Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge Part 9

"It's sweet of you to ask me," she said with a good deal of courage.

"And I can't be horrid enough to refuse this first time, but I do want you to understand that I can't spend money like you do. I'm not really stingy, as you may think--I'm only trying to be careful. I'm so afraid of being selfish."

Her speech was rather unintelligible to Rosamond, who could not know of Bruce's compact with Patricia, but she smiled pleasantly and took down the receiver.

"I don't think you could be stingy or selfish or anything that wasn't sweet," she said and then proceeded to announce to Miss Tatten that Miss Kendall and she were dining in their own rooms that evening, and would she please see that dinner was sent up promptly at six-thirty, adding a list of dishes that seemed to the anxious Patricia recklessly expensive.

The dinner was great fun, however, and Patricia felt very pleasantly luxurious as she slipped into her new kimono, a poor affair indeed compared to the fur and crepe robe, and lounged before the fire listening to Rosamond's accounts of the travels and studies which had filled her life.

"You must have been almost everywhere," she murmured admiringly. "You have seen such a lot--for a girl. I'm only two years younger, but I've never been to Niagara Falls, nor Hot Springs, nor the Tower of London----"

A ripple of laughter broke in on her confession. "What a delicious jumble!" cried Rosamond, springing up to adjust a lock that had fallen.

"One can't tell which is the place of confinement and which the playground. For Heaven's sake, though, don't _complain_ that you've never seen Niagara Falls, no self-respecting person nowadays is willing to confess that such a place even exists. It went out of date with the bridal bonnet and the what-not."

Patricia laughed, but this troubled her, and later on she recurred to it while they were beginning on their salad.

"Why shouldn't one see all the wonderful places and things in the world?" she asked. "I should think Niagara Falls was quite as important as those snippy little falls at that camp in the Adirondacks that you said were so much admired."

Rosamond laid down her fork and looked at her very carefully. "Are you actually in earnest?" she inquired with a polite repression of any hint of a smile. "My dear Miss Patricia Kendall, you forget that the most exclusive families have their camps near that snippy falls, while only the cheap tourist makes the pilgrimage to Niagara."

Patricia was obstinate. "I don't see what that has to do with it. The falls were there before the exclusive families were thought of, and it's a wonderful, wonderful falls. It seems rather stupid to me to ignore such a big thing in nature," she insisted with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks.

Rosamond waved the argument away. "Never mind the falls, large or small," she said, with unruffled amiability. "Tell me some more about yourself and your doings."

Patricia was won instantly. She was to learn later on in her friends.h.i.+p with Rosamond Merton that this was one of her readiest answers to argument, particularly when she was not faring so well as she would like. As yet, however, she had not learned the skilled defences which Rosamond kept for her protection against better logic than her own, and she responded with her usual impetuous generosity.

"I've told you almost everything," she said brightly. "I'd rather hear about you. It's twice as exciting as my humdrum accounts of myself. Tell me about your studio at home. Is it so gorgeous as the peac.o.c.k panels that Constance Fellows is doing for you?"

"It's hardly gorgeous, but it's rather good." Rosamond's interest was plainly forced. "Constance is getting on with them, is she? I must see them in the morning. How do you like her? I suppose you have heard that she is very eccentric. She refused to live in a perfect palace with an aunt of hers, merely because the aunt objected to her going to life cla.s.s. Fancy her giving up such a life for a mere trifle."

"She didn't feel that it was a trifle, I suppose," replied Patricia lightly. She did not sympathize with Rosamond's view of the matter, but she had learned in this short hour to steer her bark away from the shoals.

"I think she showed very little judgment," said Rosamond, selecting a bonbon with care. "She should have lived peaceably with her aunt and had her own models in her own studio, and she'd have been comfortable and the aunt would have been happy. There is always a way of doing as one wishes if one will only take the trouble to look it up."

Patricia hid her uneasy feelings as best she could, but her face was never hard to read, and Rosamond shook her head at her with the slow smile curving her red lips.

"You think me a monster of deceit," she accused. "Your big eyes are quite horrified at such shallow cunning. Don't worry, my dear Miss Kendall. I'm not half so bad as you think me."

Patricia flushed. "I know you are far above any such mean doings," she said stoutly, "but I wish you wouldn't talk that way. It makes me feel--but I'm not going to be such a goose as to preach. Do go on about the yachting trip. You were in the middle of it when dinner came in."

Rosamond, always graceful, responded readily enough, and the evening sped rapidly. Patricia had enjoyed herself tremendously, as she very truthfully told her hostess when she said good-night and shut herself into her own snug little room, and she looked forward to the morrow with Rosamond Merton with a thrill of pleasure.

She could not help wondering, though, as she shook out the kinks and tangles of her bright hair, why she had not told about the Sunday evening supper in the studio, nor the spread in Ethel Walters' room.

"I must be getting terribly secret and crafty," she thought with some surprise. "I suppose that's the effect of being thrown with so many strangers all at once."

She did not realize that it was Rosamond Merton's slow smile that had held her confidences back and if anyone had told her so, she would have denied it most emphatically.

