"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."