Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge Part 20

Maids came and went across the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fas.h.i.+on, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. She had recognized Bruce and Elinor.

She flew down to them for a rapturous greeting and though the courtyard was filled with hurrying people she hugged both of them heartily, dropping some tears of real delight on her own apple blossoms.

"I'll be down later," she told them. "I'm waiting for Doris Leighton. Do look after Mr. Long if he comes in before I do, and for goodness sake tell him not to breathe a word about what I was talking to him about in the Park the other day."

"Mysteries, and with your late rival in the hen-yard?" cried Bruce with feigned concern. "I'll have to look into this later, Miss Pat, and see what you've been up to behind our backs."

"You'll find out later, I hope," laughed Patricia, giving Elinor another squeeze before she ran off laughing at the thought of her conspiracy with Mr. Long coming under Bruce's notice in this unexpected way.

"I had to tell him," she thought, as she hurried back to her post. "He might have found it out before it came to anything and then I'd have felt so silly."

As she sat down again she thought she heard the door open and she asked, "Is that you, Constance?"

It was Judith with her kimono over her nightdress and her bare feet poked into her slippers. She came over and cuddled down beside Patricia.

"Don't send me back right away, please. I have something to tell you, Miss Pat," she said earnestly, and Patricia made room for her on the wide seat.

"What is it, Judy-pudy?" she asked kindly. "Bad dreams?"

Judith gave a little sound that seemed to mean satisfaction with the question. "Oh, no, not bad dreams," she answered happily, cuddling closer. "Not bad dreams. Very pleasant ones. About you, Patricia."

Patricia patted her. "Tell me," she said, not because she wanted to hear the dream, but to please Judith.

"I dreamed," began Judith, sitting up to look earnestly in Patricia's face in the dim light reflected from the courtyard. "I dreamed that you were unhappy and it was because you thought that you would never be a real singer."

Patricia interrupted her with a little laugh. "Sounds perilously like wide-awake news to me, Ju," she said lightly, determined to conquer the idea which possessed her small sister that she was unhappy over her discovery of failure. "We've put that on the shelf long ago, you and I."

Judith went on, scanning her face. "I dreamed that you cried about it when no one saw you and that you felt you'd never be happy again. Now don't say 'Stuff,' for it's true. And I couldn't bear it, so I thought and thought and then I went out and walked straight down to Tancredi's and I asked for her, and found her in. She was in the music-room and I went in and said, 'I am Judith Kendall, and I've come to ask about my sister.'"

"Good little Ju," said Patricia as she took breath. "I believe you could really have done it."

It was rather dim to read expressions, but she thought a strange look flitted across the eager face that was staring so hard at her. "You mustn't take it so seriously, Judy," she said, but Judith went on.

"'I've come to see if it's true that she'll never be a great singer and I know you'll tell me,' I said to Madame Tancredi, and she just put her arm about me and kissed me quite hard."

"That's what she would have done. How did you guess it?" cried Patricia.

"And she said very seriously, 'Your sister, my dear, is going to be the greatest singer I have ever taught, if she keeps on as she has begun, or if some stupid silly one doesn't take her from the only right method.'"

Patricia felt a surge of agonizing regret for all the bright hopes that she had lost forever, but she tried to laugh down into Judith's eager face.

"That sounds exactly like Tancredi," she declared. "How strange you should dream it so truly."

"It sounds true, doesn't it?" persisted Judith. "Should you be very cross with me if it weren't all a dream, Miss Pat?"

Patricia's heart stopped beating for a moment and then it leaped to her throat.

"What do you mean, Judith?" she called out, clutching her tightly by the shoulders. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"Ow! you hurt!" returned Judith, wriggling, and then she responded to the agony of appeal in Patricia's big gray eyes. "It isn't a dream. It's true," she said. "I went this afternoon."

Patricia could not take it in for a while. She had to question Judith again and again before she could accept this gift from the dark heavens.

"Are you sure?" she asked over and over until Judith became impatient.

"I may be only fourteen and a half and very small for my age," she said with withering dignity, "but I surely know what happened just this afternoon. I'm going back to bed now, and you can believe me or not just as you please," and in spite of Patricia's protest, she stalked away and slammed the door behind her--a very unusual thing for Judith.

Patricia sat by the window in a trance of delight. The future glowed with all its old alluring colors and new ones were s.h.i.+ning out every time she looked ahead. She was to be a singer after all. What did anything else matter?

Suddenly she laughed aloud and jumping up she ran to the mirror and snapped on the light to make a radiant face at the girl in the frame.

"We'll try to put up with being a failure as a martyr, won't we, my dear?" she said breathlessly. "Oh, how hard we'll try not to grow too pleased with ourselves now! Just remind me about it when I'm getting top-lofty, will you, please? I'm afraid I'll forget to be meek."

"What's that you're talking about?" asked Constance's voice, and Patricia turned to see her standing smiling in the doorway.

"Oh, oh, you lovely thing!" she cried in instant approval. "Why, I'd never known you in that heavenly rig."

"Thanks for the tactful way you pay tribute to my frock," replied Constance smoothly. "It is rather nice, so I forgive you on the spot."

"Nice?" exclaimed Patricia with scorn for the word. "Nice! It's splendid, gorgeous, _transcendent_. Nice, indeed! Turn around and let me drink you in."

Constance turned. The dress was of dull gold-colored net with great flowers about its hem wrought into the net with gold thread and the bodice was one great gold flower with trailing net for sleeves. Gold bands held down Constance's dark hair, and the simplicity of the whole made it suitable.

"I think I shall stay here and look at myself," she said with quaint gravity. "It's been so long since I've had a real whole dress that I fear it has turned my head. I'll be asking everybody what they think of it if I go down."

Patricia pushed her out the door. "They'll tell you without asking," she promised. "I wonder what Rosamond will say when she sees you."

At that Constance came back into the room and closed the door.

"Rosamond won't be here, after all," she said with a little laugh. "She sent word to her father to do the polite thing to Madame Milano when she came to sing in Boston, and her father sent a special car down for Rosamond to take Milano up to the Hub. She's on her way now. That's going some, isn't it?"

She evidently wanted to break the news to Patricia before she learned from others, and she seemed surprised at Patricia's easy acceptance of it.

"You're getting to be a wise child," she said with an approving nod.

"You know that it isn't always the highest flier that gets there the soonest. Keep smiling, my dear, and it won't hurt half so much."

Patricia did smile, not so much at the slang as at the friendly spirit which prompted it. "It doesn't hurt at all now," she answered, truthfully, and then she told Constance of Judith's visit.

Constance was delighted. "Plucky Judith!" she cried. "Lucky Miss Pat.

You're about the happiest girl in the world just now, aren't you?"

"Just about," Patricia confessed.

"I'm not so wretched either," said Constance with a whirl of her golden draperies. "I've come out of the woods myself. Auntie is so pleased with my altar-piece that she's giving in at last. I'm to go home next week and I can go to night life or anything else I please. She considers me safe since I could paint that picture. Funny, isn't it, that she couldn't have known me for herself?"

Patricia congratulated her with great sincerity. "I'll miss you terribly, but I'm glad for your sake," she said warmly. "You really need someone to look after you."

Constance pretended to be indignant. "After all the mending I've done in your presence, too!" she cried reproachfully. "I'll not stay to be maligned like that."