"Paper-weights," observed Patty, sucking an injured thumb, "were
evidently not made for driving in tacks. I wish I had a hammer."
This remark called forth no response, and Patty peered down from the top
of the step-ladder at her room-mate, who was sitting on the floor
dragging sofa-pillows and curtains from a dry-goods box.
"Priscilla," she begged, "you aren't doing anything useful. Go down and
ask Peters for a hammer."
Priscilla rose reluctantly. "I dare say fifty girls have already been
after a hammer."
"Oh, he has a private one in his back pocket. Borrow that. And,
Pris,"--Patty called after her over the transom,--"just tell him to
send up a man to take that closet door off its hinges."
Patty, in the interval, sat down on the top step and surveyed the chaos
beneath her. An Oriental rush chair, very much out at the elbows,
several miscellaneous chairs, two desks, a divan, a table, and two
dry-goods boxes radiated from the center of the room. The floor, as it
showed through the interstices, was covered with a grass-green carpet,
while the curtains and hangings were of a not very subdued crimson.
"One would scarcely," Patty remarked to the furniture in general, "call
it a symphony in color."
A knock sounded on the door.
"Come in," she called.
A girl in a blue linen sailor-suit reaching to her ankles, and with a
braid of hair hanging down her back, appeared in the doorway. Patty
examined her in silence. The girl's eyes traveled around the room in
some surprise, and finally reached the top of the ladder.
"I--I'm a freshman," she began.
"My dear," murmured Patty, in a deprecatory tone, "I should have taken
you for a senior; but"--with a wave of her hand toward the nearest
dry-goods box--"come in and sit down. I need your advice. Now, there are
shades of green," she went on, as if continuing a conversation, "which
are not so bad with red; but I ask you frankly if _that_ shade of green
would go with anything?"
The freshman looked at Patty, and looked at the carpet, and smiled
dubiously. "No," she admitted; "I don't believe it would."
"I knew you would say that!" exclaimed Patty, in a tone of relief. "Now
what would you advise us to do with the carpet?"
The freshman looked blank. "I--I don't know, unless you take it up," she
stammered.
"The very thing!" said Patty. "I wonder we hadn't thought of it before."
Priscilla reappeared at this point with the announcement, "Peters is
the most suspicious man I ever knew!" But she stopped uncertainly as she
caught sight of the freshman.
"Priscilla," said Patty, severely, "I _hope_ you didn't divulge the fact
that we are hanging the walls with tapestry"--this with a wave of her
hand toward the printed cotton cloth dangling from the molding.
"I tried not to," said Priscilla, guiltily, "but he read 'tapestry' in
my eyes. He had no sooner looked at me than he said, 'See here, miss;
you know it's against the rules to hang curtains on the walls, and you
mustn't put nails in the plastering, and I don't believe you need a
hammer anyway.'"
"Disgusting creature!" said Patty.
"But," continued Priscilla, hastily, "I stopped and borrowed Georgie
Merriles's hammer on my way back. Oh, I forgot," she added; "he says we
can't take the closet door off its hinges--that as soon as we get ours
off five hundred other young ladies will be wanting theirs off, and
that it would take half a dozen men all summer to put them back again."
A portentous frown was gathering on Patty's brow, and the freshman,
wishing to avert a possible domestic tragedy, inquired timidly, "Who is
Peters?"
"Peters," said Priscilla, "is a short, bow-legged gentleman with a red
Vandyke beard, whose technical title is janitor, but who is really
dictator. Every one is afraid of him--even Prexy."
"I'm not," said Patty; "and," she added firmly, "that door is coming
down whether he says so or not, so I suppose we shall have to do it
ourselves." Her eyes wandered back to the carpet and her face
brightened. "Oh, Pris, we've got a beautiful new scheme. My friend here
says she doesn't like the carpet at all, and suggests that we take it
up, get some black paint, and put it on the floor ourselves. I agree,"
she added, "that a Flemish oak floor covered with rugs would be a great
improvement."
Priscilla glanced uncertainly from the freshman to the floor. "Do you
think they'd let us do it?"
"It would never do to ask them," said Patty.
The freshman rose uneasily. "I came," she said hesitatingly, "to find
out--that is, I understand that the girls rent their old books, and I
thought, if you wouldn't mind--"
"Mind!" said Patty, reassuringly. "We'd rent our souls for fifty cents a
semester."
"It--it was a Latin dictionary I wanted," said the freshman, "and the
girls next door said perhaps you had one."
"A beautiful one," said Patty.
"No," interrupted Priscilla; "hers is lost from O to R, and it's all
torn; but mine,"--she dived down into one of the boxes and hauled out a
chunky volume without any covers,--"while it is not so beautiful as it
was once, it is still as useful."
"Mine's annotated," said Patty, "and illustrated. I'll show you what a
superior book it is," and she began descending the ladder; but
Priscilla charged upon her and she retreated to the top again. "Why,"
she wailed to the terrified freshman, "did you not say you wanted a
dictionary before she came back? Let me give you some advice at the
beginning of your college career," she added warningly. "Never choose a
room-mate bigger than yourself. They're dangerous."
The freshman was backing precipitously toward the door, when it opened
and revealed an attractive-looking girl with fluffy reddish hair.
"Pris, you wretch, you walked off with my hammer!"
