fat, like Irene
+McCullough, or if you didn't have any chin like Evalina Smith, there
+might be some reason, but there isn't anything on earth the matter with
+you, except that you're so _damp_! You cry all the time, and it gets
+tiresome to be forever sympathizing. I'm telling you the truth because
+I'm beginning to like you. There's never any use bothering to tell
+people the truth when you don't like them. The reason Conny and Pris and
+I get on so well together, is because we always tell each other the
+exact truth about our faults. Then we have a chance to correct
+them--that's what makes us so nice," she added modestly.
+
+Harriet sat with her mouth open, too surprised to cry.
+
+"And your clothes are awful," pursued Patty interestedly. "You ought not
+to let Miss Sallie pick 'em out. Miss Sallie's nice; I like her a lot,
+but she doesn't know any more than a rabbit about clothes; you can tell
+that by the way she dresses herself. And then, too, you'd be a lot nicer
+if you wouldn't be so stiff. If you'd just laugh the way the rest of us
+do--"
+
+"How can I laugh when I don't think things are funny? The jokes the
+girls make are awfully silly--"
+
+Speech was no longer possible, for Kid McCoy came stampeding down the
+corridor with as much racket as a cavalcade of horses. She was decked in
+a fur scarf and a necklace set with pearls, she wore a muff on her head,
+drum-major fashion; a lace handkerchief and a carved ivory fan protruded
+from the pocket of her blouse and a pink chiffon scarf floated from her
+shoulders; her wrist was adorned with an Oriental bracelet and she was
+lugging in her arms a silver-mounted Mexican saddle, of a type that
+might be suited to the plains of Texas, but never to the respectable
+country lanes adjacent to St. Ursula's.
+
+"Bully for Guardie!" she shouted as she descended upon them. "He's a
+daisy; he's a ducky; he's a lamb. Did you ever see such a perfectly
+corking saddle?"
+
+She plumped it over a chair, transformed the pink chiffon scarf into a
+bridle, and proceeded to mount and canter off.
+
+"Get up! Whoa! Hi, there! Clear the road."
+
+Harriet jumped aside to avoid being bumped, while Patty snatched her
+pink frock from the path of the runaway. They were shrieking with
+laughter, even Harriet, the tearful.
+
+"Now you see!" said Patty, suddenly interrupting her mirth. "It's
+perfectly easy to laugh if you just let yourself go. Kid isn't really
+funny. She's just as silly as she can be."
+
+Kid brought her horse to a stand.
+
+"Well I like that!"
+
+"Excuse me for telling the truth," said Patty politely, "I'm just using
+you for an illustration--Heavens! There's the bell!"
+
+She commenced unlacing her blouse with one hand, while she pushed her
+guests to the door with the other.
+
+"Hurry and dress, and come back to button me up. It would be a very
+delicate attention for us to be on time to-night. We've been late for
+every meal since vacation began."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The girls spent Christmas morning coasting. They were on time for
+luncheon--and with appetites!
+
+The meal was half over when Osaki appeared with a telegram, which he
+handed to the Dowager. She read it with agitated surprise and passed it
+to Miss Sallie, who raised her eyebrows and handed it to Miss Wadsworth,
+who was thrown into a very visible flutter.
+
+"What on earth can it be?" Kid wondered.
+
+"Lordy's eloped, and they've got to hunt for a new Latin teacher," was
+Patty's interpretation.
+
+As the three girls left the table, the Dowager waylaid Harriet.
+
+"Step into my study a moment. A telegram has just come--"
+
+Patty and Kid climbed the stairs in wide-eyed wonder.
+
+"It can't be bad news, for Miss Sallie was smiling--" meditated Patty.
+"And I can't think of any good news that can be happening to Harriet."
+
+Ten minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and
+Harriet burst into Patty's room wild with excitement.
+
+"He's coming!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"My father."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Right now--this afternoon--He's been in New York on business, and is
+coming to see me for Christmas."
+
+"I'm so glad!" said Patty heartily. "Now, you see the reason he hasn't
+come before is because he has been away off in Mexico."
+
+Harriet shook her head, with a sudden drop in her animation.
+
+"I suppose he thinks he ought."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"It's so. He doesn't care for me--really. He likes girls to be jolly and
+pretty and clever like you."
+
+"Well, then--_be_ jolly and pretty and clever like me."
+
+Harriet's eyes sought the mirror, and filled with tears.
+
+"You're a perfect idiot!" said Patty, despairingly.
+
+"I'm an awful fright in my green dress," said Harriet.
+
+"Yes," Patty grudgingly conceded. "You are."
+
+"The skirt is too short, and the waist is too long."
+
+"And the sleeves are sort of queer," said Patty.
+
+Faced by these dispiriting facts, she felt her enthusiasm ebbing.
+
+"What time is he coming?" she asked.
+
+"Four o'clock."
+
+"That gives us two hours," Patty rallied her forces. "One can do an
+awful lot in two hours. If you were only nearer my size, you could wear
+my new pink dress--but I'm afraid--" She regarded Harriet's long legs
+dubiously. "I'll tell you!" she added, in a rush of generosity. "We'll
+take out the tucks and let down the hem."
+
+"Oh, Patty!" Harriet was tearfully afraid of spoiling the gown. But when
+Patty's zeal in any cause was roused, all other considerations were
+swept aside. The new frock was fetched from the closet, and the ripping
+began.
+
+"And you can wear Kid's new pearl necklace and pink scarf, and my silk
+stockings and slippers--if you can get 'em on--and I think Conny left a
+lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late to
+pack--and--Here's Kid now!"
+
+Miss McCoy's sympathies were enlisted and in fifteen minutes the task of
+transforming a remonstrating, excited, and occasionally tearful Harriet
+into the school beauty, was going gaily forward. Kid McCoy was supposed
+to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal
+feminine came triumphantly to the fore. She sat herself down, with
+Patty's manicure scissors, and for three-quarters of an hour
+painstakingly ripped out tucks.
+
+Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.
+
+"Don't strain it back so tight," she ordered. "It looks as though you'd
+done it with a monkey-wrench. Here! Give me the comb."
+
+She pushed Harriet into a chair, tied a towel about her neck, and
+accomplished the coifing by force.
+
+"How's that?" she demanded of Kid.
+
+"Bully!" Kid mumbled, her mouth full of pins.
+
+Harriet's hair was rippled loosely about her face, and tied with a pink
+ribbon bow. The ribbon belonged to Conny Wilder, and had heretofore
+figured as a belt; but individual property rights were forced to bow
+before the cause.
+
+The slippers and stockings did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly
+ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope
+of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit
+Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent leather
+pumps.
+
+"But after all," Patty reassured her, "it's better for you to wear
+black. Your feet would be sort of conspicuous in pink." She was still in
+her truthful mood. "I'll tell you!" she cried, "you can wear my silver
+buckles." And she commenced cruelly wrenching them from their pink
+chiffon setting.
+
+[Illustration: Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's
+hair.]
+
+"Patty! _Don't!_" Harriet gasped at the sacrilege.
+
+"They're just the last touch that your costume needs." Patty ruthlessly
+carried on the work of destruction. "When your father sees those
+buckles, he'll think you're _beautiful_!"
+
+For a feverish hour they worked. They clothed her triumphantly in all
+the grandeur that they could command. The entire corridor had
+contributed its quota, even to the lace-edged handkerchief with a
+hand-embroidered "H" that had been left behind in Hester Pringle's top
+drawer. The two turned her critically before the mirror, the pride of
+creation in their eyes. As Kid had truly presaged, she was the ravingest
+beauty in all the school.
+
+Irish Maggie appeared in the door.
+
+"Mr. Gladden is in the drawin'-room, Miss Harriet." She stopped and
+stared. "Sure, ye're that beautiful I didn't know ye!"
+
+Harriet went with a laugh--and a fighting light in her eyes.
+
+Patty and Kid restlessly set themselves to reducing the chaos that this
+sudden butterfly flight had caused in Paradise Alley--it is always
+dreary work setting things to rights, after the climax of an event has
+been reached.
+
+It was an hour later that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the
+hall, and Harriet ran in--danced in--her eyes were shining; she was a
+picture of youth and happiness and bubbling spirits.
+
+"Well?" cried Patty and Kid in a breath.
+
+She stretched out her wrist and displayed a gold-linked bracelet set
+with a tiny watch.
+
+"Look!" she cried, "he brought me that for Christmas. And I'm going to
+have all the dresses I want, and Miss Sallie isn't going to pick them
+out ever again. And he's going to stay for dinner to-night, and eat at
+the little table with us. And he's going to take us into town next
+Saturday for luncheon and the matinee, and the Dowager says we may go!"
+
+"Gee!" observed the Kid. "It paid for all the trouble we took."
+
+"And what do you think?" Harriet caught her breath in a little gasp.
+"_He likes me!_"
+
+"I knew those silver buckles would fetch him!" said Patty.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"Uncle Bobby"
+
+
+While St. Ursula's was still dallying with a belated
+morning-after-Christmas breakfast, the mail arrived, bringing among
+other matters, a letter for Patty from her mother. It contained cheering
+news as to Tommy's scarlet fever, and the expressed hope that school was
+not too lonely during the holidays; it ended with the statement that Mr.
+Robert Pendleton was going to be in the city on business, and had
+promised to run out to St. Ursula's to see her little daughter.
+
+The last item Patty read aloud to Harriet Gladden and Kid McCoy
+(christened Margarite). The three "left-behinds" were occupying a table
+together in a secluded corner of the dining-room.
+
+"Who's Mr. Robert Pendleton?" inquired Kid, looking up from her own
+letter.
+
+"He used to be my father's private secretary when I was a little girl. I
+always called him 'Uncle Bobby.'"
+
+Kid returned to her mail. She took no interest in the race of uncles,
+either real or fictitious. But Patty, being in a reminiscent mood,
+continued the conversation with Harriet, who had no mail to deflect her.
+
+"Then he went away and commenced practising for himself. It's been ages
+since I've seen him; but he was really awfully nice. He used to spend
+his entire time--when he wasn't writing Father's speeches--in getting me
+out of scrapes. I had a goat named Billy-Boy--"
+
+"Is he married?" asked Harriet.
+
+"N-no, I don't think so. I believe he had a disappointment in his youth,
+that broke his heart."
+
+"What fun!" cried Kid, reemerging. "Is it still broken?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Patty.
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure. He must be _quite_ old by now." (Her tone
+suggested that he was tottering on the brink of the grave.) "It has been
+seven years since I've seen him, and he was through college then."
+
+Kid dismissed the subject. Old men, even with broken hearts, contained
+no interest for her.
+
+That afternoon, as the three girls were gathered in Patty's room
+enjoying an indigestible four o'clock tea of milk and bread and butter
+(furnished by the school) and fruit cake and candy and olives and
+stuffed prunes, the expressman arrived with a belated consignment of
+Christmas gifts, among them a long narrow parcel addressed to Patty. She
+tore off the wrapping, to find a note and a white pasteboard box. She
+read the note aloud while the others looked over her shoulder. Patty
+always generously shared experiences with anyone who might be near.
+
+          "_My Dear Patty,--_
+
+          "Have you forgotten 'Uncle Bobby' who used to
+          stand between you and many well-deserved
+          spankings? I trust that you have grown into a VERY
+          GOOD GIRL now that you are old enough to go away
+          to school!
+
+          "I am coming to see for myself on Thursday
+          afternoon. In the meantime, please accept the
+          accompanying Christmas remembrance, with the hope
+          that you are having a happy holiday, in spite of
+          having to spend it away from home.
+
+          "Your old playfellow,
+                              "ROBERT PENDLETON."
+
+"What do you s'pose it is?" asked Patty, as she addressed herself to
+unknotting the gold cord on the box.
+
+"I hope it's either flowers or candy," Harriet returned. "Miss Sallie
+says it isn't proper to--"
+
+"Looks to me like American Beauty roses," suggested Kid McCoy.
+
+Patty beamed.
+
+"Isn't it a lark to be getting flowers from a _man_? I feel awfully
+grown up!"
+
+She lifted the cover, removed a mass of tissue paper, and revealed a
+blue-eyed, smiling doll.
+
+The three girls stared for a bewildered moment, then Patty slid to the
+floor, and buried her head in her arms against the bed and laughed.
+
+"It's got real hair!" said Harriet, gently lifting the doll from its bed
+of tissue paper, and entering upon a detailed inspection. "Its clothes
+come off, and it opens and shuts its eyes."
+
+"Whoop!" shouted Kid McCoy, as she snatched a shoe-horn from the bureau
+and commenced an Indian war dance.
+
+Patty checked her hysterics sufficiently to rescue her new treasure from
+the danger of being scalped. As she squeezed the doll in her arms, safe
+from harm's way, it opened its lips and emitted a grateful, "_Ma-ma!_"
+
+They laughed afresh. They laid on the floor and rolled in an ecstasy of
+mirth until they were weak and gasping. Could Uncle Bobby have witnessed
+the joy his gift brought to three marooned St. Ursulites, he would have
+indeed been gratified. They continued to laugh all that day and the
+following morning. By afternoon Patty had just recovered her
+self-control sufficiently to carry off with decent gravity Uncle Bobby's
+promised visit.
+
+As a usual thing, callers were discouraged at St. Ursula's. They must
+come from away, accredited with letters from the parents, and then must
+pass an alarming assemblage of chaperones. Miss Sallie remained in the
+drawing-room during the first half of the call (which could last an
+hour), but was then supposed to withdraw. But Miss Sallie was a social
+soul, and she frequently neglected to withdraw. The poor girl would sit
+silent in the corner, a smile upon her lips, mutiny in her heart, while
+Miss Sallie entertained the caller.
+
+But rules were somewhat relaxed in the holidays. On the day of Uncle
+Bobby's visit, by a fortuitous circumstance, Miss Sallie was five miles
+away, superintending a new incubator house at the school farm. The
+Dowager and Miss Wadsworth and Miss Jellings were scheduled for a
+reception in the village, and the other teachers were all away for the
+holidays. Patty was told to receive him herself, and to remember her
+manners, and let him do a little of the talking.
+
+This left her beautifully free to carry out the outrageous scheme that
+she had concocted over night. Harriet and Kid lent their delighted
+assistance, and the three spent the morning planning for her entrance in
+character. They successfully looted the "Baby Ward" where the fifteen
+little girls of the school occupied fifteen little white cots set in
+fifteen alcoves. A white, stiffly starched sailor suit was discovered,
+with a flaring blue linen collar, and a kilted skirt, that was
+shockingly short. Kid McCoy gleefully unearthed a pair of blue and white
+socks that exactly matched the dress, but they proved very much too
+small.
+
+"They wouldn't look well anyway," said Patty, philosophically, "I've got
+an awful scratch on one knee."
+
+Gymnasium slippers with spring heels reduced her five feet by an inch.
+She spent the early afternoon persuading her hair to hang in a row of
+curls, with a spanking blue bow over her left ear. When she was
+finished, she made as sweet a little girl as one would ever find romping
+in the park on a sunny morning.
+
+"What will you do if he kisses you?" inquired Kid McCoy.
+
+"I'll try not to laugh," said Patty.
+
+She occupied the fifteen minutes of waiting in a dress rehearsal. By the
+time Maggie arrived with the tidings that the visitor was below, she had
+her part letter-perfect. Kid and Harriet followed as far as the first
+landing, where they remained dangling over the banisters, while Patty
+shouldered her doll and descended to the drawing-room.
