PREPARATIONS
With the instincts of a true hostess, Patty had slipped from the room
unobserved, and had held a short Confab with her two trusty servitors in
the kitchen.
"But, Miss Patty," expostulated Mancy, "dey ain't nuffin' fit to set
befo' dem fren's ob yo's. Dey ain't nuffin' skacely in de house, ceptin'
some bits ob candies an' cakaroons le' from yo' las' night's supper."
"Well, that's all right," said Patty; "let Pansy arrange those nicely on
the dining-room table. Use the silver dishes, Pansy, and fix them just as
I told you."
"Yes, Miss Patty," said Pansy, "but there aren't very many left."
"Well, then, Mancy, I'll tell you what: you make us a nice pot of
chocolate, and fix us some thin bread and butter, and cut up some of the
fruit cake to put with those little fancy cakes; won't that do?"
"Yas'm, I spec' so; but it's a mighty slim layout, 'specially for dem
hearty young chaps. But you go 'long, honey, I'll fix it somehow."
And, sure enough, she did fix it somehow; for when, a little later, Patty
invited her young friends out into the dining-room, the thin bread and
butter had doubled itself up into most attractive and satisfying
chicken-sandwiches, and there was also a plate of delicious toasted
crackers and cheese.
Mr. Fairfield added a box of candy which he had brought home from New
York, and the unpretentious little feast proved most enjoyable to all
concerned.
"I should think you would feel all the time as if you were acting a play
yourself, Patty," said Elsie Morris, taking her seat at the prettily
laid table.
"I do," said Patty as she took her own place at the head; "it's awfully
hard to realise that I am monarch of all I survey."
"But you have someone to dispute your right," said her father.
"And I'm glad of it," said Patty. "Whatever should I do living here all
alone just with my rights?"
"By her rights, she means her cousins," put in Frank.
"Yes," said Patty; "they're about as right as anything I know."
And so the evening passed in merry chaff and good-natured fun; and at its
close the young guests all went away except Marian, who was going to
spend the night at Boxley Hall.
After her cousin had gone upstairs to her pretty blue bedroom, Patty
lingered a moment in the library for a word with her father.
"How am I getting along, papa?" she said. "How about the proportion
to-night?"
"The market seems pretty strong on proportion to-day, Patty, dear; your
housekeeping is beginning wonderfully well. That little dinner you gave
us was first-class in every respect, and the simple refreshments you had
this evening were very pretty and graceful."
"Don't praise me too much, papa, or I'll grow conceited."
"You'll get praise from me, my lady, just when you deserve it, and at no
other time. Now, skip along to bed, or you'll have too great a proportion
of late hours."
With a good-night kiss Patty went singing upstairs, feeling sure that she
was the happiest and most fortunate little girl in the world.
So impressed was she with her realisation of this fact that she announced
it to Marian.
Marian looked at her curiously.
"You _are_ fortunate in some ways," she said; "but the real reason
you're always so happy, I think, is because of your happy disposition. A
great many girls with no mother or brother or sister, who had all the
care and responsibility of a big house, and whose father was away all
day, would think they had a pretty miserable life. But that never seems
to occur to you."
"No," said Patty contentedly; "and I don't believe it ever will."
The next morning Patty devoted all her energy to getting ready for the
Tea Club. She declined Marian's offers of help, saying:
"No, I really don't need any help. If I can keep Pansy out of the
conservatory, we three can accomplish all there is to be done; so you go
and sit by the library fire, and toast your toes and read, or play with
the cat, or do whatever you please. Remember, whenever you come here,
you're one of the family."
So Marian went off by herself and played on the piano, and read, and had
various kinds of good times, scrupulously keeping out of the way of her
busy and preoccupied cousin.
"Now, Pansy," said Patty, as she captured that culprit in the
conservatory, and led her off to the kitchen, "I want you to try
especially hard to-day to do just as I want you to, and to help me in
every possible way."
"Can I fix the flowers, Miss Patty?" said Pansy Potts, her eyes sparkling
with delight.
"Where are there any flowers to fix? You've fussed over those in the
conservatory until you've nearly worn them all out."
"Oh, Miss Patty, they're thriving beautifully. But I mean that big box
of flowers that just came up from the flower man's. He said Mr.
Fairfield sent it."
"Oh!" exclaimed Patty, "did papa really send me up flowers for the Tea
Club? How perfectly lovely! I meant to order some myself, but I know his
will be nicer."
By this time Patty was diving into the big box and scattering tissue
paper all about.
"They're beautiful," she exclaimed, "and what lots of them! Yes, Pansy,
you may arrange them; you really do it better than I do. Keep all the
pink ones for the dining-room, and put the others wherever you like. Now,
Mancy," she went on, "we'll discuss what to eat."
