Patty's Butterfly Days Part 24

"I should have built one," declared Bill, promptly.

"So you would!" agreed Patty, heartily.

"You're equal to any emergency, Little Billee; and it WASN'T all your fault, anyway. _I_ egged you on, because I love to drive fast, especially at night."

"Very reprehensible tastes, young woman," said Jim Kenerley, trying to be severe, but not succeeding very well.

"Oh, you might have known this house was here," said Mona. "It's Mr.

Kemper's house. They've gone away for a month. They're coming back next week."

"Well, they'll find everything in order," said Patty. "We didn't hurt a thing, except the window, and we've fixed that. We burned up a lot of their firewood, though."

"They won't mind that," said Mona, laughing. "They're awfully nice people. We'll come over and tell them the whole story when they get home."

"And now, can't we go home?" said Patty. "I'm just about starved."

"You poor dear child," cried Mrs. Kenerley. "You haven't had a bite of breakfast! Come on, Mona, let's take Patty and Daisy home in one of the cars; the rest can follow in the other."

Two cars of people had come over to escort the wanderers home, so this plan was agreed upon.

But somehow, Bill Farnsworth managed to hasten the glazier's task, so that all were ready to depart at once.

"I'll drive the big car," cried Bill. "Come on, Patty," and before any one realised it, he had swung the girl up into the front seat of the big touring car, and had himself climbed to the driver's seat.

"I had to do this," he said to Patty, as they started off. "I must speak to you alone a minute, and be sure that you forgive me for the trouble I made you."

"Of course I forgive you," said Patty, gaily. "I'd forgive you a lot more than that."

"You would? Why?"

"Oh, because I'm such a good forgiver. I'd forgive anybody, anything."

"Huh! then it isn't much of a compliment to have YOUR forgiveness!"

"Well, why should I pay you compliments?"

"That's so! Why SHOULD you? In fact, it ought to be the other way. Let ME pay them to YOU."

"Oh, I don't care much about them. I get quite a lot, you see--"

"I see you're a spoiled baby, that's what YOU are!"

"Now,--Little Billee!" and Patty's tone was cajoling, and her sideways glance and smile very provoking.

"And I'd like to do my share of the spoiling!" he continued, looking at her laughing, dimpled face and wind-tossed curls.

"So you shall! Begin just as soon as you like and spoil me all you can," said Patty, still in gay fooling, when she suddenly remembered Daisy's prohibition of this sort of fun.

"Of course I don't mean all this," she said, suddenly speaking in a matter-of-fact tone.

"But I do, and I shall hold you to it. You know I have your blossom wreath; I've saved it as a souvenir of last night."

"That forlorn bit of drowned finery! Oh, Little Billee, I thought you were poetical! No poet could keep such a tawdry old souvenir as that!"

"It isn't tawdry. I dried it carefully, and picked the little petals all out straight, and it's really lovely."

"Then if it's in such good shape, I wish you'd give it back to me to wear. I was fond of that wreath."

"No, it's mine now. I claim right of salvage. But I'll give you another in place of it,--if I may."

Patty didn't answer this, for Daisy, tired of being neglected, leaned her head over between the two, and commenced chattering.

The two girls were well wrapped up in coats and veils Mona had brought them, but they were both glad when they came in sight of "Red Chimneys."

Patty went gaily off to her own rooms, saying she was going to have a bath and a breakfast, and then she was going to sleep for twenty-four hours.

"I'm not," announced Daisy. "I'm going to make a straight dive for the breakfast room. Come with me, Bill, and see that I get enough to eat."

Roger, Mona, and the Kenerleys were going for an ocean dip, and Laurence Cromer, who was a late riser, had not yet put in an appearance. Aunt Adelaide was with Patty, hearing all about the adventure, so Bill was obliged to accept Daisy's rather peremptory invitation.

"What's the matter with you, Bill?" asked the girl, as she threw off her motor coat and sat at the table in her low-necked party gown.

"Nothing. I say, Daisy, why don't you go and get into some togs more suitable for 9 A.M.?"

"Because I'm hungry. Yes, James, omelet, and some of the fried chicken.

Bill, don't you like me any more?"

"Yes, of course I do. But you ought to act more,--more polite, you know."

"Oh, fiddlesticks! You mean more finicky,--like that paragon, Patty.

You think she's perfect, because she never raises her voice above a certain pitch, and she expects all you men to lie down and let her walk over you."

"She MAY walk over me, if she likes; and I want you to stop speaking of her in that slighting way, Daisy."

"Oh, you do, do you? And, pray, what right have you to say HOW I shall speak of her?"

"The right that any man has, to take the part of one who is absent."

"You'd like to have more rights than that, wouldn't you?"

"Maybe I would, but I'm not confiding in you."

"You don't have to. Yours is an open secret. Everybody can see you're perfectly gone on that little pink and white thing!"

"That will do, Daisy; don't say another word of that sort!" and Bill's voice was so stern and tense that Daisy stopped, a little frightened at his demeanour.

What he might have said further, she never knew, for just then Guy Martin and Lora Sayre came strolling into the room.