+
+She sidled bashfully into the door, dropped a courtesy, and extended a
+timid hand to the tall young gentleman who rose and advanced to meet
+her.
+
+"How do you do, Uncle Wobert?" she lisped.
+
+"Well, well! Is this little Patty?"
+
+He took her by the chin and turned up her face for a closer
+inspection--Mr. Pendleton was, mercifully, somewhat near-sighted. She
+smiled back sweetly, with wide, innocent, baby eyes.
+
+"You're getting to be a great big girl!" he pronounced with fatherly
+approval. "You reach almost to my shoulder."
+
+She settled herself far back in a deep leather chair, and sat primly
+upright, her feet sticking straight out in front, while she clasped the
+doll in her arms.
+
+"Sank you very much, Uncle Bobby, for my perfectly beautiful doll!"
+Patty imprinted a kiss upon the smiling bisque lips.
+
+Uncle Bobby watched with gratified approval. He liked this early
+manifestation of the motherly instinct.
+
+"And what are you going to name her?" he inquired.
+
+"I can't make up my mind." She raised anxious eyes to his.
+
+"How would Patty Junior do?"
+
+She repudiated the suggestion; and they finally determined upon Alice,
+after "Alice in Wonderland." This point happily disposed of, they
+settled themselves for conversation. He told her about a Christmas
+pantomime he had seen in London, with little girls and boys for actors.
+
+Patty listened, deeply interested.
+
+"I'll send you the fairy book that has the story of the play," he
+promised, "with colored pictures; and then you can read it for yourself.
+You know how to read, of course?" he added.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Patty, reproachfully. "I've known how to read a _long_
+time. I can read anyfing--if it has big print."
+
+"Well! You are coming on!" said Uncle Bobby.
+
+They fell to reminiscing, and the conversation turned to Billy-Boy.
+
+"Do you remember the time he chewed up his rope and came to church?"
+Patty dimpled at the recollection.
+
+"Jove! I'll never forget it!"
+
+"And usually Faver found an excuse for not going, but that Sunday Mover
+_made_ him, and when he saw Billy-Boy marching up the aisle, with a sort
+of dignified smile on his face--"
+
+Uncle Bobby threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"I thought the Judge would have a stroke of apoplexy!" he declared.
+
+"But the funniest thing," said Patty, "was to see you and Father trying
+to get him out! You pushed and Father pulled, and first Billy balked and
+then he butted."
+
+She suddenly realized that she had neglected to lisp, but Uncle Bobby
+was too taken up with the story to be conscious of any lapse. Patty
+inconspicuously reassumed her character.
+
+"And Faver scolded me because the rope broke--and it wasn't my fault at
+all!" she added with a pathetic quiver of the lips. "And the next day he
+had Billy-Boy shot."
+
+At the remembrance Patty drooped her head over the doll in her arms.
+Uncle Bobby hastily offered comfort.
+
+"Never mind, Patty! Maybe you'll have another goat some day."
+
+She shook her head, with the suggestion of a sob.
+
+"No, I never will! They don't let us keep goats here. And I loved
+Billy-Boy. I'm _awfully_ lonely without him."
+
+"There, there, Patty! You're too big a girl to cry." Uncle Bobby patted
+her curls, with kindly solicitude. "How would you like to go to the
+circus with me some day next week, and see all the animals?"
+
+Patty cheered up.
+
+"Will there be ele-phunts?" she asked.
+
+"There'll be several," he promised. "And lions and tigers and camels."
+
+"Oh, goody!" she clapped her hands and smiled through her tears. "I'd
+love to go. Sank you very, _very_ much."
+
+Half an hour later Patty rejoined her friends in Paradise Alley. She
+executed a few steps of the sailor's hornpipe with the doll as partner,
+then plumped herself onto the middle of the bed and laughingly regarded
+her two companions through over-hanging curls.
+
+"Tell us what he said," Kid implored. "We nearly pulled our necks out by
+the roots stretching over the banisters, but we couldn't hear a word."
+
+"Did he kiss you?" asked Harriet.
+
+"N-no." There was a touch of regret in her tone. "But he patted me on
+the head. He has a very sweet way with children. You'd think he'd had a
+course in kindergarten training."
+
+"What did you talk about?" insisted Kid, eagerly.
+
+Patty outlined the conversation.
+
+"And he's going to take me to the circus next Wednesday," she ended, "to
+see the elephunts!"
+
+"The Dowager will never let you go," objected Harriet.
+
+"Oh, yes, she will!" said Patty. "It's perfectly proper to go to the
+circus with your uncle--'specially in vacation. We've got it all
+planned. I'm to go into town with Waddy. I heard her say she had an
+appointment at the dentist's--and he'll be at the station with a
+hansom--"
+
+"More likely a baby carriage," Kid put in quickly.
+
+"Miss Wadsworth will never take you into town in _those_ clothes,"
+Harriet objected.
+
+Patty hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, while her dimples came
+and went.
+
+"I think," she said, "that the next time I'll give him an entirely
+different kind of a sensation."
+
+And she did.
+
+Anticipatory of the coming event, she sent her suit to the tailor's and
+had him lengthen the hem of the skirt two inches. She spent an entire
+morning retrimming her hat along more mature lines, and she purchased a
+veil--with spots! She also spent twenty-five cents for hairpins, and did
+up her hair on the top of her head. She wore Kid McCoy's Christmas furs
+and Harriet's bracelet watch; and, as she set off with a somewhat
+bewildered Miss Wadsworth, they assured her that she looked _old_.
+
+They reached the city a trifle late for Miss Wadsworth's appointment.
+Patty spied Mr. Pendleton across the waiting-room.
+
+"There's Uncle Robert!" she said; and to her intense satisfaction, Miss
+Wadsworth left her to accost him alone.
+
+She sauntered over in a very blase fashion and held out her hand. The
+spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he did not
+recognize her.
+
+"Mr. Pendleton! How do you do?" Patty smiled cordially. "It's really
+awfully good of you to devote so much time to my entertainment. And so
+original of you to think of a circus! I haven't attended a circus for
+years. It's really refreshing after such a dose of Shakespeare and Ibsen
+as the theaters have been offering this winter."
+
+Mr. Pendleton offered a limp hand and hailed a hansom without comment.
+He leaned back in the corner and continued to stare for three silent
+minutes; then he threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"Good Lord, Patty! Do you mean to tell me that you've grown up?"
+
+Patty laughed too.
+
+"Well, Uncle Bobby, what do you think about it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dinner was half over that night before the two travelers returned. Patty
+dropped into her seat and unfolded her napkin, with the weary air of a
+society woman of many engagements.
+
+"What happened?" the other two clamored. "Tell us about it! Was the
+circus nice?"
+
+Patty nodded.
+
+"The circus was charming--and so were the elephants--and so was Uncle
+Bobby. We had tea afterwards; and he gave me a bunch of violets and a
+box of candy, instead of the fairy book. He said he wouldn't be called
+'Uncle Bobby' by anyone as old as me--that I'd got to drop the
+'Uncle'--It's funny, you know, but he really seems younger than he did
+seven years ago."
+
+Patty dimpled and cast a wary eye toward the faculty table across the
+room.
+
+"He says he has business quite often in this neighborhood."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The Society of Associated Sirens
+
+
+Conny had gone home to recuperate from a severe attack of pink-eye.
+Priscilla had gone to Porto Rico to spend two weeks with her father and
+the Atlantic Fleet. Patty, lonely and abandoned, was thrown upon the
+school for society; and Patty at large, was very likely to get into
+trouble.
+
+On the Saturday following the double departure, she, with Rosalie Patton
+and Mae Van Arsdale, made a trip into the city in charge of Miss
+Wadsworth, to accomplish some spring shopping. Patty and Rosalie each
+needed new hats--besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and
+petticoats--and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit.
+These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to
+relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy
+affords.
+
+But when they presented themselves at the theater, they were faced by
+the announcement that the star had met with an automobile accident on
+his way to the performance, and that he was too damaged to appear; money
+would be refunded at the box office. The girls still clamored for their
+matinee, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting
+substitute for Hamlet.
+
+Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and
+ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of
+character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal
+defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges
+elected to do.
+
+To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss
+Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself
+picked out a drama entitled "The Wizard of the Nile," under the
+impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.
+
+But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the
+original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French
+flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's
+Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the
+style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were
+enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at
+the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and
+very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to
+her shocking career of wickedness, she _smoked cigarettes_!
+
+Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried,
+breathless, horrified--fascinated; but the three girls were simply
+fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all
+the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up
+realms of adventure, undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's.
+The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.
+
+That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was
+becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English
+officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling two hands rise
+from the darkness and clutch her shoulders on the right and left. She
+sat upright with a very audible gasp, and demanded in unguardedly loud
+tones, "Who's that?"
+
+The two hands instantly covered her mouth.
+
+"Sh-h! Keep quiet! Haven't you any sense?"
+
+"Mademoiselle's door is wide open, and Lordy's visiting her."
+
+Rosalie perched on the right of the bed, and Mae Mertelle on the left.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Patty, crossly.
+
+"We've got a perfectly splendid idea," whispered Rosalie.
+
+"A secret society," echoed Mae Mertelle.
+
+"Let me alone!" growled Patty. "I want to go to sleep."
+
+She laid down again in the narrow space left by her visitors. They paid
+no attention to her inhospitality, but drawing their bath robes closer
+about them, settled down to talk. Patty, being comfortably inside and
+warm, while they shivered outside, was finally induced to lend a drowsy
+ear.
+
+"I've thought of a new society," said Mae Mertelle. She did not propose
+to share the honor of creation with Rosalie. "And it's going to be
+_really_ secret this time. I'm not going to let in the whole school.
+Only us three. And this society hasn't just a few silly secrets; it has
+an _aim_."
+
+"We're going to call it the Society of Associated Sirens," Rosalie
+eagerly broke in.
+
+"That _what_?" demanded Patty.
+
+Rosalie rolled off the sonorous syllables a second time.
+
+"The Sho-shiety of Ash-sho-she-ated Shi-rens," Patty mumbled sleepily.
+"It's too hard to say."
+
+"Oh, but we won't call it that in public. The name's a secret. We'll
+call it the S. A. S."
+
+"What's it for?"
+
+"You'll promise not to tell?" Mae asked guardedly.
+
+"No, of course I won't tell."
+
+"Not even Pris and Conny when they get back?"
+
+"We'll make them members," said Patty.
+
+"Well--perhaps--but this is the kind of society that's better small. And
+we three are the only ones who really ought to be members, because we
+saw the play. But anyhow; you must promise not to tell unless Rosalie
+and I give you permission. Do you promise that?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I promise. What's it for?"
+
+"We're going to become sirens," Mae whispered impressively. "We're going
+to be beautiful and fascinating and ruthless--"
+
+"Like Cleopatra," said Rosalie.
+
+"And avenge ourselves on Man," added Mae.
+
+"Avenge ourselves--what for?" inquired Patty, somewhat dazed.
+
+"Why--for--for breaking our hearts and destroying our faith in--"
+
+"My heart hasn't been broken."
+
+"Not yet," said Mae with a touch of impatience, "because you don't know
+any men, but you will know them some day, and then your heart will be
+broken. You ought to have your weapons ready."
+
+"In time of peace prepare for war," quoted Rosalie.
+
+"Do--you think it's quite ladylike to be a siren?" asked Patty
+dubiously.
+
+"It's _perfectly_ ladylike!" said Mae. "Nobody but a lady could possibly
+be one. Did you ever hear of a washerwoman who was a siren?"
+
+"N-no," Patty confessed. "I don't believe I have."
+
+"And look at Cleopatra," put in Rosalie. "I'm sure she was a lady."
+
+"All right!" Patty agreed. "What are we going to do?"
+
+"We're going to become beautiful and fascinating, with a fatal charm
+that ensnares every man who approaches."
+
+"Do you think we can?" There was some doubt in Patty's tone.
+
+"Mae's got a book," put in Rosalie eagerly, "about 'Beauty and Grace.'
+You soak your face in oatmeal and almond-oil and honey, and let your
+hair hang in the sun, and whiten your nose with lemon juice, and wear
+gloves at night, and--"
+
+"You really ought to have a bath of asses' milk," interrupted Mae.
+"Cleopatra had; but I'm afraid it will be impossible to get."
+
+"And you ought to learn to sing," added Rosalie, "and have some one song
+like the 'Lorelei!' that you always hum when you're about to ensnare a
+victim."
+
+The project was foreign to Patty's ordinary train of thought, but it did
+have an element of novelty and allurement. Neither Mae nor Rosalie were
+the partners she would naturally have chosen in any enterprise, but
+circumstances had thrown them together that day, and Patty was an
+obliging soul. Also, her natural common sense was wandering; she was
+still under the spell of the Egyptian sorceress.
+
+They discussed the new society for several minutes more, until they
+heard the murmur of Miss Lord's voice, bidding Mademoiselle goodnight.
+
+"There's Lordy!" Patty whispered warily. "I think you'd better to go to
+bed. We can plan the rest in the morning."
+
+"Yes, let's," said Rosalie, with a shiver. "I'm freezing!"
+
+"But we must first take the vow," insisted Mae Mertelle. "We ought
+really to do it at midnight--but maybe half-past ten will do as well.
+I've got it all planned. You two say it after me."
+
+They joined hands and whispered in turn:
+
+"I most solemnly promise to keep secret the name and object of this
+society; and if I break this oath, may I become freckled and bald and
+squint-eyed and pigeon-toed, now and forever more."
+
+The three members of the S. A. S. devoted their leisure during the next
+few days to a careful study of the work on Beauty; and painstakingly set
+about putting its precepts into practice. Some of these seemed
+perplexingly at variance. The hair, for example, was to be exposed to
+air and sunlight, but the face was not. They cleverly circumvented this
+difficulty however. The week's allowance went for chamois-skin. During
+every recreation hour, they retired to an airy knoll in the lower
+pasture, and sat in a patient row, with hair streaming in the wind, and
+faces protected by homemade masks.
+
+One afternoon, a little Junior A, wandering far afield in a game of
+hide-and-seek, came upon them unawares; and returned to the safe
+confines of the playground with frightened shrieks. Dark rumors began to
+float about the school as to the aim and scope of the new society.
+Suggestions ranged all the way from Indian squaws to Druid priestesses.
+
+They almost met with disaster while acquiring the ingredients of the
+oatmeal poultice. The oatmeal and lemon were comparatively easy; the
+cook supplied them without much fuss. But she stuck at the honey. There
+were jars and jars of strained honey in the storeroom; but the windows
+were barred, and the key was in the bottom of Nora's pocket. Confronted
+by the immediate necessity of becoming beautiful, they could not
+placidly sit down for five days, and wait for the weekly shopping trip
+to the village. Besides, with a teacher in attendance, there would be no
+possible chance of making the purchase. Honey was a contraband article,
+in the same class with candy and jam and pickles.
