THE AWARD
Patty was in high spirits. It was the twentieth of April, and it was
almost time for the postman to call on his afternoon round. The two
Farringtons and Kenneth were present, and all eagerly awaited the
expected letter, telling the result of the Prize Contest.
“Just think,” said Patty, “how many anxious hearts all over this broad
land are even now waiting for the postman, and every one is to be
disappointed, except me!”
“I believe you enjoy their disappointment,” said Elise.
“You know better, my child. You know I _hate_ to have people
disappointed. But, in this case, only one can win. I’m glad I’m that
one, and I’m sorry for the others.”
“S’pose you don’t win,” observed Roger; “what will you do?”
“There’s no use s’posin’ that, for it can’t happen,” declared Patty,
turning from the window, where she had been flattening her nose against
the glass, in a frantic endeavour to catch a first glimpse of the
belated postman.
“But, just for fun,” urged Kenneth, “just for argument’s sake, if you
didn’t get that prize, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t do anything. I’d know the company that offered it was a
fake, and had gone back on its own promise.”
“Patty, you’re incorrigible!” said Ken. “I give you up. You’re the most
self-assured, self-reliant, cocksure young person I ever saw.”
“Thank you, sir, for them kind words! Oh! sit still, my heart! _Do_ I
hear that familiar whistle at last?”
“You do!” shouted Kenneth, making a spring for the front door.
They all followed, but Kenneth first reached it, and fairly grabbed the
letters from the astonished letter-carrier.
Returning to the library with his booty, he ran them over slowly and
tantalisingly.
“One for Mrs. Fairfield,” he said. “From a fashionable tailor. Do you
suppose it’s a dun? Or, perhaps, merely an announcement of new spring
furbelows. Next, one for Mr. Fairfield. Unmistakably a circular! No
good! Ha! another for Mrs. Fairfield. Now, this——”
“Oh, Ken, stop!” begged Patty. “Have pity on me! Is there one for me?”
“Yes, yes, child. I didn’t know you wanted it. Yes, here’s one for you.
It is postmarked ‘Vernondale.’ Take it, dear one!”
“Nonsense, Ken. Not that one! But isn’t there one from the Rhodes and
Geer Motor Company?”
“Why, yes; since you mention it, I notice there is such a one! Do you
want it?”
Kenneth held it high above Patty’s head, but she sprang and caught it,
and waved it triumphantly in the air.
“I told you so!” she cried.
“But you haven’t opened it yet,” said Elise. “Maybe it only tells you
you’ve failed.”
“Hush, hush, little one!” said Patty. “I’ll show it to you in a minute.”
Accepting the letter-opener Kenneth proffered, she cut open the
envelope, and read the few lines on the typewritten sheet enclosed. She
read them again, and then slowly refolded the sheet and returned it to
its envelope.
“After all,” she said, calmly, “it is well to be of a philosophical
nature in a time of disappointment.”
“Oh, Patty, you didn’t win!” cried Kenneth, springing to her side, and
grasping her hand.
“No, I haven’t won,” said Patty, with a heart-rending sigh.
“I thought you were terribly positive,” said Elise, not very kindly.
“I was,” sighed Patty. “I was terribly positive. I am, still!”
“What are you talking about, Patty?” said Roger, who began to think she
was fooling them. “Let me see that letter.”
“Take it!” said Patty, holding it out with a despairing gesture. “Read
it aloud, and let them all know the worst!”
So Roger read the few lines, which were to the effect that, owing to the
unexpected number of answers received, the decision must be delayed
until May first.
“Oh, Patty!” exclaimed Kenneth, greatly relieved. “How you scared me! Of
course you’ll get it yet.”
“Of course I shall,” said Patty, serenely, “but I hate to wait.”
Since it was not failure, after all, the young people felt greatly
relieved, and congratulated Patty upon her narrow escape.
“But the situation is too dramatic for my nerves,” declared Kenneth.
“When the real letter comes, I prefer not to be here. I can’t stand such
harrowing scenes.”
“It won’t be harrowing when the real letter comes,” said Patty. “It will
be just one grand, triumphant jubilee.”
“Well, jubilees are nerve-racking,” said Kenneth. “I think I’ll stay
away until the shouting is over.”
“You can’t,” said Patty, saucily. “You’ll be the first one here, the day
the letter is due.”
“Oh, I suppose so! Curiosity has always been my besetting sin. But
to-day’s entertainment seems to be over, so I may as well go home.”
“Us, too,” said Roger. “Come on, Elise.”
So good-byes were said, and Patty’s friends went laughing away.
Then Patty took up the letter and read it again.
“Ten days to wait,” she said, to herself. “And suppose I shouldn’t get
it, after all? But I will,—I know I will. Something inside my brain
makes me feel sure of it. And, when I have that sort of sureness, it
never goes back on me!”
She went upstairs, singing merrily, and without a shadow of doubt in her
mind as to her success in the contest.
The ten days passed quickly, for Patty was so absorbed in the
furnishings for the new summer home that she was occupied every moment
from morning till night.
