"And there"s Patty. My, but she looks funny!"
"Call her back," cried Priscilla, wildly trying to open the window.
"Let her alone," laughed Georgie; "it will be such fun to gloat over her."
The window came up with a jerk. "Patty! Patty!" shrieked Priscilla.
Patty turned and waved her hand airily. "Can"t stop now--will be back in a moment"; and she sped on around the corner.
The two stood watching the house for several minutes, vaguely expecting an explosion of some sort to occur. But nothing happened. Patty was swallowed as if by the grave, and the house gave no sign. They accordingly shrugged their shoulders and dressed for dinner with the philosophy which a life fraught with alarms and surprises gives.
DINNER was half over, and the table had finished discussing Patty"s demise, when that young lady trailed placidly in, smiled on the expectant faces, and inquired what kind of soup they had had.
"Bean soup; it wasn"t any good," said Georgie, impatiently. "What happened? Did you have a nice call?"
"No, Maggie, I don"t care for any soup to-night. Just bring me some steak, please."
"Patty!" in a pleading chorus, "what happened?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Patty, sweetly. "Yes, thank you, I had a very pleasant call. May I trouble you for the bread, Lucille?"
"Patty, I think you"re obnoxious," said Georgie. "Tell us what happened."
"Well," began Patty, in a leisurely manner, "I said to the butler, "Is Mrs. Millard in?" and he said to me (without even a smile), "I am not sure, miss; will you please step into the drawing-room and I"ll see." I was going to tell him that he needn"t bother, as I knew she was out; but I thought that perhaps it would look a little better if I waited and let him find out for himself. So I walked in and sat down in a pink-and-white embroidered _Louis-Quatorze_ chair. There was a big mirror in front of me, and I had plenty of time to study the effect, which, I will acknowledge, was a trifle mixed."
"A trifle," Georgie a.s.sented.
"I was beginning," pursued Patty, "to feel nervous for fear some of the family might drop in, when the man came back and said, "Mrs. Millard will be down in a minute."
"If I had seen you at that moment, Georgie Merriles, there would have been battle, murder, and sudden death. My first thought was of flight; but the man was guarding the door, and Mrs. Prexy had my card. While I was frenziedly trying to think of a valid excuse for my costume the lady came in, and I rose and greeted her graciously, one might almost say gushingly. I talked very fast and tried to hypnotize her, so that she would keep her eyes on my face; but it was no use: I saw them traveling downward, and pretty soon I knew by the amused expression that they had arrived at my shoes.
"Concealment was no longer possible," pursued Patty, warming to her subject. "I threw myself upon her mercy and confessed the whole d.a.m.ning truth. What kind of ice-cream is that?" she demanded, leaning forward and gazing anxiously after a pa.s.sing maid. "_Don"t_ tell me they"re giving us raspberry again!"
"No; it"s vanilla. Go on, Patty."
"Well, where was I?"
"You"d just told her the truth."
"Oh, yes. She said she"d always wanted to meet the college girls informally and know them just as they are, and she was very glad of this opportunity. And there I sat, looking like a kaleidoscope and feeling like a fool, and she taking it for granted that I was being perfectly natural. Complimentary, wasn"t it? At this point dinner was announced, and she invited me to stay--quite insisted, in fact, to make up, she said, for the one I had missed when I was ill in the infirmary." Patty looked around the table with a reminiscent smile.
"What did you say? Did you refuse?" asked Lucille.
"No; I accepted, and am over there at present, eating _pate de foie gras_."
"No, really, Patty; what did you say?"
"Well," said Patty, "I told her that this was ice-cream night at the college, and that I sort of hated to miss it; but that to-morrow would be mutton night, which I didn"t mind missing in the least; so if she would just as leave transfer her invitation, I would accept for to-morrow with pleasure."
"Patty," exclaimed Lucille, in a horrified tone, "you didn"t say that!"
"Just a little local color, Lucille," laughed Priscilla.
"But," objected Lucille, "we"d promised not to play local color any more."
"Have you not learned," said Priscilla, "that Patty can no more live without local color than she can live without food? It"s ingrained in her nature."
"Never mind," said Patty, good-naturedly; "you may not believe me now, but to-morrow night, when I"m all dressed up in beautiful clothes, swapping stories with Prexy and eating lobster salad, while you are over here having mutton, _then_ maybe you"ll be sorry."
XIII
A Crash Without
"I love the smell of powder," said Patty.
"Gunpowder or baking-powder?"
As Patty at the moment had her nose buried in a box of face-powder she thought it unnecessary to answer.
"It brings back my youth," she pursued. "The best times of my life have been mixed up with powder and rouge--Washington"s Birthday nights, and minstrel shows, and masquerades, and plays at boarding-school, and even Mother Goose tableaux when I was a--"
Patty"s reminiscences were interrupted by Georgie, who was anxiously pacing up and down the wings. "It"s queer some of the cast don"t come. I told them to be here early, so we could get them all made up and not have a rush at the end."
"Oh, there"s time enough," said Patty, comfortably. "It isn"t seven yet, and if they"re going to dress in their rooms it won"t take any time over here just to make them up and put on their wigs. It"s a comparatively small cast, you see. Now, on the night of the Trig. ceremonies, when we had to make up three whole ballets and only had one box of make-up, we _were_ rushed. I thought I"d never live to see the curtain go down. Do you remember the suit of chain-mail we made for Bonnie Connaught out of wire dish-cloths? It took sixty-three, and the ten-cent store was terribly dubious about renting them to us; and then, after working every spare second for three days over the thing, we found, the last minute, that we hadn"t left a big enough hole for her to get into, and--"
"Oh, do keep still, Patty," said Georgie, nervously; "I can"t remember what I have to do when you talk all the time."
A manager on the eve of producing a new play, with his reputation at stake, may be excused for being a trifle irritable. Patty merely shrugged her shoulders and descended through the stage-door to the half-lighted hall, where she found Cathy Fair strolling up and down the center aisle in an apparently aimless manner.
"h.e.l.lo, Cathy," said Patty; "what are you doing over here?"
"I"m head usher, and I wanted to see if those foolish soph.o.m.ores had mixed up the numbers again."
"It strikes me they"re a trifle close together," said Patty, sitting down and squeezing in her knees.
"Yes, I know; but you can"t get eight hundred people into this hall any other way. When we once get them packed they"ll have to sit still, that"s all. What are you doing over here yourself?" she continued. "I didn"t know you were on the committee. Or are you just helping Georgie?"
"I"m in the cast," said Patty.
"Oh, are you? I saw the program to-day, but I"d forgotten it. I"ve often wondered why you haven"t been in any of the cla.s.s plays."
"Fortune and the faculty are against it," sighed Patty. "You see, they didn"t discover my histrionic ability before examinations freshman year, and after examinations, when I was asked to be in the play, the faculty thought I could spend the time to better advantage studying Greek. At the time of the soph.o.m.ore play I was on something else and couldn"t serve, and this year I had just been deprived of my privileges for coming back late after Christmas."