+
+They discussed the feasibility of filing through the iron gratings, or
+of chloroforming Nora and stealing the key, but in the end Patty
+accomplished the matter by the use of a little simple blarney. She
+dropped into the kitchen one afternoon with the plaintive admission that
+she was hungry. Nora hastened to supply a glass of milk and a piece of
+bread and butter, while Patty perched on a corner of the carving-table
+and settled herself for conversation. The girls were not supposed to
+visit the kitchen, but the law was never rigidly enforced. Nora was a
+social soul and she welcomed callers. Patty praised the apple dumplings
+of last night's dessert; progressed from that to a discussion of the
+engaging young plumber who at the moment claimed all of Nora's thoughts;
+then, by a natural transition, she passed to honey. Before she left, she
+had obtained Nora's promise to substitute it for marmalade the next
+morning at breakfast.
+
+The members of the S. A. S. brought pin-trays to the meal, and
+unobtrusively transferred a supply from their plates to their laps.
+
+But even so, disaster still threatened. Patty had the misfortune to
+collide with Evalina Smith in the upper hall, and she dropped her
+pin-tray, honey-side down, in the middle of the rug. At the same
+instant, Miss Lord bore down upon her from the end of the corridor.
+Patty was a young person of resource; the emergency of the moment rarely
+found her napping. She plumped down on her knees in the midst of the
+puddle, and with widespread skirts, commenced frantically searching for
+an imaginary stick-pin.
+
+"Is it necessary for you to block up the entire hall?" was Miss Lord's
+only comment as she passed.
+
+The rug was happily reversible, and by the simple process of turning it
+over, Patty satisfactorily cleaned up the mess. The other two girls were
+generous, and shared their supply: so in the end she obtained her honey.
+
+For three wakeful nights they stuck to the poultice--though perhaps it
+would be more accurate to say that the poultice stuck to them. In spite
+of many washings in hot water, their faces became noticeably scaly.
+
+Miss Sallie, who represented St. Ursula's board of health, met Patty
+Wyatt in the hall one morning. She took her by the chin and turned her
+to the light. Patty squirmed embarrassedly.
+
+"My dear child! What is the matter with your face?"
+
+"I--I don't know--exactly. It seems sort of--of--dandruffy."
+
+"I should think it did! What have you been eating?"
+
+"Only what I get at meals," said Patty, relievedly telling the truth.
+
+"There's something the matter with your blood," diagnosed Miss Sallie.
+"What you need is a tonic. I shall prescribe boneset tea for you."
+
+"Oh, Miss Sallie!" Patty earnestly remonstrated. "I don't need it,
+_really_. I'm sure I'll be all right." She had tried boneset tea before;
+it was the bitterest brew that was ever concocted.
+
+When Miss Sallie met Mae Van Arsdale suffering from the same complaint,
+and later still, Rosalie Patton, she commenced to be perturbed. The
+apple trees under her care at the farm had been afflicted that spring
+with San Jose scale, but she had hardly expected the disease to spread
+to the school girls. That afternoon she superintended an infusion of
+boneset, of gigantic proportions, and at bedtime a reluctant school
+formed in line and filed past Miss Sallie, who, ladle in hand, presided
+over the punch bowl. Each received a flowing cupful and drank it with
+what grace she might, until Patty's turn came. She disposed of hers in a
+blue china umbrella holder which stood in the hall behind Miss Sallie's
+back. The remainder of the line successfully followed her lead.
+
+Miss Sallie watched her little charges closely for the next few days;
+and sure enough, the scales disappeared. (The Associated Sirens had
+discarded poultices.) She was more than ever convinced of the efficacy
+of boneset.
+
+Shortly after the founding of the society, Mae Mertelle returned from a
+week-end visit to her home. (Her mother was ill and she had been sent
+for. Someone in Mae's family was conveniently ill a great deal of the
+time.) She brought with her three bracelets of linked scales
+representing a serpent swallowing his tail. S. A. S. in tiny letters was
+engraved between the emerald eyes.
+
+"They are perfectly sweet!" said Patty, with grateful appreciation. "But
+why a snake?"
+
+"It isn't a snake; it's a serpent," Mae explained. "To represent
+Cleopatra. She was the Serpent of the Nile. We'll be Serpents of the
+Hudson."
+
+With the appearance of the bracelets, curiosity in the S. A. S.
+increased, but unlike the other secret societies which had appeared from
+time to time, its _raison d'etre_ remained a mystery. The school really
+commenced to believe that the society had a secret. Miss Lord, who had
+the reputation of being curious, stopped Patty one day as she was
+leaving the Virgil class, and admired the new bracelet.
+
+"And what may be the meaning of S. A. S.?" she inquired.
+
+"It's a secret society," said Patty.
+
+"Ah, a secret society!" Miss Lord smiled. "Then I suppose the name is a
+DEEP MYSTERY." She lowered her voice, as she said it, to sepulchral
+depths.
+
+There was something peculiarly irritating about Miss Lord's manner; it
+always suggested that she was amused by the vagaries of her little
+pupils. She did not possess Miss Sallie's happy faculty of meeting them
+on a level. Miss Lord peered down from above (through lorgnettes).
+
+"Of course the name is a secret," said Patty. "If that got out, it would
+give the whole thing away."
+
+"And what is the object of this famous society? Or is that too a
+secret?"
+
+"Why, yes, that is, I mustn't tell you exactly."
+
+Patty smiled up at Miss Lord with the innocent, seraphic gaze that
+always warned those who knew her best that is was wisest to let her
+alone.
+
+"It's a sort of branch of the Sunshine Society," she added
+confidentially. "We're to--well--to smile on people, you know, and make
+them like us."
+
+"I see!" said Miss Lord, with an air of friendly understanding. "Then S.
+A. S. stands for 'Sunshine and Smiles?'"
+
+"Oh, please! You mustn't say it out loud," Patty lowered her voice and
+threw an anxious glance over her shoulder.
+
+"I wouldn't tell anybody for worlds," Miss Lord promised solemnly.
+
+"Thank you," said Patty. "It would be dreadful if it got out."
+
+"It is a very sweet, womanly society," Miss Lord added approvingly. "But
+you ought not to keep it all to yourselves. Can't you let me be an
+honorary member of the S. A. S.?"
+
+"Certainly, Miss Lord!" said Patty sweetly. "If you care to belong, we
+should _love_ to have you."
+
+"Lordy wants to be a Siren!" she announced to her two fellow members
+when she met them shortly in the gymnasium. The account of the interview
+was received with hilarity. Miss Lord was anything but the accepted type
+of siren.
+
+"I thought a few smiles might relieve the gloom of Latin class," Patty
+explained. "It amuses Lordy to think she's helping the children in their
+play; and it doesn't hurt the children."
+
+For a time the S. A. S. flourished with the natural health of youth, but
+as the novelty wore off, the business of becoming beautiful grew
+onerous. Mae and Rosalie continued to study the beauty book with dogged
+perseverance,--the subject lay along the line of their natural
+ambitions--but Patty felt other matters calling. Spring field sports had
+commenced, and the nearness of the annual match with Highland-Hall,
+crowded out her interest in cold cream and almond meal. She and Mae were
+not naturally _simpatica_, and in spite of Mae's insistence, Patty
+became an apathetic siren.
+
+One Saturday just after the spring recess, Patty received permission to
+lunch in town with "Uncle Bobby." He was an uncle by courtesy only, but
+Patty had failed to inform the Dowager that the title was not his by
+natural right. She knew well what the result would be. It is quite
+proper to have luncheon with an uncle; and quite improper with even the
+oldest and baldest of family friends.
+
+When the "hearse" returned from the station at dusk with Mademoiselle
+and the city contingent, Rosalie Patton was waiting the arrival on the
+porte-cochere. She separated Patty from the group and whispered in her
+ear.
+
+"The most awful thing has happened!"
+
+"What?" Patty demanded.
+
+"The S. A. S. All is discovered!"
+
+"Not really!" cried Patty, aghast.
+
+"Yes! Come in here."
+
+Rosalie drew her into the empty cloak-room and shut the door.
+
+"You mean--they've found out the name--and everything?" Patty demanded
+breathlessly.
+
+"Not quite everything, but they would have if it hadn't been for Lordy.
+She saved us for once."
+
+"Lordy saved us!" There was incredulity mixed with Patty's horror. "What
+do you mean?"
+
+"Well, yesterday, Mae went shopping in the village with Miss
+Wadsworth--and you know what kind of a chaperone Waddy makes." Patty
+nodded impatiently. "_Anybody_ could fool her. And Mae, right under her
+very nose, commenced a flirtation with the _Soda-Water Clerk_."
+
+"Oh!" said Patty hotly. "How perfectly horrid!"
+
+"She didn't care anything about it, really. She was just trying to put
+the principles of the S. A. S. into practice."
+
+"She might at least have picked out somebody decent!"
+
+"Well, he is quite decent. He's engaged to the girl at the underwear
+counter in Bloodgood's, and he didn't want to be flirted with a bit. But
+you know how persistent Mae Mertelle is, when she makes up her mind. The
+poor young man just couldn't help himself. He was so embarrassed that he
+didn't know what he was doing. He gave Hester Pringle half chocolate and
+half sarsaparilla, and she says it was a _perfectly awful_ combination.
+It made her feel so sick that she couldn't eat any dinner. And all this
+time Waddy just sat and smiled into space and saw nothing; but all the
+girls saw,--and _so did the drugstore man_!"
+
+"Oh!" said Patty breathlessly.
+
+"And this morning Miss Sallie went to the drugstore to get some potash
+for Harriet Gladden's sore throat, and he told her all about it."
+
+"What did Miss Sallie do?" Patty asked faintly.
+
+"Do! She came back with blood in her eye, and told the Dowager, and they
+called up Mae Mertelle and then--" Rosalie closed her eyes and
+shuddered.
+
+"Well," said Patty impatiently. "What happened?"
+
+"The Dowager was _perfectly outraged_! She told Mae that she had
+disgraced the school and that she would be expelled. And she wrote a
+telegram to Mae's father to come and take her away. And she asked Mae if
+she had anything to say for herself, and Mae said it wasn't her fault.
+That you and I were to blame just as much as she, because we were all in
+a society together, but that she couldn't tell about it because she'd
+sworn."
+
+"Beast!" said Patty.
+
+"So then they sent for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A.
+S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when
+she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything it
+knew, and I never did pretend to be a sphinx."
+
+"All right," said Patty, bracing herself for the shock. "What did they
+say when they heard?"
+
+"They didn't hear! I was just on the point of breaking my vows and
+telling all, when who should pop in but Lordy. And she was _perfectly
+splendid_! She said she knew all about the S. A. S. That it was a very
+admirable institution, and that she was a member herself! She said it
+was a branch of the Sunshine Society, and that Mae had never meant to
+flirt with the young man. She had just meant to smile and be kind to
+everybody she came in contact with, and he had taken advantage. And Mae
+said, yes, that was the way of it, and she shoved off all the blame on
+that poor innocent soda-water clerk."
+
+"Just like her," Patty nodded.
+
+"And now Mae is _perfectly furious_ with him for getting her into
+trouble. She says that he's a horrid little thing with a turn-up nose,
+and that she'll never drink another glass of soda-water as long as she
+stays in St. Ursula's."
+
+"And they're going to let her stay?"
+
+"Yes. The Dowager tore up the telegram. But she gave Mae ten demerits,
+and made her go without dessert for a week, and learn Thanatopsis by
+heart. And she can't _ever_ go shopping in the village any more. When
+she needs new hair ribbons or stockings or anything, she must send for
+them by some of the other girls."
+
+"And what's the Dowager going to do to us?"
+
+"Nothing at all--and if it hadn't been for Lordy, we'd all three have
+been expelled."
+
+"And I've always detested Lordy," said Patty contritely. "Isn't it
+dreadful? You simply can't keep enemies. Just as you think people are
+perfectly horrid, and begin to enjoy hating them, they all of a sudden
+turn out nice."
+
+"I hate Mae Mertelle," said Rosalie.
+
+"So do I!" Patty agreed cordially.
+
+"I'm going to leave her old society."
+
+"I'm already out." Patty glanced toward the mirror. "And I'm not
+freckled and I'm not squint-eyed."
+
+"What do you mean?" Rosalie stared; she had for the moment forgotten the
+dread nature of the oath.
+
+"I've told Uncle Bobby."
+
+"Oh, Patty! How could you?"
+
+"I--I--that is--" Patty appeared momentarily confused. "You see," she
+confessed, "I thought myself that it would be sort of interesting to
+practice on somebody, so I--I--just tried--"
+
+"And did he--"
+
+Patty shook her head.
+
+"It was awfully uphill work. He never helped a bit. And then he noticed
+my bracelet and wanted to know what S. A. S. meant. And before I knew
+it, I was telling him!"
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"First he roared; then he got awfully sober, and he gave me a long
+lecture--it was really very impressive--sort of like Sunday School, you
+know. And he took the bracelet away from me and put it in his pocket.
+He told me he'd send me something nicer."
+
+"What do you s'pose it will be?" asked Rosalie interestedly.
+
+"I hope it won't be a doll!"
+
+Two days later the morning mail brought a small parcel for Miss Patty
+Wyatt. She opened it under her desk in geometry class. Buried in
+jeweler's cotton she found a gold linked bracelet that fastened with a
+padlock in the shape of a heart. On the back of one of Uncle Bobby's
+cards was written:--
+
+"This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the
+key."
+
+Patty deflected Rosalie as she was turning into French and privately
+exhibited the bracelet with pride.
+
+Rosalie regarded it with sentimental interest.
+
+"What has he done with the key?" she wondered.
+
+"I s'pose," said Patty, "he's got it in his pocket."
+
+"How awfully romantic!"
+
+"It sounds sort of romantic," Patty agreed with the suggestion of a
+sigh. "But it isn't really. He's thirty years old, and beginning to be
+bald."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+The Reformation of Kid McCoy
+
+
+Miss McCoy, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of
+St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She
+was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received--and retained--in
+a respectable-boarding-school.
+
+"Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant
+bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to
+be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written
+reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was
+the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her;
+and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed
+expostulation of the ladies in charge.
+
+Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside
+the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous
+father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and
+losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk
+from a champagne glass. Her father had died--quite opportunely--while
+his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter
+to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next
+three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with
+"Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.
+
+The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference
+with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the
+East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched. If any
+molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.
+
+Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all
+permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing
+master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an
+exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers
+on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him
+sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly
+in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had
+received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:
+
+"Was the young lady trained in a circus?"
+
+The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was
+beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had
+never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however,
+St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss
+McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation
+sometime.
+
+When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.
+
+Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate--- she wore her room-mates
+out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the
+essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in
+the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous
+mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was
+looking worn.
+
+Then the change came.
+
+Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of
+wide-eyed amazement.
+
+"What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a
+lady!"
+
+"A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been
+polishing her face.
+
+"A _lady_. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through
+the embroidery in her night gown."
+
+"What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.
+
+"She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."
+
+Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the
+folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and
+allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her
+shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the
+last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.
+
+"What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in
+her voice.
+
+Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement
+and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an
+endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.
+
+"It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate
+in Asia--or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a
+lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was
+sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her
+father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that
+kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little
+golden-haired daughter in England."
+
+"Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie
+had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't
+haul her up sharp.
+
+"Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to
+India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a
+sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond--that was
+her name--to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond
+went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made
+it beautiful and homelike and comfortable--she wouldn't let him drink or
+smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past--"
+
+"He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty
+glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy
+of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."