She went with Nan to all sorts of fascinating shops, where they selected
wall-papers, rugs, furniture, and curtains. Not much bric-a-brac, and
very few pictures, for they were keeping the house simple in tone, but
comfortable and cheerful of atmosphere. Christine gladly gave her advice
when needed, but she was very busy with her work, and they interrupted
her as seldom as possible.
Patty bought lovely things for her own rooms,—chairs of blue and white
wicker; curtains of loose-meshed, blue silky stuff, over ruffled dimity
ones; a regulation brass bedstead for her bedroom, but a couch that
opened into a bed for her out-of-door dormitory. By day, this could be a
chintz-covered couch with chintz pillows; by night, a dainty, white nest
of downy comfort. Several times they went down to Spring Beach, to
inspect the work going on there, and always returned with satisfactory
reports.
As the time of departure drew near, Elise began to realise how much she
would miss Patty, and lamented accordingly.
“I think you might have arranged to go where we’re going,” she said.
“You know you could make your people go wherever you wanted to.”
“But you go to the Adirondacks, Elise; I couldn’t run my motor car much
up there.”
“Oh, that motor car! Even if you do get it, Patty, you won’t use it more
than a few times. Nobody does.”
“P’raps not. But, somehow, it just seems to me I shall. It just _seems_
to me so. But, Elise, you’ll come down to visit me?”
“Yes; for a few days. But you’ll have Christine there most of the time,
I suppose.”
“I’ll have Christine whenever she’ll come,” said Patty, a little
sharply; “and, Elise, if you care anything for my friendship, I wish
you’d show a little more friendliness toward her.”
“Oh, yes; just because Mr. Hepworth thinks she’s a prodigy, and Mrs. Van
Reypen has taken her up socially, you think she’s something great!”
Patty looked at Elise a moment in astonishment at this outburst, and
then she broke into a hearty laugh.
“I think you’re something great, Elise! I think you’re a great goose!
What kind of talk are you talking? Christine is a dear, sweet, brave
girl,—and you know it. Now, drop it, and never, never, never talk like
that again.”
Elise was a little ashamed of her unjust speech, and only too glad to
turn it off by joining in Patty’s laughter. So she only said, “Oh,
Christine’s all right!” and dropped the subject.
By the first of May, everything was ready for occupancy at “The
Pebbles.” The lawn and grounds were in fine condition, and the house in
perfect order.
But Patty begged that they shouldn’t start until she had received word
about her prize car.
“Why, Puss, all the mail will be forwarded,” said her father. “You’ll
get your precious missive there just as well as here.”
“I know that, daddy dear,—but, well,—I can’t seem to feel like going,
until I know that car is my very own. Just wait until the third of May,
can’t you?”
She was so persuasive that Nan went over to her side, and then, of
course, Mr. Fairfield had to give his consent to wait. Not that he
cared, particularly, but he was a little afraid that Patty would not get
the prize, and thought she might bear her disappointment better if away
from her young friends.
But they waited, and again the group of those most interested gathered
in the Fairfield library to await the letter.
Christine and Mr. Hepworth were there, too, this time; also Philip Van
Reypen.
Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield, though outwardly calm and even gay, were perhaps
the most anxious of all, for they knew how keenly a disappointment would
affect Patty.
The whistle sounded. The postman’s step was heard. Instead of rushing to
the door, Patty felt a strange inertia, and sank back in her chair.
“Go, Ken,” she said, faintly, and Kenneth went.
Silently he took the mail from the carrier, silently he returned with it
to the library. There was none of the gay chaffing they had had before,
and all because Patty, the moving spirit, was grave and quiet, with a
scared, drawn look on her sweet face.
Hastily running over the letters, Kenneth laid aside all but one, and
slowly extended that to Patty.
She took it, opened it, and read it with a dazed expression.
The eager ones circled round, with faces tense and waiting.
Again Patty read her letter. Then, still with that dazed look on her
face, she glanced from one to another. As her eyes met Mr. Hepworth’s,
she suddenly held the paper out to him.
“I’ve won,” she said, simply, and gave him the letter.
Then she drew a short little sigh, almost a sob of relief, and then the
colour came back to her face, the light to her eyes, and she smiled
naturally.
“I’ve won!” she cried again. “It’s all right!”
Then there was jubilation, indeed! Everybody congratulated everybody
else. Everybody had to read the wonderful letter, and see for himself
that the prize, the Electric Runabout, had indeed been awarded to Miss
Patricia Fairfield, for the best and most complete list of answers to
the puzzles in the contest.
Only the girls’ parents and Gilbert Hepworth knew how tightly the
tension of Patty’s nerves had been strained, but they had been alertly
watching for any sign of collapse, and were thankful and relieved that
the danger was over.
Hepworth didn’t stop then to wonder why Patty had handed him the letter
first. And, indeed, she didn’t know herself. But she felt his sensitive
sympathy so keenly, and saw such deep anxiety in his eyes, that
involuntarily she turned to him in her moment of triumph.
“I told you so!” Philip Van Reypen was shouting. “I knew we’d win!
Hepworth, old man, you did it, with that last charade! Bully for you!”