"Oh, Georgie, we need it worse than you do! Come in and help tack."
"Hello, Georgie," called Patty, from the ladder. "Isn't this room going
to be beautiful when it's finished?"
Georgie looked about. "You are more sanguine than I should be," she
laughed.
"You can't tell yet," Patty returned. "We're going to cover the
wall-paper with this red stuff, and paint the floor black, and have dark
furniture, and red hangings, and soft lights. It will look just like the
Oriental Room in the Waldorf."
"How in the world," Georgie demanded, "do you ever make them let you do
all these things? I stuck in three innocent little thumb-tacks to-day,
and Peters descended upon me bristling with wrath, and said he'd report
me if I didn't pull them out."
"We never ask," explained Patty. "It's the only way."
"You've got enough to do if you expect to get settled by Monday,"
Georgie remarked.
"_C'est vrai_," agreed Patty, descending the ladder with a sudden access
of energy; "and you've got to stay and help us. We have to get all this
furniture moved into the bedrooms and the carpet up before we even
_begin_ to paint." She regarded the freshman tentatively. "Are you
awfully busy?"
"Not very. My room-mate hasn't come yet, so I can't settle."
"That's nice; then you can help us move furniture."
"Patty!" said Priscilla, "I think you are too bad."
"I should really love to stay and help, if you'll let me."
"Certainly," said Patty, obligingly. "I forgot to ask your name," she
continued, "and I don't suppose you like to be called 'Freshman'; it's
not specific enough."
"My name is Genevieve Ainslee Randolph."
"Genevieve Ains--dear me! I can't remember anything like that. Do you
mind if I call you Lady Clara Vere de Vere for short?"
The freshman looked doubtful, and Patty proceeded: "Lady Clara, allow me
to present my room-mate Miss Priscilla Pond--no relation to the extract.
She's athletic and wins hundred-yard dashes and hurdle races, and gets
her name in the paper to a really gratifying extent. And my dear friend
Miss Georgie Merriles, one of the oldest families in Dakota. Miss
Merriles is very talented--sings in the glee club, plays on the comb--"
"And," interrupted Georgie, "let me present Miss Patty Wyatt, who--"
"Has no specialty," said Patty, modestly, "but is merely good and
beautiful and bright."
A knock sounded on the door, which opened without waiting for a
response. "Miss Theodora Bartlet," continued Patty, "commonly known as
the Twin, Miss Vere de Vere."
The Twin looked dazed, murmured, "Miss Vere de Vere," and dropped down
on a dry-goods box.
"The term 'Twin,'" explained Patty, "is used in a merely allegorical
sense. There is really only one of her. The title was conferred in her
freshman year, and the reason has been lost in the dim dawn of
antiquity."
The freshman looked at the Twin and opened her mouth, but shut it again
without saying anything.
"My favorite maxim," said Patty, "has always been, 'Silence is golden.'
I observe that we are kindred spirits."
"Patty," said Priscilla, "do stop bothering that poor child and get to
work."
"Bothering?" said Patty. "I am not bothering her; we are just getting
acquainted. However, I dare say it is not the time for hollow
civilities. Do you want to borrow anything?" she added, turning to the
Twin, "or did you just drop in to pay a social call?"
"Just a social call; but I think I'll come in again when there's no
furniture to move."
"You don't happen to be going into town this afternoon?"
"Yes," said the Twin. "But," she added guardedly, "if it's a
curtain-pole, I refuse to bring it out. I offered to bring one out for
Lucille Carter last night, because she was in a hurry to give a
house-warming, and I speared the conductor with it getting into the car;
and while I was apologizing to him I knocked Mrs. Prexy's hat off with
the other end."
"We have all the curtain-poles we need," said Patty. "It's just some
paint--five cans of black paint, and three brushes at the ten-cent
store, and thank you very much. Good-by. Now," she continued, "the first
thing is to get that door down, and I will wrest a screw-driver from the
unwilling Peters while you remove tacks from the carpet."
"He won't give you one," said Priscilla.
"You'll see," said Patty.
Five minutes later she returned waving above her head an unmistakable
screw-driver. "_Voilà, mes amies!_ Peters's own private screw-driver,
for which I am to be personally responsible."
"How did you get it?" inquired Priscilla, suspiciously.
"You act," said Patty, "as if you thought I knocked him down in some
dark corner and robbed him. I merely asked him for it politely, and he
asked me what I wanted to do with it. I told him I wanted to take out
screws, and the reason impressed him so that he handed it over without
a word. Peters," she added, "is a dear; only he's like every other
man--you have to use diplomacy."
By ten o'clock that night the study carpet of 399 was neatly folded and
deposited at the end of the corridor above, whence its origin would be
difficult to trace. The entire region was steeped in an odor of
turpentine, and the study floor of 399 was a shining black, except for
four or five unpainted spots which Patty designated as "stepping-stones,"
and which were to be treated later. Every caller that had dropped in
during the afternoon or evening had had a brush thrust into her hand and
had been made to go down upon her knees and paint. Besides the floor,
three bookcases and a chair had been transferred from mahogany to
Flemish oak, and there was still half a can of paint left which Patty
was anxiously trying to dispose of.
The next morning, in spite of the difficulty of getting about, the
step-ladder had been reërected, and the business of tapestry-hanging
was going forward with enthusiasm, when a knock suddenly interrupted the
work.