+
+"You've read it!" said Rosalie.
+
+"Not that I know of," said Patty.
+
+"Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and
+were married--"
+
+"And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing
+on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a
+lonely heart?"
+
+"Um--yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.
+
+There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she
+knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.
+
+"It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy
+come in?"
+
+"Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest.
+"It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book,
+and I had the _awfulest_ time making her read it. She made fun of it at
+first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the
+resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."
+
+"Kid's story? What _are_ you talking about?" Patty was commencing to be
+interested.
+
+"Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book.
+Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen
+are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he
+needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a
+lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of
+his life."
+
+Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and
+regarded her with a touch of asperity.
+
+"I don't see anything so funny--I think it's very romantic."
+
+"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even
+pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can _stay_ one--"
+
+"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than
+that--you wait and see."
+
+And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of
+the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her
+deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were
+extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed
+week, and it did last.
+
+Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call
+her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat
+through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a
+sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a
+solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising
+scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of
+the school.
+
+They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe
+played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school
+saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting
+before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while
+Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives
+sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their
+shoulders, gathered by the open window.
+
+Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a
+rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The
+entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up
+the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer
+book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass
+atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.
+
+This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost
+beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a
+lady.
+
+Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming
+East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South
+Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held
+earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should
+behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They
+pondered a long time over whether or not she should kiss him, but
+Rosalie decided in the negative.
+
+"When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him
+that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past
+three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."
+
+"Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."
+
+It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school--in a
+body--flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They
+had rather hoped for a flannel shirt and boots and spurs, and, in any
+case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a
+frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick,
+and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear
+that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the
+plate in church.
+
+But the worst is still to tell.
+
+He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back
+to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence
+would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie
+was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride--a tall, fair, beautiful
+woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls
+after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful
+presence, sixty-four--no, sixty-three--of her auditors decided to grow
+up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed
+incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in
+an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never--she
+realized it perfectly--could she have competed in femininity with
+Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to
+practise from the cradle.
+
+They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school,
+Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie
+and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her
+shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."
+
+After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers
+gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the
+girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor
+followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a
+reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the
+town."
+
+The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss
+Lord came to investigate--and she came on her tiptoes.
+
+Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a
+short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted
+upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp,
+while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.
+
+"Margarite! Get down!" someone suddenly warned in frightened tones above
+the uproar.
+
+"You needn't call me Margarite. I'm Kid McCoy of Cripple Creek."
+
+Her eye caught sight of Miss Lord towering above the heads crowded in
+the doorway and she quite suddenly climbed down. For once, Miss Lord was
+without words. She stared for a space of three minutes; finally, she
+managed to articulate:
+
+"Sunday evening in a Church school!"
+
+The audience dispersed, and Miss Lord and Miss McCoy remained alone.
+Rosalie fled to the farthermost reaches of Paradise Alley and discussed
+possible punishments with Patty and Conny for a trembling hour.
+"Lights-out" had rung before she summoned courage to steal back to the
+darkened South Corridor. The sound of smothered sobbing came from
+Margarite's bed. Rosalie sank down on her knees and put her arm around
+her room-mate. The sobbing ceased while Margarite rigidly held her
+breath.
+
+"Kid," she comforted, "don't mind Lordie--she's a horrid, snooping old
+thing! What did she say?"
+
+"I'm not to leave bounds for a month, have to learn five psalms by heart
+and take f-fifty demerits."
+
+"Fifty! It's a perfect shame! You'll never work them off. She had no
+_right_ to make a fuss when you'd been good so long."
+
+"I don't care!" said Kid, fiercely, as she struggled to free herself
+from Rosalie's embrace. "She'll never have a chance again to call me her
+sweet little daughter."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Onions and Orchids
+
+
+"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
+
+Patty dreamily assured herself of this important truth for the twentieth
+time, as she sat by the open schoolroom window, her eyes on the
+billowing whiteness of the cherry tree which had burst into blossom
+overnight.
+
+It was particularly necessary that she should finish her lessons with
+dispatch, because it was Saturday, and she was going to the city with
+Mademoiselle's party to spend an hour in the dentist's chair. But the
+weather was not conducive to concentrated effort. After an hour of
+half-hearted study, she closed her geometry, and started upstairs to
+dress, leaving the stay-at-homes to another hour of work.
+
+She started upstairs; but she did not get very far on the way. As she
+passed the open door that led to the back porch, she stepped outside to
+examine the cherry tree at close range; then she strolled the length of
+the pergola to see how the wistaria was coming on; from there, it was
+just a step to the lane, with its double row of pink-tipped apple trees.
+Before she knew it, Patty found herself sitting on the stone wall at the
+end of the lower pasture. Behind her lay the confines of St. Ursula's.
+Before her the World.
+
+She sat on the top of the wall, and dangled her feet out of bounds. The
+very most scandalous crime one could commit at St. Ursula's was to go
+out of bounds without permission. Patty sat and gazed at the forbidden
+land. She knew that she had no time to waste if she were to catch the
+hearse and the train and the dentist's chair. But still she sat and
+dreamed. Finally, far across the fields on the highroad, she spied the
+hearse bowling merrily to the station. Then it occurred to her that she
+had forgotten to report to Mademoiselle that she was going, and that
+Mademoiselle, accordingly, would not be missing her. At the school, of
+course, they would think that she had gone, and likewise would not be
+missing her. Without any premeditated iniquity, she was free!
+
+She sat a few moments longer to let the feeling penetrate. Then she slid
+over the wall and started--a joyous young mutineer, seeking adventure.
+Following the cheery course of the brook, she dipped into a tangled
+ravine and stretch of woodland, raced down a hillside and across a
+marshy meadow, leaping gaily from hummock to hummock--occasionally
+missing and going in. She laughed aloud at these misadventures, and
+waved her arms and romped with the wind. In addition to the delicious
+sense of feeling free, was added the delicious sense of feeling bad. The
+combination was intoxicating.
+
+And so, always following the stream, she came at last to another
+wood--not a wild wood like the first, but a tame, domesticated wood. The
+dead limbs were cut away, and the ground was neatly brushed up under
+the trees. The brook flowed sedately between fern-bordered banks, under
+rustic bridges, and widened occasionally into pools carpeted with lily
+pads. Mossy paths set with stepping-stones led off into mysterious
+depths that the eye could not penetrate: the leaves were just out enough
+to half hide and to tantalize. The grass was starred with crocuses. It
+looked like an enchanted wood in a fairy tale.
+
+This second wood, however, was bordered by a solid stone wall, and on
+top of the wall, by four strands of barbed wire. Signs appeared at
+intervals--three were visible from where Patty stood--stating that these
+were private grounds, and that trespassers would be prosecuted to the
+full extent of the law.
+
+Patty knew well to whom it belonged; she had often passed the front
+gates which faced on the other road. The estate was celebrated in the
+neighborhood, in the United States, for the matter of that. It comprised
+500 acres and belonged to a famous--or infamous--multi-millionaire. His
+name was Silas Weatherby, and he was the originator of a great many
+Wicked Corporations. He had beautiful conservatories full of tropical
+plants, a sunken Italian garden, an art collection and picture gallery.
+He was a crusty old codger always engaged in half-a-dozen lawsuits. He
+hated the newspapers, and the newspapers hated him. He was in
+particularly bad repute at St. Ursula's, because, in response to a
+politely couched note from the principal, asking that the art class
+might view his Botticelli and the botany class his orchids, he had
+ungraciously replied that he couldn't have a lot of school girls running
+over his place--if he let them come one year, he would have to let them
+come another, and he didn't wish to establish a precedent.
+
+Patty looked at the "No Trespassing" signs and the barbed wire, and she
+looked at the wood beyond. They couldn't do anything if they did catch
+her, she reasoned, except turn her out. People weren't jailed nowadays
+for taking a peaceable walk in other people's woods. Besides, the
+millionaire person was attending a directors' meeting in Chicago. This
+bit of neighborhood gossip she had gleaned that morning in her weekly
+perusal of the daily press--Saturday night at dinner they were supposed
+to talk on current topics, so Saturday morning they glanced at the
+headlines and an editorial. Since the family were not at home, why not
+drop in and inspect the Italian garden? The servants were doubtless more
+polite than the master.
+
+She selected a portion of the wall where the wire seemed slack, and
+wriggled under, stomach-wise, tearing only a small hole in the shoulder
+of her blouse. She played with the enchanted wood half an hour or so;
+then following a path, she quite suddenly left the wood behind, and
+popped out into a garden--not a flower garden, but a kitchen garden on
+an heroic scale. Neat plots of sprouting vegetables were bordered by
+currant bushes, and the whole was surrounded by a high brick wall,
+against which pear trees were trained in the English fashion.
+
+A gardener was engaged, with his back toward Patty, in setting out baby
+onions. She studied him dubiously, divided between a prompting to run,
+and a social instinct of friendliness. He was an extremely picturesque
+gardener, dressed in knickerbockers and leather gaiters, with a touch of
+red in his waistcoat, and a cardigan jacket and a cap on the side of his
+head. He did not look very affable; but he did look rheumatic--even if
+he chased her, she was sure that she could run faster than he. So she
+settled herself on his wheelbarrow and continued to watch him, while she
+pondered an opening remark.
+
+He glanced up suddenly and caught sight of her. The surprise nearly
+tipped him over.
+
+"Good morning!" said Patty pleasantly.
+
+"Ugh!" grunted the man. "What are you doing there?"
+
+"Watching you plant onions."
+
+This struck Patty as a self-evident truth, but she was perfectly willing
+to state it.
+
+He grunted again as he straightened his back and took a step toward her.
+
+"Where'd you come from?" he demanded gruffly.
+
+"Over there." Patty waved her hand largely to westward.
+
+"Humph!" he remarked. "You belong to that school--Saint Something or
+Other?"
+
+She acknowledged it. Saint Ursula's monogram was emblazoned large upon
+her sleeve.
+
+"Do they know you're out?"
+
+"No," she returned candidly, "I don't believe they do. I am quite sure
+of it in fact. They think I've gone to the dentist's with Mam'selle, and
+she thinks I'm at school. So it leaves me entirely at leisure. I thought
+I'd come over and see what Mr. Weatherby's Italian garden looks like.
+I'm interested in Italian gardens."
+
+"Well I'll be--!" He commenced, and came a trifle nearer and stared
+again. "Did you happen to see any 'No Trespassing' signs as you came
+through?"
+
+"Mercy, yes! The whole place is peppered with 'em."
+
+"They don't seem to have impressed you much."
+
+"Oh, I never pay any attention to 'No Trespassing' signs," said Patty
+easily. "You'd never get anywhere in this world if you let _them_ bother
+you."
+
+The man unexpectedly chuckled.
+
+"I don't believe you would!" he agreed. "I've never let them bother me,"
+he added meditatively.
+
+"Can't I help you plant your onions?" Patty asked politely. It struck
+her that this might be the quickest route to the Italian garden.
+
+"Why, yes, thank you!"
+
+He accepted her offer with unexpected cordiality, and gravely explained
+the mode of work. The onions were very tiny, and they must be set
+right-side up with great care; because it is very difficult for an
+embryonic onion to turn itself over after it has once got started in the
+wrong direction.
+
+Patty grasped the business very readily, and followed along in the next
+row three feet behind him. It turned out sociable work; by the end of
+fifteen minutes they were quite old friends. The talk ranged far--over
+philosophy and life and morals. He had a very decided opinion on every
+subject--she put him down as Scotch--he seemed a well-informed old
+fellow though, and he read the papers. Patty had also read the paper
+that morning. She discoursed at some length upon whether or not
+corporations should be subject to state control. She stoutly agreed with
+her editor that they should. He maintained that they were like any other
+private property, and that it was nobody's damned business how they
+managed themselves.
+
+"A penny, please," said Patty, holding out her hand.
+
+"A penny?--what for?"
+
+"That 'damn.' Every time you use slang or bad grammar you have to drop a
+penny in the charity box. 'Damn' is much worse than slang; it's
+swearing. I ought to charge you five cents, but since this is the first
+offense, I'll let you off with one."
+
+He handed over his penny, and Patty gravely pocketed it.
+
+"What sort of things do you learn in that school?" he inquired with a
+show of curiosity.
+
+She obligingly furnished a sample:
+
+"The perimeters of similar polygons are as their homologous sides."
+
+"You will find that useful," he commented with the suggestion of a
+twinkle in his eye.
+
+"Very," she agreed--"on examination day."
+
+After half an hour, onion-planting grew to be wearying work; but Patty
+was bound to be game, and stick to her job as long as he did. Finally,
+however, the last onion was in, and the gardener rose and viewed the
+neat rows with some satisfaction.
+
+"That will do for to-day," he declared; "we've earned a rest."
+
+They sat down, Patty on the wheelbarrow, the man on an upturned tub.
+
+"How do you like working for Mr. Weatherby?" she inquired. "Is he as bad
+as the papers make out?"
+
+The gardener chuckled slightly as he lighted his pipe.
+
+"Well," he said judiciously, "he's always been very decent to me, but I
+don't know as his enemies have any cause to love him."
+
+"I think he's horrid!" said Patty.
+
+"Why?" asked the man with a slight air of challenge. He was quite
+willing to run his master down himself, but he would not permit an
+outsider to do it.
+
+"He's so terribly stingy with his old conservatories. The Dowager--I
+mean Mrs. Trent, the principal, you know--wrote and asked him to let the
+botany class see his orchids, and he was just as rude as he could be!"
+
+"I'm sure he didn't mean it," the man apologized.
+
+"Oh, yes, he did!" maintained Patty. "He said he couldn't have a lot of
+school girls running through and breaking down his vines--as if we would
+do such a thing! We have perfectly beautiful manners. We learn 'em every
+Thursday night."
+
+"Maybe he was a little rude," he agreed. "But you see, he hasn't had
+your advantages, Miss. He didn't learn his manners in a young ladies'
+boarding-school."
+
+"He didn't learn them anywhere," Patty shrugged.
+
+The gardener took a long pull at his pipe and studied the horizon with
+narrowed eyes.
+
+"It isn't quite fair to judge him the way you would other people," he
+said slowly. "He's had a good deal of trouble in his life; and now he's
+old, and I dare say pretty lonely sometimes. All the world's against
+him--when people are decent, he knows it's because they're after
+something. Your teacher, now, is polite when she wants to see his
+conservatories, but I'll bet she believes he's an old thief!"
+
+"Isn't he?" asked Patty.
+
+The man grinned slightly.
+
+"He has his moments of honesty like the rest of us."
+
+"Perhaps," Patty grudgingly conceded, "he may not be so bad when you
+know him. It's often the way. Now, there was Lordy, our Latin teacher. I
+used to despise her; and then--in the hour of trial--she came up to the
+scratch, and was _per-fect-ly bully_!"
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"A penny."
+
+Patty handed him back his own.
+
+"She kept me from getting expelled--she did, really. I've never been
+able to hate her since. And you know, I miss it dreadfully. It's sort of
+fun having an enemy."
+
+"I've had a good many," he nodded, "and I've always managed to enjoy
+them."
+
+"And probably they're really quite nice?" she suggested.
+
+"Oh, yes," he agreed, "the worst criminals are often very pleasant
+people when you see their right side."
