Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge Part 8

The hall clock sounded again, this time heard clearly through the open door, and Patricia was astonished to find that the tea-hour had arrived without her knowing it.

"Am I all right to go down just as I am?" she inquired rather anxiously of her new friend. "Ought I put on a hat or something?"

"Put on anything you please. Take a parasol or a pair of galoshes if you feel that your system craves them," replied Constance calmly. "I am going just as I am. We girls who are in the house usually are glad to sneak in without prinking."

Patricia giggled. "Lead me down," she commanded briskly. "I'm perfectly crazy to see what's what and who's who. I was going to find out all about the various girls from Doris Leighton, but I'm sure you'll do very well in her place."

"I call that a real compliment," declared Constance with evident sincerity. "Leighton is the squarest damsel in the whole troupe and she isn't spoiled by her beauty either."

They found the tea-room filled as on the other day, and Patricia, thanks to Constance Fellows' kindness, found herself one of a gay group near the piano, as much at home among the chattering girls as though she had known them for weeks.

"I tell you what it is, Avis Coulter," Constance was saying to a very plain, angular girl with large spectacles when the tea was almost over, "we've got to show this budding genius a little friendly attention, or she'll get homesick and mopey before the resplendent Merton returns to coddle her. What are you going to do to liven her dragging days?"

The spectacled girl rubbed her nose thoughtfully. "I've tickets for a concert at Carnegie Hall tomorrow afternoon," she hazarded doubtfully.

"And I have a perfectly good studio party at my cousin Emily's," said another girl.

"And I'm going to have a spread in my room tomorrow night," volunteered a third member of the party.

Constance Fellows nodded approval. "That sounds very well to me," she said. "I accept for Miss P. Kendall and myself. Who's to bring the chaperone for these festivities?"

Avis Coulter, on the score of the concert being in the afternoon, declared that it was all stuff to think of such a thing, while Marie Jones said that her cousin Emily was chaperone enough for an army of buds, and Ethel Walters sniffed at the idea of a chaperone for a spread in one's very own room, under the roof with Miss Ardsley and the dependable Miss Tatten, the house-keeper, whom Patricia had not yet seen.

Constance would have none of their reasoning, however, and insisted that one of the older students at Artemis Lodge be in charge of all the festivities shown Patricia in the interval of Miss Merton's absence.

"I am responsible for her," she said firmly, "and I am not going to present her to Merton with the slightest social blot upon her dazzling whiteness. Chaperoned she must and shall be, or she doesn't budge a step."

Patricia was very much amused and surprised to see that Constance had her way. Instead of rebelling, as she had expected, the girls gave in at once, showing as much meekness in fulfilling the wishes of this decided young person as though it were she and not they that was granting the favors.

Patricia went back to her room cheered and exhilarated, and found the brief time before the dinner hour all too short for the necessary amount of practicing she had portioned off for herself.

Dinner in the gay little restaurant with its decorated walls and sociable small tables was a far more enjoyable affair than she had thought it could be when she had looked forward to it in her lonely interval, and after another half hour of chat by the fire-side in the library she went to her room highly delighted with her first day at Artemis Lodge.

Stopping at the public telephone in the hall--she decided not to use the one in Miss Merton's sitting-room until the owner was at home again--she called up Elinor and gave her a brief report.

"I'm having a perfectly lovely time," she told her. "And as Doris isn't coming back till next week, I am going to bring someone who has been very nice to me home to supper on Sunday, in her place. I know you'll like her, and," here she laughed a little, "tell Judy she isn't at all pretty."

CHAPTER VII

A DINNER FOR TWO

Rosamond Merton came home unexpectedly to find Patricia grown very much at home indeed during the four days of her absence.

She opened the door of the sitting-room, after a light tap of the tiny bra.s.s knocker, to find Patricia rising from the piano-stool with pleased expectation in her face, an expression which rapidly became one of joyful surprise. Rosamond was so much prettier than Patricia had been picturing her that she fairly beamed as she came to greet her.

"How lovely of you to come back so soon," she said with such warmth that Rosamond Merton felt glad that she had been compelled to cut her visit short.

"It's lovely to be welcomed home," she returned, beginning to pull off her gloves. "I always dreaded the empty rooms after I had been away.

Have you been quite comfortable? I left so hurriedly that I hadn't time to arrange for your arrival."

Patricia a.s.sured her that she was absolutely in clover, and she showed her the little bedroom as a proof, exhibiting the easy chair, the cosy table and all her other small comforts with a great deal of pride.

Rosamond was genuinely interested in all the contrivances which had been installed for Patricia's well-being and she showed so much of what Patricia called "human" feeling that she won the last citadel in that young lady's affections.

"Do you know I was dreadfully afraid of you that day at Tancredi's?" she confessed when they were once more in the sitting-room by the fire.

