exiled to her own room, decided to write to Nan.
She filled several sheets with accounts of her doings at Mrs. Van Reypen’s, and gloated over the fact that there were now but four days of her week left.
“I shall win this time,” she wrote, “and, though life here is not a bed of roses, yet it is not so very bad, and when the week is over I shall look back at it with lots of funny thoughts. Oh, Nan, prepare a fatted calf for Thursday night, for I shall come home a veritable Prodigal Son! Of course, I don’t mean this literally; we have lovely things to eat here, but it’s ‘hame, hame, fain wad I be.’ I won’t write again, I’ll probably get no chance, but send Miller for me at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon.”
After writing the letter Patty felt less homesick. It seemed, somehow, to bring Thursday nearer, to write about it. She began to dress for dinner, and, in a spirit of mischief, she took pains to make a most fetching toilette.
Her frock was of white mousseline de soie that twinkled into foolish little ruffles all round the hem.
More tiny frills gambolled around the low-cut circular neck and nestled against Patty’s soft, round arms.
Her curly hair was parted, and massed low at the back of her neck, and behind one ear she tucked a half-blown pink rosebud.
The long, dreamy day had roused in Patty a contrary wilfulness, and she was quite ready for fun if any came her way.
At dinner Mrs. Van Reypen monopolised the conversation. She talked mostly to Philip, but occasionally addressed a remark to Patty. She was exceedingly polite to her, but made her feel that her share of the conversation must be formal and conventional. Then she would chatter to her nephew about matters unknown to Patty, and then perhaps again throw an observation about the weather at her “companion.”
Patty accepted all this willingly enough, but Philip didn’t.
He couldn’t keep his eyes off Patty, who was looking her very prettiest, and whose own eyes, when she raised them, were full of smiles.
But in vain he endeavoured to make her talk to him.
Patty remembered Mrs. Van Reypen’s injunctions, and, though her bewitching personality made such effort useless, she tried to be absolutely and uninterestingly silent.
“Aunty Van,” said Philip, at last, giving up his attempts to make Patty converse, “let’s have a little theatre party to-morrow night. Shall us? I’ll get a box, and if you and Miss Fairfield will go, I’ll be delighted.”
“I’ll go, with pleasure,” replied his aunt, “but Miss Fairfield will be obliged to decline. She has been out late too often since she has been here, and she needs rest. So invite the Delafields instead, and that will make a pleasant quartette.”
For an instant Patty was furiously angry at this summary disposal of herself, but when she saw Philip’s face she almost screamed with laughter.
Crestfallen faintly expressed his appearance. He was crushed, and looked absolutely stunned.
“How he is under his aunt’s thumb!” thought Patty, secretly disgusted at his lack of self-assertion, but she suddenly changed her mind.
“Thank you, Aunty Van,” she heard him saying, in a cool, determined voice, “but I prefer to choose my own guests. I do not care to ask the Delafields—unless you especially desire it. I am sorry Miss Fairfield cannot go, but I trust you will honour me with your presence.” Philip had scored.
Mrs. Van Reypen well knew if she went alone with her nephew, under such conditions, he would be sulky all the evening. Nor could she insist on having the Delafields asked after the way he had put it.
She then nobly endeavoured to undo the mischief she had wrought.
“No, Philip, I don’t care especially about the Delafields. And if Miss Fairfield thinks it will not tire her too much I shall be glad to have her accept your kindness.”
His kindness, indeed! Patty felt like saying, “Do you know I am Patricia Fairfield, and it is I who confer an honour when I accept an invitation?”
It wasn’t exactly pride, but Patty had been brought up in an atmosphere of somewhat old-fashioned chivalry, and it jarred on her sense of the fitness of things to have Philip’s invitation to her referred to as a “kindness.”
So she decided to take a stand herself.
“I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Van Reypen,” she said, with just the slightest emphasis on kindness, “but I cannot accept it. I quite agree with Mrs. Van Reypen that I need rest.”
The speech was absurd on the face of it, for Patty’s rosy, dimpled cheeks and sparkling eyes betokened no weariness or lassitude.
But Mrs. Van Reypen accepted this evidence of the girl’s obedience to her wishes, and said:
“You are right, Miss Fairfield, and my nephew will excuse you from his party.”
Philip sent her a reproachful glance, and Patty dropped her eyes again, wishing dinner was over.
At last the ladies left the table, and Philip rose and held aside the portière while his aunt passed through.
As Patty followed, he detained her a moment, and whispered:
“It is cruel of you to punish me for my aunt’s unkindness.”
“I can’t help it,” said Patty, and as her troubled eyes met his angry ones they both smiled, and peace was restored.
“After Friday,” whispered Patty, as she went through the doorway.
“After Friday,” he repeated, puzzled by her words, but reassured by her smiles.
And then Mrs. Van Reypen sent Patty to her room for the night, and when Philip came to the drawing-room he found he was destined to be entertained by his aunt alone.
“Of course,” said Patty, to her own reflection in her mirror, “a companion can’t expect to sit with ‘the quality,’ but it does seem a shame to dress up pretty like this and then be sent to bed at nine o’clock! Never mind, only three evenings more in this house, and then victory for Patty Fairfield!”
Chapter XVII.
The Road to Success
Patty adhered to her resolution not to go to the theatre on Monday night, but when she saw Mrs. Van Reypen and Philip start off she secretly regretted her decision.
She loved fun and gaiety, and it suddenly seemed to her that she had been foolishly sensitive about Mrs. Van Reypen’s attitude toward her.
However, it couldn’t be helped now, so she prepared to spend the evening reading in the library.
She would have liked to hold a long telephone conversation with Nan and her father, but she thought she had better not, for there were so many house servants on duty that a maid or a footman would be likely to overhear her.
She played the piano and sang a little, then she wandered about the large and lonely rooms. Patty was a sociable creature, and had never before spent an evening entirely alone, unless when engaged in some important and engrossing work.
But after a while the telephone rang, and when the parlour-maid told her the call was for her she flew to the instrument with glad anticipation.
“Hello!” she cried, and “Hello!” returned a familiar voice.
“Oh, Ken! of all people. How did you know I was here?”
“Oh, I found it out! How are you? May I come to see you?”
“No, indeed! I’m a companion. I’m not expected to have