Miss Pat at School Part 18

Judith tossed her mane. "Don't call names," she responded, hiding the gratified smile that lurked in the corners of her mouth. "You'd think of things, too, if you didn't talk _quite_ so much, Miss Pat. It's dreadfully hard to talk and think at the same time."

"Is it?" cried Patricia, delighted as usual with Judith's maxims.

"Hear that now, will you, Norn? Ju's going to reform me. I hope I'll be a satisfactory subject, Judy darling. 'Thinking Taught While You Wait.' It's a great idea and it may lead to a new school of mental science. Ju would look fine in cap and gown as president of the college----"

Patricia broke off laughing at Judith's absolutely unconscious face, as, with fingers once again screwed into her ears and mouth twisted intently, she immersed herself in the dignified oblivion of study.

Patricia looked at her with laughing eyes that gradually grew sober.

"I've got it!" she said, eagerly turning to Elinor. "I've got the idea for the sort of thing you meant. I'll do Judy just as she is--you'll pose, won't you, Ju? I won't be too hard on you."

"Don't I always study like this?" replied Judith without looking up.

"Go ahead as long as you like--only don't talk. I want to study."

"Good girl, Judith!" cried Patricia, pulling the stool with its burden nearer to the light. "I'll plunge in right away and get it blocked in tonight. Do you know where I put that other package of modeling-wax, Elinor?"

She set to work with a will, humming to herself as she worked, the failure of her more ambitious undertaking forgotten in the joy of renewed hope, and her intimate knowledge of Judith's face and figure helping unconsciously to better work than she could have done in the schools.

When nine o'clock rang from the church tower across the park she laid down her tools with an air of great content.

"I believe it's going to go," she announced to the absorbed pair of workers before her. "Wake up, Norn, and give me a criticism. Ju has to go to bed and can't hold the pose much longer anyway."

"Pooh, I'm not a bit tired," protested Judith. "I sit this way every night for _hours_."

Elinor laid down her brushes and turned in her chair. Her face lighted as she saw the rough, vigorous outlines of Patricia's latest effort.

"That's the real thing, Miss Pat!" she said enthusiastically. "If you can keep it up like that, you won't have to be ashamed of it, I can tell you!"

She came and stood behind Patricia, her hands on her shoulders, eager and interested.

"That shoulder is a little too high, and the head needs more fullness at the top--Ju has lots of hair--but it's going along splendidly, _splendidly_! Don't touch it again till Judith poses tomorrow. You want to keep close to life and not make up anything."

Patricia, meek in experience of past failure, covered her work and put it safely away.

"I'll go on with it when I'm rested and Judy is fresh," she said contentedly. "If it goes on as rapidly as it has tonight, it will be ready to turn in at the end of the week. We have until Sat.u.r.day night to put in our stuff, you know. You have to get yours in by noon, don't you?"

Elinor nodded. "But I shan't have any trouble finishing in time, I'm sure," she said with bright confidence. "I feel as though it were almost going to do itself."

The spare hours of the rest of that week were devoted to the prize designs, and both progressed so happily that their authors were filled with a greater measure of content as the days sped.

"I'm going to take mine in to the Academy to work on this afternoon while I wait for the night life," said Elinor on Thursday as they were leaving the breakfast room. "I want to see how it looks among the big casts and life studies. I'm afraid it won't show up very well among the real things, but it may help me to see its faults and remedy them while I still have time."

Patricia gazed approvingly at the dim, shadowy study of graceful figures grouped in attentive att.i.tudes about a reader in a landscape of suggested loveliness that spoke to any observer with delicate symbolism.

"It's the best ever," she declared. "I'll 'wagger,' as Hannah Ann says, that you lift the medal."

Elinor gave a gently contemptuous sniff as she stowed it away in its corner. "No doubt--with all those experienced students competing!

Some of them have been there ten years, Miss Pat. I simply haven't the ghost of a show, and you know it."

Patricia was silenced, though unconvinced. "Don't you let any of those hyenas see it, all the same," she cautioned. "I know them better than you do. They'd rush another version in before yours, and then where would you be?"

"I don't believe anyone would be so low minded!" cried Elinor, shocked and reproachful. "How can you say such things, Miss Pat?"

"Take my advice, my dear," grinned Patricia. "You're too good to see through some of those fakes, and this is one instance when my eyes are clearer than yours. It isn't often I can give you points, so do be grateful. Don't let those long-haired boys get a glimpse of it, or it's all up with you."

Elinor promised, smiling at Patricia's vehemence, and went off with her canvas, securely wrapped against curious eyes, held firmly in one gray-gloved hand.