Rosamond had laid aside her traveling dress and slipped on a soft fur-trimmed crepe lounging robe with her feet in embroidered satin mules, and the impressionable Patricia was feasting her eyes on her. She was used to beauty--and beauty of a much higher cla.s.s--in her own sister Elinor, and every day her mirror reflected quite as attractive features as those of her new companion, but the extreme luxury with which Rosamond indulged her fancy in the matter of clothing was a revelation to her.

She looked at the s.h.i.+mmering cloudy-blue folds of the robe, at the soft dark edges of fur with their under-ruffles of pink chiffon, at the lace and ribbons of the petticoat which showed where the robe fell away, and she forgot they were merely outer trappings, to be bought from any department store or private shop. They seemed part of a superior charm belonging exclusively to Rosamond Merton, and Patricia sighed as she saw in the mirror over the mantel-shelf the image of a fluffy-haired girl in an unpretentious blouse.

"I wonder that she can put up with me," she thought ruefully, smoothing down the folds of her simple corduroy skirt. "She must be very kind-hearted indeed. I wish that I might do something to show how I feel about it."

As Rosamond chatted on, telling of her visit to Red Top and describing the house party with a good deal of cleverness, Patricia became so interested that she forgot her grateful intentions in listening to the gossip which her new friend retailed so sparklingly. She laughed over the description of the model poultry farm and chaffed Rosamond quite freely on her lack of technical terms; she smiled a little uneasily over the dinner party at the rectory, feeling a bit guilty that she should find matter for mirth in the precise and dainty entertainment offered impartially by the gentle rector and his ladylike maiden sisters; and she was frankly disturbed by the careless fas.h.i.+on of treating the attack of measles which had disbanded the house party a week earlier than planned.

"Of course, you weren't in any danger," she said, more to herself than to Rosamond. "Measles aren't much to be afraid of, anyway, unless one is a perfect Methuselah. I think it was hard on Mr. Long to have his nice party broken up after all his planning, just because a lot of grown-ups got scared about _measles_. If I were the girl he's in love with, I'd stayed and helped nurse Danny, instead of running away from the place."

Rosamond laughed her indolent laugh. "And been quarantined for three weeks out there in the desolate country," she mocked. "My cousin isn't that heroic sort, even if she were devoted to a man. She doesn't care two pins for your Mr. Long, and I fancy he knows it by this time."

"Not care for him?" cried Patricia in amazement. "Why in the world did she and her mother come to see him then? I thought they were engaged."

Rosamond shook her head slowly and emphatically. "Not at all," she said calmly. "She thought she might like him well enough last fall, but he has developed such queer tastes recently--burying himself on that ridiculous chicken-farm and taking up with stupid little boys who develop measles when they run away from school to visit their benefactor, that she really has had quite enough of him without marrying him."

Patricia was silent, puckering her brows over the problem of unrewarded virtue, while Rosamond Merton watched her with something like a twinkle in her long eyes.

"It seems pretty hard that Mr. Long has to lose his happiness just because he's done right and been kind," she said finally, with a little sigh at the topsy-turvy ways of this wilful world. "He's saving Danny Sneath from growing up a horrid worthless man like his father--that's plain from Danny coming back on the sly to see him--and he's doing splendidly with Red Top, and yet he doesn't get what he wants."

"He shouldn't want what he can't get then," smiled Rosamond, indulgent as far as Patricia was concerned. "Don't worry your pretty head about such stupid things--men always get over disappointments like that. He'll probably be in love with the next girl who happens to look at him twice.

Tell me how you've been putting in the time since I ran off so unceremoniously. Have you been fearfully homesick?"

Patricia abandoned Mr. Long and his deserts reluctantly. "He ought to be happy and I am sure he will," she insisted warmly. "People always get paid back in the same coin they use." A sudden memory of her own debt made her add, more shyly, "You ought to believe in that--after all the kindness you've shown me. And I do want you to know that I'm going to pay you back just a tiny bit some day. I don't know how, but I'm going to do it."

Rosamond's slow smile answered her fully, and she plunged into an eager account of the way in which she had been taken into the inner circles of Artemis Lodge and made to feel so entirely at home. "They've been wonderfully nice to me," she said gayly. "I've had a splendid time each day, and my lessons have gone beautifully, too. I haven't had a single dull moment. I'm so grateful to you for taking me in."

The little cloud which had slightly dimmed Rosamond's smile faded at these words and left her face serene. "We will have better times yet,"

she promised as she rose to glance at the clock in the tower across the housetops. "Let's begin by having dinner upstairs here by ourselves.

I'll phone down to the office at once. Isn't it stupid to have to call up Tatten every time one wants a tray in one's room? They take great care of us here," and she shrugged her shoulders gracefully.

Patricia feared that the expense of such select dining might be too much for her small store of funds and she was determined not to sail under false colors with this luxuriant companion.

"It would be jolly enough, but how about the cost?" she asked frankly.

"I can't stand many extras, you know. I'm rather poor as far as cash is concerned."

Miss Merton paused with her hand on the receiver. "You surely didn't think I was intending you to pay for my treat," she said in such a gently grieved tone that Patricia became most uncomfortable.