Just Patty Part 11

"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.

"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my suit-case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack.

That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.

"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't understand."

Conny nodded feelingly.

"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown people have horrid manners."

"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time, what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."

"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.

"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for dinner, the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her head.

"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'

"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with it?'

"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And there it was, wide open!"

Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles filling in the interstices.

"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.

"They belong to him," Conny murmured fervently.

Patty nodded.

"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle Tom lives five miles from town, and there simply wasn't anything we could do that night."

"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert, and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested Priscilla.

"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.

"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to fit."

"I hope it looked all right?"

"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon.

I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."

"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?"

asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the dressmaker's.

"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it--just like all my dancing dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash.

I hated it anyway."

"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until--"

"Just wait till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of her dresses--one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It was white crepe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet, and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I looked perfectly beautiful--I did, honestly--you wouldn't have known me.

I looked _at least_ twenty!

"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as though I were flirting with my grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a good time--if you're pretty."

Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed her chronicle.

"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table.

Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper--the man next to me--said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life; that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."

"But about the suit-case," they prompted. "Didn't you do anything more?"

"Uncle Tom telephoned again in the morning, and the station agent said he'd got the party on the wire as had the young lady's case. And he was coming back here in two days, and I was to leave his suit-case with the baggage man at the station, and he would leave mine."

"But you didn't leave it."

"I came on the other road. I'm going to send it down."

"And what did you wear at the wedding?"

"Louise's clothes. It didn't matter a bit, my not matching the other bridesmaids, because I was maid of honor, and ought to dress differently anyway. I've been grown up for three days--and I just wish Miss Lord could have seen me with my hair on the top of my head talking to men!"

"Did you tell the Dowager?"

"Yes, I told her about getting the wrong suit-case; I didn't mention the fact that it belonged to the third man from the end."

"What did she say?"

"She said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's luggage; and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely. She telephoned to the baggage man that it was here, but she couldn't send Martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some eggs."

Recreation was over, and the girls came trooping in to gather books and pads and pencils for the approaching study hour. Everyone who pa.s.sed number Seven dropped in to hear the news. Each in turn received the story of the suit-case, and each in turn gasped anew at sight of the contents.

"Doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish?" said Rosalie Patton, sniffing.

"Oh, there's a b.u.t.ton loose!" cried Florence Hissop, the careful housewife. "Where's some black silk, Patty?"

She threaded a needle and secured the b.u.t.ton. Then she daringly tried on the coat. Eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch.

It was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present. Even Irene McCullough found it baggy.

"He had awfully broad shoulders," said Rosalie, stroking the satin lining.

They peered daintily at the other garments.

"Oh!" squealed Mae Mertelle. "He wears blue silk suspenders."

"And something else blue," chirped Edna Hartwell, peering over her shoulder. "They're pajamas!"

"And to think of such a thing happening to Patty!" sighed Mae Mertelle.