+
+"Yes, that's true," said Patty. "It's mainly chance that makes people
+bad--I know it is in my own case. This morning for instance, I got up
+with every intention of learning my geometry and going to the
+dentist's--and yet--here I am! And so," she pointed a moral, "you always
+ought to be kind to criminals and remember that under different
+circumstances you might have been in jail yourself."
+
+"That thought," he acknowledged, "has often occurred to me. I--we--that
+is," he resumed after a moment of amused meditation, "Mr. Weatherby
+believes in giving a man a chance. If you have any convict friends, who
+are looking for a job, this is the place to send them. We used to have a
+cattle thief taking care of the cows, and a murderer in charge of the
+orchids."
+
+"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a
+murderer."
+
+"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."
+
+"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.
+
+"A good many years--and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air
+of challenge.
+
+"I hope he appreciates you?"
+
+"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."
+
+He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.
+
+"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian
+garden?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."
+
+"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."
+
+"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"
+
+"It's tiresome work--good for my character."
+
+"Oh!" Patty laughed.
+
+"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me,
+I stop and think how my own back ached."
+
+"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced
+approvingly.
+
+"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.
+
+The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and
+fountains and clipped yew trees.
+
+"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.
+
+"And who is she?"
+
+"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year,
+because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most
+plants--at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and
+Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van
+Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay
+in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the
+city and gives them to Keren."
+
+"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for
+the rest to help?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends
+can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes
+back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or
+Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears
+eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."
+
+"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I
+could help?"
+
+Patty glanced about tentatively.
+
+"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't
+got in her book."
+
+"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay
+a visit to the orchid house."
+
+They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the
+conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely
+forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock
+in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St.
+Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before--and
+that she was in a starving condition.
+
+"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"
+
+"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"
+
+"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."
+
+"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he
+suggested.
+
+"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.
+
+She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she
+cared little who furnished it.
+
+"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter
+and--er--cookies. Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four
+o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without
+being missed."
+
+"You just wait in the pavilion, and I'll see what the gardener's cottage
+can supply us."
+
+He was back in fifteen minutes, chuckling as he lugged a big hamper.
+
+"We'll have a picnic," he proposed.
+
+"Oh, let's!" said Patty joyously. She did not mind eating with him in
+the least, for he had washed his hands, and appeared quite clean.
+
+She helped him unpack the hamper and set the table in the little
+pavilion beside the fountain. He had lettuce sandwiches, a pat of
+cottage cheese, a jug of milk, orange marmalade, sugar cookies, and
+gingerbread hot from the oven.
+
+"What a perfectly bully spread!" she cried.
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"Another penny!"
+
+Patty peered into an empty pocket.
+
+"You'll have to charge it. I've used up all my ready money."
+
+The spring sun was warm, the fountain was splashing, the wind was
+sprinkling the pavilion floor with white magnolia petals. Patty helped
+herself to marmalade with a happy sigh of contentment.
+
+"The most fun in the world is to run away from the things you ought to
+do," she pronounced.
+
+He acknowledged this immoral truth with a laugh.
+
+"I suppose you ought to be working?" she asked.
+
+"There are one or two little matters that might be the better for my
+attention."
+
+"And aren't you glad you're not doing them?"
+
+"Bully glad!"
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"Give it back."
+
+The cent returned to her pocket, and the meal progressed gaily. Patty
+was in an elated frame of mind, and Patty's elation was catching.
+Escaping from bounds, trespassing on a private estate, planting onions,
+and picnicking in the Italian garden with the head gardener--she had
+never had such a dizzying whirl of adventures. The head gardener also
+seemed to enjoy the sensation of offering sanctuary to a runaway school
+girl. Their appreciation of the lark was mutual.
+
+As Patty, with painstaking honesty, was dividing the last of the
+gingerbread into two exact halves, she was startled by the sound of a
+footstep on the gravel path behind; and there walked into their party a
+groom--a crimson-faced, gaping young man who stood mechanically bobbing
+his head. Patty stared back a touch apprehensively. She hoped that she
+hadn't got her friend into trouble. It was very possibly against the
+rules for gardeners to entertain runaway school girls in the Italian
+garden. The groom continued to stare and to duck his head, and her
+companion rose and faced him.
+
+"Well?" he inquired with a note of sharpness. "What do you want?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but this telegram come, and Richard says it might be
+important, sir, and he says for me to find you, sir."
+
+He received the telegram, ran his eyes over it, scribbled an answer on
+the back with a gold pencil which he extracted from his pocket, and
+dismissed the man with a curt nod. The envelope had fluttered to the
+table and lay there face up. Patty inadvertently glanced at the address,
+and as the truth flashed across her, she hid her head against the back
+of the stone seat in a gale of laughter. Her companion looked
+momentarily sheepish, then he too laughed.
+
+"You have enjoyed the privilege of telling me exactly how rude you think
+I am. Not even the reporters always allow themselves that pleasure."
+
+"Oh, but that was before I knew you! I think now that you have perfectly
+beautiful manners."
+
+He bowed his thanks.
+
+"I shall endeavor to have better in the future. It will be my pleasure
+to put my greenhouses at the disposal of the young ladies of St.
+Ursula's some afternoon soon."
+
+"Really?" she smiled. "That's awfully nice of you!"
+
+They repacked the hamper and divided the crumbs among the goldfish in
+the fountain.
+
+"And now," he inquired, "which will you visit first--the picture gallery
+or the orchids?"
+
+Patty emerged from the orchid house at four o'clock, her arms filled
+with an unprecedented collection for Conny's book. The big yellow
+four-in-hand coach was standing outside the stable being washed. She
+examined it interestedly.
+
+"Should you like to have me drive you home on that?"
+
+"Oh, I'd love it!" Patty dimpled. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't be wise,"
+she added on second thought. "No, I am sure it wouldn't be wise," she
+firmly turned her back. Her eyes fell on the road, and an apprehensive
+light sprang to her face.
+
+"There's the hearse!"
+
+"The hearse?"
+
+"Yes, the school wagonette. I think I'd better be going."
+
+He accompanied her back, through the vegetable garden and the enchanted
+wood, and held her flowers while she crawled under the fence, tearing a
+hole in the other shoulder of her blouse.
+
+They shook hands through the barbed wire.
+
+"I've enjoyed both the onions and the orchids," said Patty politely,
+"and particularly the gingerbread. And if I ever have any convict
+friends in need of employment, I may send them to you?"
+
+"Do so," he urged. "I will find them a job here."
+
+She started off, then turned to wave good-by to him.
+
+"I've had a perfectly bully time!"
+
+"A penny!" he called.
+
+Patty laughed and ran.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+The Lemon Pie and the Monkey-Wrench
+
+
+Evalina Smith was a morbid young person who loved to dabble in the
+supernatural. Her taste in literature was for Edgar A. Poe. In religion
+she inclined toward spiritualism. Her favorite amusement was to gather a
+few shuddering friends about her, turn out the gas, and tell ghost
+stories. She had an extensive repertoire of ghoulish incidents, that
+were not fiction but the actual experience of people she knew. She had
+even had one or two spiritual adventures herself; and she would set
+forth the details with wide eyes and lowered voice, while her auditors
+held one another's hands and shivered. The circle in which Evalina
+moved had not much sense of humor.
+
+One Saturday evening St. Ursula's School was in an unusually social
+mood. Evalina was holding a ghost party in her room in the East Wing;
+Nancy Lee had invited her ten dearest friends to a birthday spread in
+Center; the European History class was celebrating the completion of the
+Thirty-Years War by a molasses-candy pull in the kitchen; and Kid McCoy
+was conducting a potato race down the length of the South Corridor--the
+entrance fee a postage stamp, the prize sealed up in a large bandbox and
+warranted to be worth a quarter.
+
+Patty, who was popular, had been invited to all four of the functions.
+She had declined Nancy's spread, because Mae Van Arsdale, her particular
+enemy, was invited; but had accepted the other invitations, and was
+busily spending the evening as an itinerant guest.
+
+She carried her potato, insecurely balanced on a teaspoon, over one
+table and under another, through a hoop suspended from the ceiling, and
+deposited it in the wastebasket at the end of the corridor, in exactly
+two minutes and forty-seven seconds. (Kid McCoy had a stop-watch.) This
+was far ahead of anyone else's record, and Patty lingered hopefully a
+few minutes in the neighborhood of the bandbox; but a fresh inrush of
+entries postponed the bestowal of the prize, so she left the judges to
+settle the question at their leisure, and drifted on to Evalina's room.
+
+She found it dark, except for the fitful blue flare of alcohol and salt
+burning in a fudge pan. The guests were squatting about on sofa
+cushions, looking decidedly spotty in the unbecoming light. Patty
+silently dropped down on a vacant cushion, and lent polite attention to
+Evalina, who at the moment held the floor.
+
+"Well, you know, I had a very remarkable experience myself last summer.
+Happening to visit a spiritualist camp, I attended a materializing
+seance."
+
+"What's that?" asked Rosalie Patton.
+
+"A seance in which spirits appear to mediums in the material form they
+occupied during life," Evalina condescendingly explained. Rosalie was
+merely an invited guest. She did not belong to the inner cult.
+
+"Oh!" said Rosalie, vaguely enlightened.
+
+"I didn't really expect anything to happen," Evalina continued, "and I
+was just thinking how foolish I was to have wasted that dollar, when the
+medium shut her eyes and commenced to tremble. She said she saw the
+spirit of a beautiful young girl who had passed over five years before.
+The girl was dressed in white and her clothes were dripping wet, and she
+carried in her hand a monkey-wrench."
+
+"A monkey-wrench!" cried Patty. "What on earth--"
+
+"I don't know any more than you do," said Evalina impatiently. "I'm just
+telling what happened. The Medium couldn't get her full name, but she
+said her first name commenced with 'S.' And instantly, it came over me
+that it was my Cousin Susan who fell into a well and was drowned. I
+hadn't thought of her for years, but the description answered perfectly.
+And I asked the medium, and after a little, she said yes, it was Susan,
+and that she had come to send me a warning."
+
+Evalina allowed an impressive pause to follow, while her auditors leaned
+forward in strained attention.
+
+"A warning!" breathed Florence Hissop.
+
+"Yes. She told me never to eat lemon pie."
+
+Patty choked with sudden laughter. Evalina cast her a look and went on.
+
+"The medium shivered again and came out of the trance, and she couldn't
+remember a thing she had said! When I told her about the monkey-wrench
+and the lemon pie, she was just as much puzzled as I was. She said that
+the messages that came from the spirit world were often inexplicable;
+though they might seem to deal with trivial things, yet in reality they
+contained a deep and hidden truth. Probably some day I would have an
+enemy who would try to poison me with lemon pie, and I must never, on
+_any_ account, taste it again."
+
+"And haven't you?" Patty asked.
+
+"Never," said Evalina sadly.
+
+Patty composed her features into an expression of scientific inquiry.
+
+"Do you think the medium told the truth?"
+
+"I've never had any cause to doubt it."
+
+"Then you really believe in ghosts?"
+
+"In spirits?" Evalina amended gently. "Many strange things happen that
+cannot be explained in any other manner."
+
+"What would you do if her spirit should appear to you? Would you be
+scared?"
+
+"Certainly not!" said Evalina, with dignity. "I was very fond of Cousin
+Susan. I have no cause to fear her spirit."
+
+The smell of boiling molasses penetrated from below; Patty excused
+herself and turned toward the kitchen. The spiritual heights on which
+Evalina dwelt, she found a trifle too rare for ordinary breathing.
+
+The candy was on the point of being poured into pans.
+
+"Here, Patty!" Priscilla ordered, "you haven't done any work. Run down
+to the storeroom and get some butter to keep our hands from sticking."
+
+Patty obligingly accompanied the cook to the cellar, with not a thought
+in the world beyond butter. On a shelf in the storeroom stood
+to-morrow's dessert--a row of fifteen lemon pies, with neatly decorated
+tops of white meringue. As Patty looked at them, she was suddenly
+assailed by a wicked temptation; she struggled with it for a moment of
+sanity, but in the end she fell. While Nora's head was bent over the
+butter tub, Patty opened the window and deftly plumped a pie through the
+iron grating onto the ledge without. By the time Nora raised her head,
+the window was shut again, and Patty was innocently translating the
+label on a bottle of olive oil.
+
+As they pulled their candy in a secluded corner of the kitchen, Patty
+hilariously confided her plan to Conny and Priscilla. Conny was always
+game for whatever mischief was afoot, but Priscilla sometimes needed
+urging. She was--most inconveniently--beginning to develop a moral
+nature, and the other two, who as yet were comfortably un-moral,
+occasionally found her difficult to coerce.
+
+Priscilla finally lent a grudging consent, while Conny enthusiastically
+volunteered to acquire a monkey-wrench. Being captain of sports, she
+could manage the matter better than Patty. On a flying visit to the
+stables, ostensibly to consult with Martin as to a re-marking of the
+tennis courts, she singled out from his tool bench the monkey-wrench of
+her choice, casually covered it with her sweater, and safely bore it
+away. She and Patty conveyed their booty by devious secret ways to
+Paradise Alley. A great many alarms were given on the passage, a great
+deal of muffled giggling ensued, but finally the monkey-wrench and the
+pie--slightly damaged as to its meringue top, but still distinctly
+recognizable as lemon--were safely cached under Patty's bed to await
+their part in the night's adventure.
+
+"Lights-out" as usual, rang at nine-thirty, but it rang to deaf ears. A
+spirit of restless festivity was abroad. The little girls in the "Baby
+Ward" larked about the halls in a pillow fight, until they were sternly
+ordered to bed by the Dowager herself. It was close to ten o'clock when
+the candy-pullers washed their sticky hands and turned upstairs.
+
+Patty found a delegation of potato racers waiting with the news that she
+had won the prize. An interested crowd gathered to watch her open the
+box; it contained a tin funeral wreath that had been displayed that
+winter in the window of the village undertaker--Kid had bought it cheap,
+owing to fly specks that would not rub off. The wreath was hoisted on
+the end of a shinny stick and marched through the corridor to the tune
+of "John Brown's Body," while Mademoiselle ineffectually wrung her hands
+and begged for quiet.
+
+"_Mes cheres enfantes_--it is ten o'clock. _Soyez tranquilles._
+Patty--_Mon Dieu_--How you are bad! Margarite McCoy, you do not listen
+to me? _Nous verrons!_ Go to your room, dis in-stant! You do not belong
+in my hall. Children! I implore. Go to bed--all--_tout de suite_!"
+
+The procession cheered and marched on, until Miss Lord descended from
+the East and commanded silence. Miss Lord when incensed was effectual.
+The peace of conquest settled for a time over Paradise Alley, and she
+returned to her own camp. But a fresh hub-bub broke out, when it was
+discovered that someone had sprinkled granulated sugar, in liberal
+quantities, through every bed in the Alley. Patty and Conny would have
+been suspected, had their own sheets not yielded a plentiful harvest. It
+was another half hour before the beds were remade, and the school
+finally composed to sleep.
+
+When the teacher on duty had made her last rounds, and everything was
+quiet, Patty turned back the covers of her bed and cautiously stepped to
+the floor. She was still fully clothed, except that she had changed her
+shoes for softer soled bedroom slippers, better fitted for nocturnal
+adventures. Priscilla and Conny joined her. Fortunately a full moon
+shone high in the sky, and they needed no artificial light. Aided by her
+two assistants, Patty draped the sheets of her bed about her into two
+voluminous wings, and fastened them securely with safety pins. A pillow
+slip was pulled over her head and the corners tied into ears. They
+hesitated a moment with scissors suspended.