Ethel Walters' spread had consisted of crackers and sardines, with olives and oranges and walnut bars for side dishes. The studio supper, though beautifully correct in most details, had Constance Fellows and a very shabby yet delightfully entertaining friend of hers, as chief guests. And how was anyone to know what Rosamond Merton might think of such swift intimacies?

CHAPTER VIII

PATRICIA RECEIVES AN INVITATION

The next few weeks sped pleasantly for Patricia.

Rosamond Merton was an ideal room-mate. She never intruded on Patricia's privacy, nor withdrew unsociably when Patricia felt inclined for chat.

She allowed Patricia to make her own hours for use of the fine piano in her sitting-room and was patient under the many changes which the despotic Tancredi inflicted on the submissive Patricia, s.h.i.+fting her own practicing with such delicate tact that her fellow student scarcely realized her sacrifices.

"She's perfectly wonderful, Norn," declared Patricia, standing at the studio window one Sunday night about the middle of February. "She never gets cross or fussed like I do, and she is always so beautifully dressed. I am sometimes quite ashamed of my plain self when we are going about together. I do look awfully little-girly and prim in most of my clothes. I wish I were more ornamental," she ended with a tiny apologetic frown.

Judith looked at Elinor and nodded. "I knew it," she said. "I knew Miss Pat would be getting spoiled by spending all her time with such a showy person."

Patricia laughed a short, annoyed laugh. "Nonsense, Judy. I'm not a bit different. I only wish I didn't have to put all my patrimony into Madame Tancredi's pocket. I hate to go about with Rosamond, looking like her maid. I've worn that same suit to every place we've gone and I believe people think I sleep in it now."

Elinor looked slightly troubled. "If you'd only let us get you a new frock----" she began.

Patricia cut her short. "Hardly," she said emphatically. "I've told you all along that I wouldn't sponge on any of you. It's bad enough to take so much from dear old Ted. No, I'll go on exactly as I planned, and I won't get a single new thing until spring."

This virtuous declaration did not seem to stimulate her as it should have done, for she added, rather dolefully for her, "I wish I were like Constance Fellows or Ethel Walters. They never seem to mind being shabby."

"You can scarcely call yourself shabby--and I'm sure Constance loves beautiful things," said Elinor with gentle firmness. "You couldn't look at her work and not realize how she gloried in color and form."

Judith wagged her head wisely. "Perhaps she can stand doing without pretty things for herself," she suggested, "because she can put so much of it into her work."

This thoughtful sifting for motives was so like Judith that Patricia forgot her grievances in an amused laugh. "Good for you, Judy-pudy," she cried, flinging an arm about her small sister. "There's a hint for me, is it? I'll try to take it, Miss Minerva, and if you hear that my exercises are growing too frilly for Tancredi's taste you'll know the reason why."

Judith was not at all discomposed by her light-minded raillery. "I should think it would be a very good thing for you to try, Miss Pat,"

she said sedately. "Clothes go out of fas.h.i.+on so dreadfully soon nowadays and the singing exercises will last most of your life."

Patricia watched her leave the room to arrange the materials for the salad dressing--Bruce always made the dressing on Sunday nights--and she smiled at Elinor in a very tender fas.h.i.+on.

"Judy is a wonder," she confessed. "She has a mind of her own. I wonder why she's taken such an aversion to Rosamond lately? She never misses a chance to undermine her. Not openly, you know, but in a quiet way. I've noticed it ever since Doris Leighton came back and we had the spread that evening in her room."

"Judith couldn't have gotten it from Doris," said Elinor positively. "I heard all that Doris said about Miss Merton, and it was rather nice. I think you must be over-sensitive, Miss Pat. Judith has been at the Lodge several times since then and she may have been talking with someone who is envious of your Rosamond. She isn't as popular as she might be, you know."

"Of course, she isn't," exclaimed Patricia, on the defensive at once.

"She doesn't choose to hobn.o.b with everyone, and so they say she's stuck up, and ultra, and exclusive. If she were as much of a sn.o.b as they say, she certainly wouldn't have chosen to take me in."

Judith had returned, carrying the salad in its green bowl. She held it precisely between her slender, pale hands as she stood still to confute this heresy.

"You know perfectly well, Miss Pat, that there isn't a prettier girl in the musical set in Artemis Lodge," she declared with a touch of wrath in her calm tones. "You are related to a famous artist, and you have Madame Milano for a friend. Miss Merton wouldn't look at you, either, if you didn't have nice clothes and good manners, besides being very well-born indeed, as she certainly knows."

With this blast delivered, Judith set the salad-bowl carefully down on the table and left the room, her head high and her mane tossing.

Patricia, instead of being amused this time, looked annoyed. "Judy's getting spoiled, Elinor," she said, turning away to ramble idly about the room. "She's as conceited a young imp as I know. These stories of hers have about turned her head. I wish you'd tell her for me that she must behave properly to Rosamond, or she'll have to stay away from the Lodge. I won't have her putting on her superior airs and looking mysterious over nothing with me."