Just Patty Part 31

"Ye're sure it's on the straight, Miss? Y' ain't pitchin' me no curve?"

"It's on the straight." She pledged her word. "I ain't pitchin' you no curve."

Patty crept upstairs the back way, and by a wide detour avoided the excited crowd still gathered in the East Wing. A fresh hub-bub had arisen, for Evalina Smith had found a monkey-wrench on the floor of her room. It was shown to the scoffing Martin as visible proof that the burglar had been there.

"An it's me own wrench!" he cried in wide-eyed amazement. "Now, what do ye think of his nerve?"

Patty hurriedly undressed and tumbled into a kimono. Sleepily rubbing her eyes, she joined the a.s.semblage in the hall.

"What's happened?" she asked, blinking at the lights. "Has there been a fire?"

A chorus of laughter greeted the question.

"It's a burglar!" said Conny, exhibiting the wrench.

"Oh, _why_ didn't you wake me?" Patty wailed. "I've wanted all my life to see a burglar."

Two weeks later, a groom arrived on horseback with a polite note for the Dowager.

Mr. Weatherby presented his compliments to Mrs. Trent, and desired the pleasure of showing the young ladies of the Senior cla.s.s through his art gallery on Friday next at four o'clock.

The Dowager was at a loss to account for this gratuitous courtesy on the part of her hitherto unneighborly neighbor. After a moment of deliberation, she decided to meet him half way; and the groom rode back with an equally polite acceptance.

On Friday next, as the school hea.r.s.e turned in at the gates of Weatherby Hall, the owner stood on the portico waiting to welcome his guests. If there were a shade more _empress.e.m.e.nt_ in his greeting to Patty than to her companions, the Dowager did not notice it.

He made an exceptionally attentive host. In person he conducted them through the gallery and pointed out the famous Botticelli. Tea was served at little tables set on the western terrace. Each girl found a gardenia at her plate and a silver bonbonniere with the St. Ursula monogram on the cover. After tea their host suggested a visit to the Italian garden. As they strolled through the paths, Patty found herself walking beside him and the Dowager. His conversation was addressed to Mrs. Trent, but an occasional amused glance was directed toward Patty.

They turned a corner behind a marble pavilion, and came upon a fountain and a gardener man, intent upon a border of maiden-hair ferns.

"I have a very remarkable new Swedish gardener," Mr. Weatherby casually remarked to the Dowager. "The man is a genius at making plants grow. He came highly recommended. Oscar!" he called. "Bring the ladies some of those tulips."

The man dropped his watering-can, and approached, hat in hand. He was a golden-haired, blue-eyed young chap with an honest smile. He presented his flowers, first to the elder lady and then to Patty. As he caught her interested gaze, a light of comprehension suddenly leaped to his eyes.

Her costume and make-up to-day were so very dissimilar to those which she had a.s.sumed on the occasion of their first meeting, that recognition on his part had not been instantaneous.

Patty fell back a step to receive her flowers and the others strolled on.

"I have to thank ye, Miss," he said gratefully, "for the finest job I ever had. It's all right!"

"You know now," Patty laughed, "that I didn't pitch you no curves?"

XII

The Gypsy Trail

"Heels together. Hips firm, one, two, three, four--Irene McCullough!

_Will_ you keep your shoulders back and your stomach in? How many times must I tell you to stand straight? That's better! We'll start again.

One, two, three, four."

The exercise droned on. Some twenty of the week's delinquents were working off demerits. It was uncongenial work for a sunny Sat.u.r.day. The twenty pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head--across ropes and rings and parallel bars--toward the green tree tops and the blue sky; and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.

Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined.

No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter discipline.

"One, two, three, four--Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the cla.s.s when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order, "Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt.

Break ranks."

With a relieved whoop, the cla.s.s dispersed.

"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.

"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"

"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"

"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same.

She's so--so sort of _spirited_, you know--like a skittish horse."

"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the upper hand of Jelly once, and _just make her toe the mark_!"

"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."

"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky mixture in the wash bowl.

The fancy-dress lawn fete, which St. Ursula's School held on the last Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and s.p.a.ce for their proper adjustment, were to be a.s.sumed at the school and driven down in the hea.r.s.e. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery dressing-room.

Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing at the school. They had gone as Gypsies--not comic opera Gypsies, but real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the room with their costumes for a week before the fete.) Patty wore one brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf.

Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped.

Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were the last word in realism.

They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.

"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."

She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.

"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."

"You impudent little ragam.u.f.fins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your faces?"

"Washed 'em in black coffee."

Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.

"You're a disgrace to the school!" she p.r.o.nounced. "Don't let any policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."