+
+"Hurry up and cut a nose," Patty whispered. "I'm smothering!"
+
+"It seems sort of too bad to spoil a perfectly good pillow slip," said
+Priscilla, with a slight access of conscience.
+
+"I'll drop some money in the missionary box," Patty promised.
+
+The nose and eyes were cut; a grinning mouth and devilishly curved
+eyebrows were added with burnt cork. The pillow slip was tied firmly
+about her neck to allow no chance of slipping, the ears waved
+lopsidedly; she was the most amazing specter that ever left a
+respectable grave.
+
+These preparations had occupied some time. It was already ten minutes of
+twelve.
+
+"I'll wait till the stroke of midnight," said Patty. "Then I'll flutter
+into Evalina's room, and wave my wings, and whisper, 'Come!' The
+monkey-wrench and the pie, I'll leave on the foot of her bed, so she'll
+know she wasn't dreaming."
+
+"What if she screams?" asked Priscilla.
+
+"She won't scream. She loves ghosts--especially Cousin Susan. She said
+to-night she'd be glad to meet her."
+
+"But what if she does scream?" persisted Priscilla.
+
+"Oh, that's easy! I'll dash back and pop into bed. Before anybody wakes,
+I'll be sound asleep."
+
+They made a reconnoitering excursion into the empty corridors to make
+sure that all was quiet. Only regular breathing issued from open doors.
+Evalina fortunately lived in a single, but unfortunately, it was at the
+extreme end of the East Wing in the opposite corner of the building from
+Patty's own domicile. Conny and Priscilla, in bedroom slippers and
+kimonos, tiptoed after Patty as she took her flight down the length of
+the Alley. She sailed back and forth and waved her wings in the
+moonlight that streamed through the skylight in the central hall. The
+two spectators clung together and shivered delightedly. In spite of
+having been behind the scenes and assisted at the make-up, they received
+a distinct sensation--what it would be to one suddenly wakened from
+sleep, to a believer in ghosts, they were a bit apprehensive to
+consider. At the entrance to the East Wing, they handed Patty her pie
+and monkey-wrench, and retreated to their own neighborhood. In case of
+an uproar, they did not wish to be discovered too far from home.
+
+Patty flitted on down the corridor, past yawning doors, into Evalina's
+room, where she took up a central position in a patch of moonlight. A
+few sepulchral "Comes!" brought no response. Evalina was a sound
+sleeper.
+
+Patty shook the foot of the bed. The sleeper stirred slightly but slept
+on. This was annoying. The ghost had no mind to make noise enough to
+disturb the neighbors. She laid the pie and the monkey-wrench on the
+counterpane, and shook the bed again, with the insistence of an
+earthquake. As she was endeavoring to resume her properties, Evalina
+sat up and clutched the bed clothes about her neck with a frenzied jerk.
+Patty just had time to save the pie--the monkey-wrench went to the floor
+with a crash; and the crash, to Patty's startled senses, was echoed and
+intensified from far down the hall. She had no chance to wave her wings
+or murmur, "Come." Evalina did not wait for her cue. She opened her
+mouth as wide as it would open, and emitted shriek after shriek of such
+ear-splitting intensity, that Patty, for a moment, was too aghast to
+move. Then, still hugging the pie in her arms, she turned and ran.
+
+[Illustration: Evalina sat up and clutched the bedclothes about her
+neck]
+
+To her consternation the cries were answered ahead. The whole house
+seemed to be awake and shrieking. She could hear doors banging and
+frightened voices demanding the cause of the tumult. She was making a
+quick dash for her own room, trusting to the confusion and darkness to
+make good her escape, when Miss Lord, gaily attired in a flowered
+bath-robe, appeared at the end of the corridor. Patty was headed
+straight for her arms. With a gasp of terror, she turned back toward
+the shrieking Evalina.
+
+She realized by now that she was in a trap.
+
+A narrow passage led from the East Wing to the servants' quarters. She
+dived into this. If she could reach the back stairs it would mean
+safety. She pushed the door open a crack, and to her horror, was
+confronted by a worse uproar. The servants' quarters were in a state of
+panic. She saw Maggie dashing past, wrapped in a pink striped blanket,
+while above the general confusion rose Norah's rich brogue:
+
+"Help! Murther! I seen a bur-r-gu-lar!"
+
+She shut the door and shrank back into the passage. Behind her Evalina
+was still hysterically wailing:
+
+"I saw a ghost! I saw a ghost!"
+
+Before her the cry of "Burglars!" was growing louder.
+
+Utterly bewildered at this double demonstration, Patty flattened herself
+against the wall in the friendly darkness of the passage, while she
+soulfully thanked Heaven that the proposed electric lights had not yet
+been installed. A dozen voices were calling for matches, but no one
+seemed to find any. She pantingly tugged at the pillowcase fastened
+about her neck; but Conny had tied it firmly with a white hair ribbon,
+and the knot was behind. In any case, even if she could remove her
+masquerade, she was lost if they found her; for she was still wearing
+the white dress of the evening, and not even Patty's imagination could
+compass an excuse for that at twelve o'clock at night.
+
+The search was growing nearer; she caught the glimmer of a light ahead.
+At any moment they might open the door of the passage. The linen closet
+was the only refuge at hand--and that was very temporary. She felt for
+the door handle and slipped inside. If she could find a pile of sheets,
+she might dive to the bottom and hope to escape notice, being mostly
+sheet herself. But it was Saturday, and all the linen had gone down. A
+long, slippery, inclined chute connected the room with the laundry in
+the basement two floors below. Steps were already audible in the
+passage. She heard Miss Lord's voice say:
+
+"Bring a light! We'll search the linen closet."
+
+Patty did not hesitate. In imagination she could already feel the
+pressure of Miss Lord's grasp upon her shoulder. A broken neck was
+preferable.
+
+Still hugging the lemon pie--in all her excitement she had clasped it
+firmly--she climbed into the chute, stretched her feet out straight in
+front, and pushed off. For two breathless seconds she dashed through
+space, then her feet hit the trap door at the bottom, and she shot into
+the laundry.
+
+One instant earlier, the door from the kitchen stairs had cautiously
+opened, and a man had darted into the laundry. He had just had time to
+cast a glance of boundless relief about the empty, moonlit room, when
+Patty and the pie catapulted against him. They went down together in a
+whirl of waving wings. Patty being on top picked herself up first. She
+still clutched her pie--at least what was left of it; the white meringue
+was spread over the man's hair and face; but the lemon part was still
+intact. The man sat up dazedly, rubbed the meringue from his eyes, cast
+one look at his assailant, and staggered to his feet. He flattened
+himself against the wall with arms thrown wide for support.
+
+"Holy gee!" he choked. "What in hell uv I got into?"
+
+Patty excused his language, as he did not appear to know that he was
+addressing a lady. He seemed to be laboring under the impression that
+she was the devil.
+
+Her pillow slip by now was very much askew; one ear pointed northward,
+the other southeast, and she could only see out of one eye. It was very
+hot inside and she was gasping for breath. For a palpitating moment they
+merely stared and panted. Then Patty's mind began to work.
+
+"I suppose," she suggested, "you are the burglar they are screaming
+about?"
+
+The man leaned back limply and stared, his wide, frightened eyes
+shining through a fringe of meringue.
+
+"I," said Patty, completing the introduction, "am the ghost."
+
+He muttered something under his breath. She could not make out whether
+he was praying or swearing.
+
+"Don't be afraid," she added kindly. "I won't hurt you."
+
+"Is it a bloomin' insane asylum?"
+
+"Just a girl's school."
+
+"Gosh!" he observed.
+
+"Hush!" said Patty. "They're coming this way now!"
+
+The sound of running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while
+bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former
+tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost
+regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual
+danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied
+his face as it showed through the interstices of the meringue. He had
+honest blue eyes and yellow curls. She suddenly stretched out a hand
+and grasped him by an elbow.
+
+"Quick! They'll be here in a minute. I know a place to hide. Come with
+me."
+
+She pushed him unresisting down a passage and into a storeroom, boarded
+off from the main cellar, where the scenery of the dramatic society was
+kept.
+
+"Get down on your hands and knees and follow me," she ordered, as she
+stooped low and dived behind a pile of canvas.
+
+The man crawled after. They emerged at the farther end into a small
+recess behind some canvas trees. Patty sat on a stump and offered a
+wooden rock to her companion.
+
+"They'll never think of looking here," she whispered. "Martin's too fat
+to crawl through."
+
+A small barred window let in some faint moonlight and they had an
+opportunity to study each other more at leisure. The man did not yet
+seem comfortable in Patty's presence; he was occupying the farthest
+possible corner of his rock. Presently he rubbed his coat sleeve over
+his head and looked long and earnestly at the meringue. He was
+evidently at a loss to identify the substance; in the rush of events he
+had taken no note of the pie.
+
+Patty brought her one eye to bear down upon him.
+
+"I'm simply melting!" she whispered. "Do you think you could untie that
+knot?"
+
+She bent her head and presented the back of her neck.
+
+The man by now was partially reassured as to the humanness of his
+companion, and he obediently worked at the knot but with hands that
+trembled. At last it came loose, and Patty with a sigh of relief emerged
+into the open. Her hair was somewhat tousled and her face was streaked
+with burnt cork, but her blue eyes were as honest as his own. The sight
+reassured him.
+
+"Gee!" he muttered in a wave of relief.
+
+"Keep still!" Patty warned.
+
+The hunt was growing nearer. There was the sound of tramping feet in the
+laundry and they could hear the men talking.
+
+"A ghost and a burglar!" said Martin, in fine scorn. "That's a likely
+combination, ain't it now?"
+
+They made an obligatory and superficial search through the coal cellar.
+Martin jocularly inquiring:
+
+"Did ye look in the furnace, Mike? Here Osaki, me lad, ye're small. Take
+a crawl oop the poipes and see if the ghost ain't hidin' there."
+
+They opened the door of the property-room and glanced inside. The
+burglar ducked his head and held his breath, while Patty struggled with
+an ill-timed desire to giggle. Martin was in a facetious mood. He
+whistled in the manner of calling a dog.
+
+"Here, Ghostie! Here, Burgie! Come here, old fellow!"
+
+They banged the door shut and their footsteps receded. Patty was rocking
+back and forth in a species of hysterics, stuffing the corner of the
+sheet into her mouth to keep from laughing audibly. The burglar's teeth
+were chattering.
+
+"Lord!" he breathed. "It may be funny for you, Miss. But it means the
+penitentiary for me."
+
+Patty interrupted her hysterics and regarded him with disgust.
+
+"It would mean expulsion for me, or at least something awfully
+unpleasant. But that's no reason for going all to pieces. You're a nice
+sort of a burglar! Brace up and be a sport!"
+
+He mopped his brow and removed another portion of icing.
+
+"You must be an awful amateur to break into a house like this," she said
+contemptuously. "Don't you know the silver's plated?"
+
+"I didn't know nuthin' about it," he said sullenly. "I see the window
+open over the shed roof and I clum up. I was hungry and was lookin' for
+somethin' to eat. I ain't had nothin' since yesterday mornin'."
+
+Patty reached to the floor beside her.
+
+"Have some pie."
+
+The man ducked aside as it was poked at him.
+
+"W-what's that?" he gasped.
+
+He was as nervous as a mouse in a cage.
+
+"Lemon pie. It looks a little messy but it's all right. The only thing
+the matter with it is that it has lost its meringue top. That's mostly
+on your head. The rest of it is spread over me and the laundry floor and
+Evalina Smith's bed and the clothes chute."
+
+"Oh!" he murmured in evident relief, as he rubbed his hand over his hair
+for the fourth time. "I was wonderin' what the blame stuff was."
+
+"But the lemon's all here," she urged. "You'd better eat it. It's quite
+nourishing, I believe."
+
+He accepted the pie and fell to eating it with an eagerness that carried
+out the truth of his assertion as to yesterday's breakfast.
+
+Patty watched him, her natural curiosity struggling with her acquired
+politeness. The curiosity triumphed.
+
+"Do you mind telling me how you came to be a burglar? You make such a
+remarkably bad one, that I should think you would have chosen almost any
+other profession."
+
+He told his story between bites. To one more experienced in police
+records, it might have sounded a trifle fishy, but he had an honest face
+and blue eyes, and it never entered her head to doubt him. The burglar
+commenced it sullenly; no one had ever believed him yet and he wasn't
+expecting her to. He would like to have invented something a little more
+plausible, but he lacked the imagination to tell a convincing lie. So,
+as usual, he lamely told the truth.
+
+Patty listened with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by
+lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but
+she managed to get the gist of it.
+
+By rights he was a gardener. In the last place where he worked he used
+to sleep in the attic, because the gentleman he was away a lot, and the
+lady she was afraid not to have a man in the house. And a gas-fitter,
+that he had always thought was his friend, give him some beer one night
+and got him drunk, and took away the key of the back door. And while he
+(the gardener) was sound asleep on the children's sand pile under the
+apple tree in the back yard, the gas-fitter entered the house and stole
+an overcoat and a silver coffee-pot and a box of cigars and a bottle of
+whisky and two umbrellas. And they proved it on him (the gardener) and
+he was sent up for two years. And when he come out, no one wouldn't give
+him no work.
+
+"An' ye can't make me believe," he added bitterly, "that that beer
+wasn't doped!"
+
+"Oh, but it was terrible of you to get drunk!" said Patty, shocked.
+
+"'Twas an accident," he insisted.
+
+"If you are _sure_ that you'll never do it again," she said, "I'll get
+you a job. But you must promise, on your word of honor as a gentleman.
+You know I couldn't recommend a drunkard."
+
+The man grinned feebly.
+
+"I guess ye'll not be findin' anybody that will be wantin' a jailbird."
+
+"Oh, yes, I will! I know exactly the man. He's a friend of mine, and he
+likes jailbirds. He realizes that it's only luck that made him a
+millionaire instead of a convict. He always gives a man a chance to
+start again. He used to have a murderer in charge of his greenhouses,
+and a cattle thief to milk the cows. I'm sure he'll like you. Come with
+me, and I'll write you a letter of introduction."
+
+Patty gathered her sheets about her and prepared to crawl out.
+
+"What are ye doin'?" he demanded quickly. "Y' aren't goin' to hand me
+over?"
+
+"Is it likely?" She regarded him with scorn. "How could I hand you over,
+without handing myself over at the same time?"
+
+The logic of this appealed to him, and he followed meekly on hands and
+knees. She approached the laundry door and listened warily; the search
+had withdrawn to other quarters. She led the way along a passage and up
+a flight of stairs and slipped into the deserted kindergarten room.
+
+"We're safe here," she whispered. "They've already searched it."
+
+She cast about for writing materials. No ink was to be found, but she
+discovered a red crayon pencil, and tore a sheet of paper from a copy
+book. "Honesty is the best policy," was inscribed in flowing characters
+at the top.
+
+She hesitated with her crayon poised.
+
+"If I get you a nice job in charge of onions and orchids and things,
+will you promise never again to drink any beer?"
