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[187] 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.[188]
"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[189] 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.[190]
"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.[191]
"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,[192] 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.[193] 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[194] 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.[195]
"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 clam[196]ored. "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[200]—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[201] 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,[202] 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.[203]
"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[204] 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?"