Patricia looked after her with loving pride. "How pretty she is, and how clever," she thought tenderly. "And the best part of it is that she doesn't know what an adorable dear she is. I hope she gets an honorable mention, even if she can't hit the prize. She deserves a lot of good times, after all those lean years when she took such good care of us."

When Patricia came home from the library at half-past five, she was surprised to find Elinor stretched on the couch, with a thick comfortable drawn up to her chin, and her face gray and haggard.

"What in the world--" she began in alarm, but Elinor silenced her questioning with a weak wave of one tired hand.

"I'm not really sick," she said, in a faint tone, as Patricia cuddled down on the floor beside her and took the chilly hand in her warm one.

"I have one of my old headaches. I forgot to get any lunch. I had just put the key in my locker, when everything grew black and I'd have collapsed if Doris Leighton hadn't helped me to a chair. She gave me some milk and got my things for me, and when I felt well enough, she came over here with me. She's certainly the sweetest thing. She had to miss getting her criticism, too. Mr. Benton had just gone in when I crumpled up."

"She's a perfect angel," cried Patricia, her heart warming at the thought of Doris' genuine sweetness of nature. "If Miss Jinny really had known her, she'd been the last to suspect her."

"She's coming over after life cla.s.s," Elinor went on, closing her eyes wearily. "I found I'd forgotten my keys when I got home, and she's going to bring them over for me on her way home."

"You'd better go to sleep," said Patricia, smoothing the white brow with deft fingers. "I'll keep everything quiet, so that you can sleep it off as you used to be able to. I hope you'll be all right in the morning."

Elinor nodded mutely, and Patricia, pulling down the shades so that the street light did not flicker on the pale wall, tiptoed out of the room, to caution Judith and await the coming of Doris Leighton.

Dinner was long over, Judith's lessons done and bed-time come, when at last Patricia hurried down to the long parlor where Doris sat in the dim light.

She was very pale and tired looking, but as graceful and charming as ever. She inquired after Elinor with a profuse sympathy that more than satisfied the warm-hearted Patricia, whose compa.s.sion stirred at her look of fatigue.

"You ought to be taking more care of yourself," she said, with concern.

"You're tired to death, and yet you come out of your way to see about Elinor. You look dreadfully f.a.gged."

Doris smiled wanly. She laid an impulsive hand on Patricia's arm and opened her pretty lips, but before the words came she evidently obeyed another differing impulse, for she underwent a subtle change, an imperceptible hardening that was so delicately veiled by her still gracious manner that Patricia had only a baffling sense of being gently shut out from her real confidence.

"I've been working on my panel study," she said, with an effort at brightness. "I don't seem to get it finished to my liking, and the time is getting perilously short, you know."

Patricia looked her surprise. "Why, I thought you hadn't started it yet. You said you'd rush it off at the last moment without a bit of trouble."

"That's the way I usually do," a.s.sented Doris evenly. "But I'm going out of town on Sat.u.r.day, and I have to turn it in before I leave tomorrow night. I'll stay home and work on it in the morning, so I shan't see you perhaps before I go."

She said good-night absently, and Patricia, watching her hurry down the frosty street, found herself wondering at the subtle barrier that she could feel so keenly, while she yet tried to disbelieve.

"I wonder what she was going to say?" she thought, as she went slowly up to Judith's room, where she was to spend the night. "It can't be my imagination this time, for she actually did start to speak, and then stopped." She frowned and then her face cleared. "What a stupid I am--always getting up in the air about trifles! Doris Leighton is tired to death, and wanted to get home. She was just as pleasant as ever, even though she didn't have time or strength to be as sociable as she'd liked. If she hadn't felt an interest in Elinor, she'd not troubled to bring her keys back tonight. I hope she makes good with her prize study, now that she's gotten an idea for it. She's a stunning worker when she goes at it."

She tiptoed softly in to Elinor, who was sleeping quietly, and she stood looking down at the sweep of eyelash and rounded cheek that the low-turned light caught out from the jumbled ma.s.ses of dark hair.

"Dear old Norn," she thought fondly. "You'll be at the head of the night life, too, some day, like Doris is now, and you'll be cleverer than any of them, for you aren't ever a bit c.o.c.ked up about yourself."

Her eyes grew wide with thought. "That's the reason," she whispered triumphantly, "that you're going to be a howling success--you've got time to care about all the other things in life first, to think about them and to enjoy them. And that means O-RIG-INAL-ITY. You've got more ideas now than any of those old stagers, you adorable duck!" she ended, so overcome by her feelings that she dropped on her knees by the couch and pressed her warm lips on the dark hair.

Elinor merely stirred and mumbled something indistinct, much to the contrite Patricia's relief.