+
+"Sure," he agreed, but without much enthusiasm.
+
+There was a light of uneasiness in his eye. Nothing in his past
+experience tallied with to-night's adventure; and he suspected an
+ambush.
+
+"Because," said Patty, "it would be awfully embarrassing for me if you
+did get drunk. I should never dare recommend another burglar."
+
+She wrote her note on the window ledge, by moonlight, and read it aloud:
+
+          "_Dear Mr. Weatherby_,--
+
+          "Do you remember the conversation we had the day I
+          ran away and dropped into your onion garden? You
+          said you thought criminals were often quite as
+          good as the rest of us, and that you would find a
+          job for any convict friend I might present. This
+          is to introduce a burglar of my acquaintance who
+          would like to secure a position as gardener. He
+          was trained to be a gardener and much prefers it
+          to burglaring, but finds it difficult to find a
+          place because he has been in prison. He is
+          faithful, honest and industrious, and promises to
+          be sober. I shall appreciate any favor you may
+          show him.
+
+                                "Sincerely yours,
+                                             "PATTY WYATT."
+
+          "P. S.--Please excuse this red crayon. I am
+          writing at midnight, by moonlight in the
+          kindergarten room, and the ink's all locked up.
+          The burglar will explain the circumstances, which
+          are too complicated to write.
+
+                                      "Yours ever,
+                                               "P. W."
+
+She enclosed her note in a large manila envelope that had contained
+weaving mats, and addressed it to Silas Weatherby, Esq. The man received
+it gingerly. He seemed to think that it might go off.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Patty. "Are you afraid of it?"
+
+"Ye're sure," he asked suspiciously, "that Silas Weatherby ain't a
+cop?"
+
+"He's a railroad president."
+
+"Oh!" The burglar looked relieved.
+
+Patty unlocked the window, then paused for a final moral lecture.
+
+"I am giving you a chance to begin again. If you are game, and present
+this letter, you'll get a job. If you're a coward, and don't dare
+present it, you can keep on being a burglar for the rest of your life
+for all I care--and a mighty poor one you'll make!"
+
+She opened the window and waved her hand invitingly toward the outside
+world.
+
+"Good-by, Miss," he said.
+
+"Good-by," said Patty cordially. "And good luck!"
+
+He paused, half in, half out, for a last reassurance.
+
+"Ye're sure it's on the straight, Miss? Y' ain't pitchin' me no curve?"
+
+"It's on the straight." She pledged her word. "I ain't pitchin' you no
+curve."
+
+Patty crept upstairs the back way, and by a wide detour avoided the
+excited crowd still gathered in the East Wing. A fresh hub-bub had
+arisen, for Evalina Smith had found a monkey-wrench on the floor of her
+room. It was shown to the scoffing Martin as visible proof that the
+burglar had been there.
+
+"An it's me own wrench!" he cried in wide-eyed amazement. "Now, what do
+ye think of his nerve?"
+
+Patty hurriedly undressed and tumbled into a kimono. Sleepily rubbing
+her eyes, she joined the assemblage in the hall.
+
+"What's happened?" she asked, blinking at the lights. "Has there been a
+fire?"
+
+A chorus of laughter greeted the question.
+
+"It's a burglar!" said Conny, exhibiting the wrench.
+
+"Oh, _why_ didn't you wake me?" Patty wailed. "I've wanted all my life
+to see a burglar."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two weeks later, a groom arrived on horseback with a polite note for the
+Dowager.
+
+Mr. Weatherby presented his compliments to Mrs. Trent, and desired the
+pleasure of showing the young ladies of the Senior class through his
+art gallery on Friday next at four o'clock.
+
+The Dowager was at a loss to account for this gratuitous courtesy on the
+part of her hitherto unneighborly neighbor. After a moment of
+deliberation, she decided to meet him half way; and the groom rode back
+with an equally polite acceptance.
+
+On Friday next, as the school hearse turned in at the gates of Weatherby
+Hall, the owner stood on the portico waiting to welcome his guests. If
+there were a shade more _empressement_ in his greeting to Patty than to
+her companions, the Dowager did not notice it.
+
+He made an exceptionally attentive host. In person he conducted them
+through the gallery and pointed out the famous Botticelli. Tea was
+served at little tables set on the western terrace. Each girl found a
+gardenia at her plate and a silver bonbonniere with the St. Ursula
+monogram on the cover. After tea their host suggested a visit to the
+Italian garden. As they strolled through the paths, Patty found herself
+walking beside him and the Dowager. His conversation was addressed to
+Mrs. Trent, but an occasional amused glance was directed toward Patty.
+They turned a corner behind a marble pavilion, and came upon a fountain
+and a gardener man, intent upon a border of maiden-hair ferns.
+
+"I have a very remarkable new Swedish gardener," Mr. Weatherby casually
+remarked to the Dowager. "The man is a genius at making plants grow. He
+came highly recommended. Oscar!" he called. "Bring the ladies some of
+those tulips."
+
+The man dropped his watering-can, and approached, hat in hand. He was a
+golden-haired, blue-eyed young chap with an honest smile. He presented
+his flowers, first to the elder lady and then to Patty. As he caught her
+interested gaze, a light of comprehension suddenly leaped to his eyes.
+Her costume and make-up to-day were so very dissimilar to those which
+she had assumed on the occasion of their first meeting, that recognition
+on his part had not been instantaneous.
+
+Patty fell back a step to receive her flowers and the others strolled
+on.
+
+"I have to thank ye, Miss," he said gratefully, "for the finest job I
+ever had. It's all right!"
+
+"You know now," Patty laughed, "that I didn't pitch you no curves?"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+The Gypsy Trail
+
+
+"Heels together. Hips firm, one, two, three, four--Irene McCullough!
+_Will_ you keep your shoulders back and your stomach in? How many times
+must I tell you to stand straight? That's better! We'll start again.
+One, two, three, four."
+
+The exercise droned on. Some twenty of the week's delinquents were
+working off demerits. It was uncongenial work for a sunny Saturday. The
+twenty pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head--across ropes and
+rings and parallel bars--toward the green tree tops and the blue sky;
+and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.
+
+Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her
+orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty
+waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium
+suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any
+of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined.
+No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter
+discipline.
+
+"One, two, three, four--Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It
+isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class
+when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when
+nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order,
+"Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt.
+Break ranks."
+
+With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.
+
+"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as
+they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.
+
+"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"
+
+"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent
+insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"
+
+"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same.
+She's so--so sort of _spirited_, you know--like a skittish horse."
+
+"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the
+upper hand of Jelly once, and _just make her toe the mark_!"
+
+"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into
+your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."
+
+"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky
+mixture in the wash bowl.
+
+The fancy-dress lawn fete, which St. Ursula's School held on the last
+Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon
+the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village
+photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space
+for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven
+down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the
+trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery
+dressing-room.
+
+Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing
+at the school. They had gone as Gypsies--not comic opera Gypsies, but
+real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the
+room with their costumes for a week before the fete.) Patty wore one
+brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf.
+Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped.
+Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were
+the last word in realism.
+
+They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and
+hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a
+worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back
+stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings,
+clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never
+held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary
+indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.
+
+"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."
+
+She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet
+petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.
+
+"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the
+tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."
+
+"You impudent little ragamuffins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the
+shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your
+faces?"
+
+"Washed 'em in black coffee."
+
+Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.
+
+"You're a disgrace to the school!" she pronounced. "Don't let any
+policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."
+
+"Patty! Conny!--Hurry up. The hearse is starting."
+
+Priscilla appeared in the doorway and waved her gridiron frantically.
+Priscilla, late about finding a costume, at the last moment had
+blasphemously gone as St. Laurence, draped in a sheet, with the kitchen
+broiler under her arm.
+
+"We're coming! Tell him to wait." Patty dashed out.
+
+"Don't you want a coat?" Conny shrieked after her.
+
+"No--come on--we don't need coats."
+
+The two raced down the drive after the wagonette--Martin never waited
+for laggards; he let them run and catch up. They sprang onto the rear
+step; and half-a-dozen outstretched hands hauled them in, head first.
+
+They found the photographer's waiting-room a scene of the maddest
+confusion. When sixty excited people occupy the normal space of twelve,
+the effect is not restful.
+
+"Did anyone bring a button-hook?"
+
+"Lend me some powder."
+
+"That's _my_ safety-pin!"
+
+"Where'd you put the burnt cork?"
+
+"Is my hair a perfect sight?"
+
+"Fasten me up--please!"
+
+"Does my petticoat show?"
+
+Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.
+
+"I say, let's get out of this--I'm simply roasting!"
+
+St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the
+vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a
+shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.
+
+"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying
+on a conversation.
+
+"What?" asked the others, with interest.
+
+"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the
+electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about
+all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the
+Christmas vacation. They used to go walking together--and without any
+chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful
+fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss
+Jellings treated that man--it was _per-fect-ly dreadful_! The way she
+jumps on Irene McCullough is _nothing_ to the way she jumped on him."
+
+"_He_ doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said
+Conny simply.
+
+"He doesn't stand it any more."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Well, I--sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the
+Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly
+and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any
+attention to them at first--I'd just got to the place where the
+detective says, 'Is that the mark of a _human_ hand?'--but pretty soon
+they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort
+of embarrassed about interrupting."
+
+"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her
+apologies.
+
+"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something,
+and she wouldn't listen to a word he said--she was _perfectly horrid_.
+You know,--the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I
+don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on
+Saturday for extra gymnasium.'--Well, they kept that up for fifteen
+minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat
+and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back--_I've_ never
+seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever
+since."
+
+"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.
+
+"Yes, she _can_," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see
+that man come back, and show her her place!"
+
+The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day
+commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller
+groups disentangled themselves and posed separately, while those who
+were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others
+laugh.
+
+"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly
+be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And
+will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep
+your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count
+three. One, two, three--thank you very much!"
+
+He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.
+
+It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and
+her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground
+of superior numbers, and they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies
+politely stood aside.
+
+Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's--each playing
+the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins--made up the group. It was to be
+a symbolical picture, Keren explained.
+
+When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to
+catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front.
+It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety;
+she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with
+white basting thread.
+
+Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and
+tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with
+appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but
+these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering
+on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was
+about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle
+slung from three sticks--when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding
+quiet that had settled on the place.
+
+"Where is everybody?"
+
+She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided
+between consternation and laughter.
+
+"Patty! The hearse has gone!--And the street-car people are waiting on
+the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."
+
+"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three
+sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer,
+who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."
+
+"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us
+in the car in these clothes."
+
+"She'll have to," said Patty simply. "She can't leave us on the corner."
+
+They clattered downstairs, but wavered an instant in the friendly
+darkness of the doorway; there was no time, however, for maidenly
+hesitations, and taking their courage in both hands, they plunged into
+the Saturday afternoon crowd that thronged Main Street.
+
+"Oh, Mama! Quick! Look at the Gypsies," a little boy squealed as the two
+pushed past.
+
+"Heavens!" Conny whispered. "I feel like a circus parade."
+
+"Hurry!" Patty panted, taking her by the hand and beginning to run. "The
+car's stopped and they're getting in--Wait! Wait!" She frenziedly waved
+the tambourine above her head.
+
+An express wagon at the crossing blocked their progress. The last of the
+Eleven Thousand Virgins climbed aboard, without once glancing over her
+shoulder; and the car, unheeding, clanged away, and became a yellow spot
+in the distance. The two Gypsies stood on the corner and stared at one
+another in blank interrogation.
+
+"I haven't a cent--have you?"
+
+"Not one."
+
+"How are we going to get home?"
+
+"I haven't an idea."
+
+Patty felt her elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew
+Dominick Murphy, a protege of the school, and an intimate acquaintance
+of her own, regarding her with impish delight.
+
+"Hey, youse! Give us a song and dance."
+
+"At least our friends don't recognize us," said Conny, drawing what
+comfort she could from her incognito.
+
+Quite a crowd had gathered by now, and it was rapidly growing larger.
+Pedestrians had to make a detour into the street in order to get past.
+
+"It wouldn't take us long," said Patty, a spark of mischief breaking
+through the blankness of her face, "to earn money enough for a
+carriage--you thump the tambourine and I'll dance the sailor's
+hornpipe."
+
+"Patty! Behave yourself." Conny for once brought a dampening supply of
+common sense to bear on her companion. "We're going to graduate in
+another week. For goodness' sake, _don't_ let's get expelled first."
+
+She grasped her by the elbow and shoved her insistently down a side
+street. John Drew Murphy and his friends followed for several blocks,
+but having gazed their fill, and perceiving that the Gypsies had no
+entertainment to offer, they gradually dropped away.
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" asked Conny when they had finally shaken off
+the last of the small boys.
+
+"I s'pose we could walk."
+
+"Walk!" Conny exhibited her flapping sole. "You don't expect me to walk
+three miles in that shoe?"
+
+"Very well," said Patty. "What _shall_ we do?"
+
+"We might go back to the photographer's and borrow some car-fare."
+
+"No! I'm not going to parade myself the length of Main Street again with
+_that_ hole in my stocking."
+
+"Very well," Conny shrugged. "Think of something."
+
+"I suppose we could go to the livery stable and--"
+
+"It's on the other side of town--I can't flap all that distance. Every
+time I take a step, I have to lift my foot ten inches high."
+
+"Very well." It was Patty's turn to shrug. "Perhaps you can think of
+something better?"
+
+"I think the simplest way would be to take a car, and ask the conductor
+to charge it to us."
+
+"Yes--and explain for the benefit of all the passengers that we belong
+at St. Ursula's School? It would be all over town by night, and the
+Dowager would be furious."
+
+"Very well--what shall we do?"
+
+They were standing at the moment before a comfortable frame house with
+three children romping on the veranda. The children left off their play
+to come to the top of the steps and stare.
+
+"Come on!" Patty urged. "We'll sing the 'Gypsy Trail.'" (This was the
+latest song that had swept the school.) "I'll play an accompaniment on
+the tambourine, and you can flap your sole. Maybe they'll give us ten
+cents. It would be a beautiful lark to earn our car-fare home--I'm
+_sure_ it's worth ten cents to hear me sing."
+
+Conny glanced up and down the deserted street. No policeman was in
+sight. She grudgingly allowed herself to be drawn up the walk, and the
+music began. The children applauded loudly; and the two were just
+congratulating themselves on a very credible performance, when the door
+opened and a woman appeared--a first cousin to Miss Lord.
+
+"Stop that noise immediately! There's somebody sick inside."
+
+The tone also was reminiscent of Latin. They turned and ran as fast as
+Conny's flapping sole would take her. When they had put three good
+blocks between themselves and the Latin woman, they dropped down on a
+friendly stepping-stone, and leaned against each other's shoulders and
+laughed.
+
+A man rounded the corner of the house before them, pushing a mowing
+machine.
+
+"Here, you!" he ordered. "Move on."
+
+They got up, meekly, and moved on several blocks further. They were
+going in exactly the opposite direction from St. Ursula's school, but
+they couldn't seem to hit on anything else to do, so they kept on moving
+mechanically. They had arrived in the outskirts of the village by now,
+and they presently found themselves face to face with a tall chimney
+and a group of low buildings set in a wide enclosure--the water-works
+and electric plant.