“Yes, he did!” cried Patty, holding out her hand to Mr. Hepworth, with a
smile of gratitude; “but you all helped me. Oh, isn’t it splendid! I
didn’t so much care for the car, but I wanted to _win_!”
“Oh, _listen_ to that!” exclaimed Kenneth. “She didn’t care for the car!
Oh, Patty, what _are_ you saying? Give me the car, then!”
“Oh, of course I want the car, you goose! But I mean I really cared more
for the _game_,—the winning of it!”
“Of course you did!” declared Van Reypen. “That’s the true sportsman
spirit: ‘not the quarry, but the chase!’ I’m proud of you, Miss
Fairfield! Your sentiments are the right sort.”
Patty smiled and dimpled, quite her roguish self again, now that the
exciting crisis was past.
“Nan,” she cried, “we must celebrate! Will you invite all this hilarious
populace to dinner, or give them an impromptu tea-fight right now?”
“Dinner!” cried Philip Van Reypen; and “Dinner!” took up the other
voices, in gay insistence.
“Very well,” said Nan; “but, if it’s to be dinner, you must all run away
now and come back later. I can’t order a celebration dinner at a
moment’s notice.”
“All right, we will.” And obediently the guests went away, to return
later for a gala dinner.
And a real celebration it was. Mr. Fairfield himself went out to the
florist’s and returned with a centrepiece for the table, consisting of a
wicker automobile filled with flowers.
By dint of much telephoning, Nan provided place cards and favours of
little motor cars; and the ices were shaped like tiny automobiles; and
the cakes like tires. And all the viands were so delicious, and the
guests so gay and merry, that the feast was one long to be remembered by
all.
“When will you get the car, Patty?” asked Elise.
“I don’t know exactly. In a fortnight, perhaps. But we’ll be down at
Spring Beach then, so whoever wants a ride in it will have to come down
there.”
“I want a ride in it,” said Philip Van Reypen, “and I will come down
there. May I ask you to set the date?”
“You’ll get a notification in due season,” said Patty, smiling at the
eager youth. “I’m not sure it’s your turn first. No, Elise must be
first.”
“Why, I didn’t help you at all,” said Elise, greatly pleased, however,
at Patty’s remark.
“No, but you’re my lady friend, and so you come first. Perhaps your
brother will come with you.”
“_Perhaps_ he _will_!” said Roger, with emphasis.
“And who comes next?” asked Kenneth, with great interest.
“Christine, of course,” said Patty, smiling at the Southern girl, who
was enjoying all the fun, though quiet herself.
“Just as I guessed,” said Kenneth. “And, _then_, who next? Don’t keep me
in suspense!”
“Owing to the unexpected number of applicants, decision is delayed for
ten days,” said Patty, laughing at Ken’s disappointed face. “We’ll let
you know when you’re due, Ken. Don’t you worry.”
“Need _I_ worry?” asked Van Reypen, and then Hepworth said, “Need I?”
“No, you needn’t any of you worry. But I’m not going to take anybody
riding until I learn how to manage the frisky steed myself.”
“But I can show you,” said Philip, insinuatingly.
“So can I,” said Roger.
“No, you can’t,” said Patty. “Miller is going to teach me, and
then,—well, then, we’ll see about it.”
And, with this somewhat unsatisfactory invitation to “The Pebbles,” they
were forced to be content.
After dinner, Kenneth remarked that it looked like a shower.
“What do you mean?” asked Patty. “It’s a still, clear night.”
“You come here, and I’ll show you,” said Kenneth, mysteriously. Then,
taking Patty’s hand, he led her to a large davenport sofa, and seated
her in the centre of it.
“Now,” he said, “let it shower!”
As if by magic, a half a dozen or more parcels of all shapes and sizes
fell into Patty’s lap.
“It’s a shower, for you!” explained Elise, dancing about in glee. “Open
them!”
“Oh! I see,” said Patty. “How gorgeous!”
The parcels were in tissue paper, ribbon-tied, and Patty was not long in
exposing their contents. One and all, they were gifts selected with
reference to her new motor car.
Elise gave her a most fetching blue silk hood, with quaint shirring, and
draw-strings, and wide blue ribbon ties.
Christine gave her a lovely motor-veil, of the newest style and
flimsiest material.
Roger gave her gauntleted motor-gloves, of new and correct make.
Kenneth gave a motor-clock, of the most approved sort; and Philip Van
Reypen presented a clever little “vanity case,” which shut up into small
compass, but held many dainty toilette accessories.
Mr. Hepworth’s gift was an exquisite flower vase, of gold and glass, to
be attached to her new car.
Patty was more than surprised; she was almost overcome by this “shower”
of gifts, and she exclaimed:
“You are the _dearest_ people! And you needn’t wait for invitations.
Come down to ‘The Pebbles’ whenever you want to, and I’ll take you all
riding at once! I don’t see where you ever found such beautiful things!
Nor _why_ you gave them to me!”
“Because we love you, Patty dear,” said Christine, so softly that she
thought no one heard.
But Kenneth heard, and he smiled as he looked at Patty, and said, “Yes,
that’s why.”