Harriet sat with her mouth open, too surprised to cry.
"And your clothes are awful," pursued Patty interestedly. "You ought not to let Miss Sallie pick 'em out. Miss Sallie's nice; I like her a lot, but she doesn't know any more than a rabbit about clothes; you can tell that by the way she dresses herself. And then, too, you'd be a lot nicer if you wouldn't be so stiff. If you'd just laugh the way the rest of us do—"
"How can I laugh when I don't think things are funny? The jokes the girls make are awfully silly—"
Speech was no longer possible, for Kid[168] McCoy came stampeding down the corridor with as much racket as a cavalcade of horses. She was decked in a fur scarf and a necklace set with pearls, she wore a muff on her head, drum-major fashion; a lace handkerchief and a carved ivory fan protruded from the pocket of her blouse and a pink chiffon scarf floated from her shoulders; her wrist was adorned with an Oriental bracelet and she was lugging in her arms a silver-mounted Mexican saddle, of a type that might be suited to the plains of Texas, but never to the respectable country lanes adjacent to St. Ursula's.
"Bully for Guardie!" she shouted as she descended upon them. "He's a daisy; he's a ducky; he's a lamb. Did you ever see such a perfectly corking saddle?"
She plumped it over a chair, transformed the pink chiffon scarf into a bridle, and proceeded to mount and canter off.
"Get up! Whoa! Hi, there! Clear the road."
Harriet jumped aside to avoid being bumped, while Patty snatched her pink frock[169] from the path of the runaway. They were shrieking with laughter, even Harriet, the tearful.
"Now you see!" said Patty, suddenly interrupting her mirth. "It's perfectly easy to laugh if you just let yourself go. Kid isn't really funny. She's just as silly as she can be."
Kid brought her horse to a stand.
"Well I like that!"
"Excuse me for telling the truth," said Patty politely, "I'm just using you for an illustration—Heavens! There's the bell!"
She commenced unlacing her blouse with one hand, while she pushed her guests to the door with the other.
"Hurry and dress, and come back to button me up. It would be a very delicate attention for us to be on time to-night. We've been late for every meal since vacation began."
The girls spent Christmas morning coasting. They were on time for luncheon—and with appetites!
The meal was half over when Osaki ap[170]peared with a telegram, which he handed to the Dowager. She read it with agitated surprise and passed it to Miss Sallie, who raised her eyebrows and handed it to Miss Wadsworth, who was thrown into a very visible flutter.
"What on earth can it be?" Kid wondered.
"Lordy's eloped, and they've got to hunt for a new Latin teacher," was Patty's interpretation.
As the three girls left the table, the Dowager waylaid Harriet.
"Step into my study a moment. A telegram has just come—"
Patty and Kid climbed the stairs in wide-eyed wonder.
"It can't be bad news, for Miss Sallie was smiling—" meditated Patty. "And I can't think of any good news that can be happening to Harriet."
Ten minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Harriet burst into Patty's room wild with excitement.
"He's coming!"[171]
"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.[172]
"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 neck[173]lace 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.[174]
"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.
[175]
"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.[176]
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[177] caught her breath in a little gasp. "He likes me!"
"I knew those silver buckles would fetch him!" said Patty.[178]
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.[182]
"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?"[183]
"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-de[184]served 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[185] 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.[186]
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.