+
+A light of hope dawned in Patty's eyes.
+
+"I'll tell you! We'll go and ask Mr. Gilroy to take us home in his
+automobile."
+
+"Do you know him?" Conny asked dubiously. She had received so many
+affronts that she was growing timid.
+
+"Yes! I know him _intimately_. He was under foot every minute during the
+Christmas vacation. We had a snow fight one day. Come on! He'll love to
+run us out. It will give him an excuse to make up with Jelly."
+
+They passed up a narrow tarred walk toward the brick building labeled
+"Office." Four clerks and a typewriter girl in the outer office
+interrupted their work to laugh as the two apparitions appeared in the
+door. The young man nearest them whirled his chair around in order to
+get a better view.
+
+"Hello, girls!" he said with cheerful familiarity. "Where'd you spring
+from?"
+
+The typewriter, meanwhile, was making audible comments upon the
+discrepancies in Patty's hosiery.
+
+Patty's face flushed darkly under the coffee.
+
+"We have called to see Mr. Gilroy," she said with dignity.
+
+"This is Mr. Gilroy's busy day," the young man grinned. "Wouldn't you
+rather talk to me?"
+
+Patty drew herself up haughtily.
+
+"Please tell Mr. Gilroy--_at once_--that we are waiting to speak to
+him."
+
+"Certainly! I _beg_ your pardon." The young man sprang to his feet with
+an air of elaborate politeness. "Will you kindly give me your cards?"
+
+"I don't happen to have a card with me to-day. Just say that two ladies
+wish to speak with him."
+
+"Ah, yes. One moment, please--Won't you be seated?"
+
+He offered his own chair to Patty, and bringing forward another,
+presented it to Conny with a Chesterfieldian bow. The clerks tittered
+delightedly at this bit of comedy acting, but the Gypsies did not
+condescend to think it funny. They accepted the chairs with a frigid,
+"Thank you," and sat stiffly upright staring at the wastebasket in their
+most distant society manner. While the deferential young man was
+conveying the message to the private office of his chief, public comment
+advanced from Patty's stockings to Conny's shoes. He returned presently,
+and with unruffled politeness invited them please to step this way. He
+ushered them in with a bow.
+
+Mr. Gilroy was writing, and it was a second before he glanced up. His
+eyes widened with astonishment--the clerk had delivered the message
+verbatim. He leaned back in his chair and studied the ladies from head
+to foot, then emitted a curt:
+
+"Well?"
+
+There was not a trace of recognition in his glance.
+
+Patty's only intention had been to announce their identity, and invite
+him to deliver them at St. Ursula's door, but Patty was incapable of
+approaching any matter by the direct route when a labyrinth was also
+available. She drew a deep breath, and to Conny's consternation, plunged
+into the labyrinth.
+
+"You Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy?" she dropped a curtsy. "I come find-a you."
+
+"So I see," said Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, dryly. "And now that you've
+found me, what do you want?"
+
+"I want tell-a your fortune," Patty glibly dropped into the lingo she
+and Conny had practised on the school the night before. "You cross-a my
+hand with silver--I tell-a your fortune."
+
+This was no situation of Conny's choosing, but she was always staunchly
+game.
+
+"Nice-a fortune," she backed Patty up. "Tall young lady. Ver'
+beautiful."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!"
+
+Mr. Gilroy leaned back in his chair and regarded them severely, but with
+a gleam of amusement flickering through.
+
+"Where did you get my name?" he demanded.
+
+Patty waved her hand airily toward the open window and the distant
+horizon--as it showed between the coal sheds and the dynamo building.
+
+"Gypsy peoples, dey learn signs," she explained lucidly. "Sky, wind,
+clouds--all talk--but you no understand. I get message for you--Mr.
+Laurence K. Gilroy--and we come from long-a way off to tell-a your
+fortune." With a pathetic little gesture, she indicated their damaged
+foot gear. "Ver' tired. We travel far."
+
+Mr. Gilroy put his hand in his pocket and produced two silver half
+dollars.
+
+"Here's your money. Now be honest! What sort of a bunco game is this?
+And where in thunder did you get my name?"
+
+They pocketed the money, dropped two more curtsies, and evaded
+inconvenient questions.
+
+"We tell-a your fortune," said Conny, with business-like directness. She
+brought out the pack of cards, plumped herself cross-legged on the
+floor, and dealt them out in a wide circle. Patty seized the gentleman's
+hand in her two coffee-stained little paws, and turned it palm up for
+inspection. He made an embarrassed effort to draw away, but she clung
+with the tenacious grip of a monkey.
+
+"I see a lady!" she announced with promptitude.
+
+"Tall young lady--brown eyes, yellow hair, ver' beautiful," Conny echoed
+from the floor, as she leaned forward and intently studied the queen of
+hearts.
+
+"But she make-a you lot of trouble," Patty added, frowning over a
+blister on his hand. "I see li'l' quarrel."
+
+Mr. Gilroy's eyes narrowed. In spite of himself, he commenced to be
+interested.
+
+"You like-a her very much," pronounced Conny from below.
+
+"But you never see her any more," chimed in Patty.
+"One--two--three--four months, you no see her, no spik with her." She
+looked up into his startled eyes. "_But you think about her every day!_"
+
+He made a quick movement of withdrawal, and Patty hastily added a
+further detail.
+
+"Dat tall young lady, she ver' unhappy too. She no laugh no more like
+she used."
+
+He arrested the movement and waited with a touch of anxious curiosity to
+hear what was coming next.
+
+"She feel ver' bad--ver' cross, ver' unhappy. She thinks always 'bout
+that li'l' quarrel. Four months she sit and wait--but you never come
+back."
+
+Mr. Gilroy rose abruptly and strode to the window.
+
+His unexpected visitors had dropped from the sky at the psychological
+moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his
+desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English,
+were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, and make
+another plea for justice? St. Ursula's vacation was at hand; in a few
+days more she would be gone--and very possibly she would never come
+back. The world at large was full of men, and Miss Jellings had a taking
+way.
+
+Conny continued serenely to study her cards.
+
+"One--More--Chance!" She spoke with the authority of a Grecian sibyl.
+"You try again, you win. No try, you lose."
+
+Patty leaned over Conny's shoulder, eager to supply a salutary bit of
+advice.
+
+"Dat tall young lady too much--" she hesitated a moment for fitting
+expression--"too much head in air. Too _bossy_. You make-a her mind?
+Understand?"
+
+Conny, gazing at the round-faced, chubby Jack of Diamonds, had received
+a new idea.
+
+"I see 'nother man," she murmured. "Red hair and--and--_fat_. Not too
+good-looking but--"
+
+"_Very dangerous!_" interpolated Patty. "You have no time to waste. He
+comes soon."
+
+Now, they had fabricated this detail out of nothing in the world but
+pure fancy and the Jack of Diamonds, but as it happened, they had
+touched an open wound. It was an exact description of a certain rich
+young man in the neighboring city, who loaded Miss Jellings with favors,
+and whom Mr. Gilroy detested from the bottom of his soul. All that
+afternoon, mixed in with his promptings and hesitations and travail of
+spirit, had loomed large, the fair, plump features of his fancied rival.
+Mr. Gilroy was a common-sense young business man, as free as most from
+superstition; but when a man's in love he is open to omens.
+
+He stared fixedly about the familiar office and out at the coal sheds
+and dynamo, to make sure that he was still on solid earth. His gaze came
+back to his visitors from the sky in absolute, anxious, pleading
+bewilderment.
+
+They were studying the cards again in a frowning endeavor to wrest a few
+further items from their overtaxed imaginations. Patty felt that she had
+already given him fifty cents' worth, and was wondering how to bring the
+interview to a graceful end. She realized that they had carried the
+farce too impertinently far, ever to be able to announce their identity
+and suggest a ride home. The only course now, was to preserve their
+incognito, make good their escape, and get back as best they could--at
+least they had a dollar to aid in the journey!
+
+She glanced up, mentally framing a peroration.
+
+"I see good-a fortune," she commenced, "if--"
+
+Her glance passed him to the open window, and her heart missed a beat.
+Mrs. Trent and Miss Sarah Trent, come to complain about the new electric
+lights, were serenely descending from their carriage, not twenty feet
+away.
+
+Patty's hand clutched Conny's shoulder in a spasmodic grasp.
+
+"Sallie and the Dowager!" she hissed in her ear. "Follow me!"
+
+With a sweep of her hand, Patty scrambled the cards together and rose.
+There would be no chance to escape by the door; the Dowager's voice was
+already audible in the outer office.
+
+"Goo' by!" said Patty, springing to the window. "Gypsies call. We must
+go."
+
+She scrambled over the sill and dropped eight feet to the ground. Conny
+followed. They were both able pupils of Miss Jellings.
+
+Mr. Laurence K. Gilroy, open-mouthed, stood staring at the spot where
+they had been. The next instant, he was bowing courteously to the
+principals of St. Ursula's, and striving hard to concentrate a dazed
+mind upon the short-circuit in the West Wing.
+
+Patty and Conny left the car--and a number of interested passengers--at
+the corner before they reached the school. Circumnavigating the wall,
+until they were opposite the stables, they approached the house modestly
+by the back way. They had the good fortune to encounter no one more
+dangerous than the cook (who gave them some gingerbread) and they
+ultimately reached their home in Paradise Alley none the worse for the
+adventure--and ninety cents to the good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the long, light evenings came, St. Ursula's no longer filled in the
+interim between dinner and evening study with indoor dancing, but
+romped about on the lawn outside. To-night, being Saturday, there was no
+evening study to call them in, and everybody was abroad. The school year
+was almost over, the long vacation was at hand--the girls were as full
+of bubbling spirits as sixty-four young lambs. Games of blindman's-buff,
+and pussy-wants-a-corner, and cross-tag were all in progress at once. A
+band of singers on the gymnasium steps was drowning out a smaller band
+on the porte-cochere; half-a-dozen hoop-rollers were trotting around the
+oval, and scattered groups of strollers, meeting in the narrow paths,
+were hailing each other with cheerful calls.
+
+Patty and Conny and Priscilla, washed and dressed and chastened, were
+wandering arm in arm through the summer twilight, talking--a trifle
+soberly--of the long-looked-forward-to future that was now so
+oppressively close upon them.
+
+"You know," Patty spoke with a sort of frightened gulp--"in another week
+we'll be _grown-up_!"
+
+They stopped and silently looked back toward the gay crowd romping on
+the lawn, toward the big brooding house, that through four tempestuous,
+hilarious, care-free years had sheltered them so kindly. Grown-upness
+seemed a barren state. They longed to stretch out their hands and clutch
+the childhood that they had squandered with so little thought.
+
+"Oh, it's horrible!" Conny breathed with sudden fierceness. "_I want to
+stay young!_"
+
+In this unsocial mood, they refused an offered game of hare-and-hounds,
+and evading the singers on the gymnasium steps--the song was the "Gypsy
+Trail"--they sauntered on down the pergola to the lane, sprinkled with
+fallen apple blossoms. At the end of the lane, they came suddenly upon
+two other solitary strollers, and stopped short with a gasp of
+unbelieving wonder.
+
+"It's Jelly!" Conny whispered.
+
+"And Mr. Gilroy," Patty echoed.
+
+"Shall we run?" asked Conny, in a panic.
+
+"No," said Patty, "pretend not to notice him at all."
+
+The three advanced with eyes discreetly bent upon the ground, but Miss
+Jellings greeted them gaily as she passed. There was an intangible,
+excited, happy thrill about her manner--something _electric_, Patty
+said.
+
+"Hello, you bad little Gypsies!"
+
+It was a peculiarly infelicitous salutation, but she was smilingly
+unconscious of any slip.
+
+"_Gypsies?_"
+
+Mr. Gilroy repeated the word, and his benumbed faculties began to work.
+He stopped and scanned the trio closely. They were clothed in dainty
+muslin, three as sweet young girls as one would ever meet. But Patty and
+Conny, even in the failing light, were still noticeably brunette--it
+takes boiling water to get out coffee stain.
+
+"Oh!"
+
+He drew a deep breath of enlightenment, while many emotions struggled
+for supremacy in his face. Conny dropped her gaze embarrassedly to the
+ground; Patty threw back her head and faced him. He and she eyed each
+other for a silent instant. In that glance, each asked the other not to
+tell--and each mutely promised.
+
+The breeze brought the chorus of the "Gypsy Trail"; and as they
+sauntered on, Miss Jellings fell softly to humming the words in tune
+with the distant singers:
+
+          "And the Gypsy blood to the Gypsy blood
+           Ever the wide world over.
+           Ever the wide world over, lass,
+           Ever the trail held true
+           Over the world and under the world
+           And back at the last to you.
+               Follow the Romany patteran--"
+
+The words died away in the shadows.
+
+Conny and Patty and Priscilla stood hand in hand and looked after them.
+
+"The school has lost Jelly!" Patty said, "and I'm afraid that we're to
+blame, Con, dear."
+
+"I'm glad of it!" Conny spoke with feeling. "She's much too nice to
+spend her whole life telling Irene McCullough to stand up straight and
+keep her stomach held in."
+
+"Anyway," Patty added, "he has no right to be angry, because--without
+us--he never would have dared."
+
+They kept on across the meadow till they came to the pasture bars, where
+they leaned in a row with their heads tipped back, scanning the
+darkening sky. Miss Jellings's mood was somehow catching; the little
+contretemps had stirred them strangely. They felt the thrill of the
+untried future, with Romance waiting around the corner.
+
+"You know," Conny broke silence after a long pause--"I think, after all,
+maybe it will be sort of interesting."
+
+"What?" asked Priscilla.
+
+She stretched out her arm in a wide gesture that comprised the night.
+
+"Oh, everything!"
+
+Priscilla nodded understandingly, and presently added with an air of
+challenge:
+
+"I've changed my mind. I don't believe I'll go to college."
+
+"Not go to college!" Patty echoed blankly. "Why not?"
+
+"I think--I'll get married instead."
+
+"Oh!" Patty laughed softly. "_I_ am going to do both!"
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 21, "chose" changed to "choose" (endeavor to choose)
+
+Page 35, "Cony" changed to "Conny" (Conny Wilder in dramatics)
+
+Page 36, "Rosaile" changed to "Rosalie" (When Rosalie chanced)
+
+Page 76, "or" changed to "of" (majority of the)
+
+Page 85, "exhanced" changed to "enhanced" (are enhanced by)
+
+Page 86, "skurried" changed to "scurried" (she scurried off)
+
+Page 92, "Sally" changed to "Sallie" ( Miss Sallie affably)
+
+Page 107, "Connie" changed to "Conny" (Conny murmured fervently)
+
+Page 109, "wail" changed to "wait" (Just wait till)
+
+Page 152, "esthetic" changed to "aesthetic" (rather than aesthetic)
+
+Page 206, "same" changed to "some" (There was some)
+
+Page 230, "or" changed to "of" (quiet confines of)
+
+Page 247, "cheery" changed to "cherry" (of the cherry tree)
+
+Page 320, "freindly" changed to "friendly" (the friendly darkness)
+
+Page 329, "airly" changed to "airily" (her hand airily)
+
+Page 330, "sings" changed to "signs" (dey learn signs)
+
+Page 338, "tempestous" changed to "tempestuous" (through four
+tempestuous)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Just Patty, by Jean Webster
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