"Yas'm, and I s'pose it'll be some ob dem highfalutin fandangoes ob yo's,
what nobody can't eat."
"You guessed right the very first time," said Patty, smiling back at
the good-natured old cook, whose bark was so much worse than her bite.
"You see, Mancy, this is my own party, and so I can have just what I
like at it. Not even papa can object to the things that I have for my
own Tea Club."
"Dat's so, chile, but co'se yo' knows you'se mighty likely to spoil dem
good t'ings befo' yo' get 'em made."
"Oh, I don't think I will this time," said Patty, with that assured
little toss of her head which always meant perfect confidence in her
own ability.
Mancy said nothing, but grunted somewhat doubtfully as Patty went on to
describe the beautiful things she intended to have.
"I want rissoles," she said, as she turned over the cookery-book, and
looked in the index for R. "They're awfully good."
"What's dem, missy? I never heard tell of 'em."
"I forget what they are," said Patty, "but we had them at Delmonico's one
day, when papa and I were there at lunch, and I remember thinking then
they'd be nice for the Tea Club. They were either some little kind of a
cake, or else a sort of croquette. Either would be nice, you know. Why,
they're not here. What a silly book not to have them in! Oh, well, never
mind, here's 'Richmond Maids of Honour.' We used to have those at Aunt
Isabel's, and they're the loveliest things. I'll make those, Mancy; and
while I'm doing it you make me some wine jelly and some Bavarian cream,
and then I can put them together with _marrons_ and candied cherries and
whipped cream and things, and make a Royal Diplomatic Pudding."
"'Pears like yo's makin' things fine enough for a weddin',"
growled Mancy.
"Well, now, look here, last night you thought the things I had for my
evening company were too plain, and now you're grumbling because they're
too fancy."
"Laws, honey, can't you see no diffunce 'tween plain bread and butter and
a lot of pernicketty gimcracks that never turns out right nohow?"
A haunting doubt regarding the proportion between her elaborate plans and
the simple Tea Club hovered round Patty's mind, but she resolutely put it
aside, thinking to herself, "I don't care, it's my first function, and
I'm going to have it just as nice as I can."
Patty always felt particularly grand and grown up when she used the word
_function_, and now that she had mentally applied it to the Tea Club
meeting, that simple affair seemed to take on a gigantic amplitude and
fairly seemed to cry out for elaborate devices of all sorts.
"Never you mind, Mancy," she said, "you just go ahead and do as I tell
you. Get the jelly and cream ready, and I'll do the rest."
"But ain't yo' gwine to have no solidstantial kind o' food?"
"Oh, yes, of course. I want a _croustade_ of chicken and
club-sandwiches."
"Humph," said Mancy, her patience giving out at this, "ef yo' does, yo'll
hab to talk English."
Patty laughed. "You must get used to these names, Mancy, because these
are the kind of things I like. Well, you just boil a couple of chickens,
and cut them up small, and see that there are two loaves of bread ready,
those long round, crimply ones, you know, and then I'll put it all
together and all you'll have to do is to brown it. And I'll show you how
to make the club-sandwiches after lunch. You might as well learn once for
all, you know. There's bacon in the house, isn't there?"
"No, dey ain't; is yo' fren's gwine stay ter breakfus'?"
"Oh, no, I'd want the bacon for the club-sandwiches. Don't worry, Mancy,
they'll all come out right."
"Dey mought and den again dey moughtn't," grumbled the old woman, but
undaunted Patty went on measuring and weighing with a surety of success
that is found only in the young and inexperienced.
At one o'clock Marian walked out into the kitchen.
"Good gracious, Patty Fairfield," she exclaimed, "what are you doing? And
what are all those things? Do you expect the Democratic Convention to be
entertained here, or are you going to give the Sunday-school a picnic?
And are we never to have lunch? I'm simply starving!"
Patty turned a flushed face to her cousin, and looked dazed and
bewildered.
"Two and five-eighths ounces of sugar," she said, "spun to a thread; add
chopped nuts and the well-beaten whites of six eggs; brown with a
salamander. Marian, I haven't any salamander!"
The tragic tone of Patty's awful avowal was too much for Marian, and she
dropped into a kitchen chair and went off into peals of laughter.
"Patty," she cried, "you goose! What are you doing? Just making up the
whole recipe-book, page by page? I believe you're crazy!"
"It's for the Tea Club," exclaimed Patty, "and I want things to be nice."
"H'm," said Marian, "and _are_ they nice?"
She glanced at some of the completed delicacies on the table, and Patty,
seeing the look, turned red again, but this time it was not the effect of
the kitchen range.
"Well," she said, "some of them aren't quite right, but I think the
others will be."
"And I think you're working too hard," said Marian kindly. "You come
away with me now, and rest a little bit; and, Mancy, you put a little
lunch for us on the dining-room table, won't you? Just anything will do,
you know."