But, oh, Ken, I’m making good this time! On Thursday the week will be up, and I’ll get my fifteen dollars. Isn’t that gay?”
“You’re a plucky girl, Patty, and I congratulate you. Is it very horrid?”
“No, it isn’t exactly horrid, but I’m fearfully homesick. But it’s only three more days now, and won’t I be glad to get home!”
“And we’ll be glad to have you. The goldfish are dull and moping, and we all want our Patty back again.”
“That’s nice of you. But, Ken, how did you know where to find me? I made Nan and father promise not to tell.”
“Well, I may as well confess: I basely worried it out of Miller. I asked him where he took you to last Thursday afternoon.”
“Oh! I meant to tell him not to tell, but I forgot it. Well, it doesn’t matter much, as you chanced to strike a time when I’m alone. But don’t call me up again. I’m not supposed to have any social acquaintances.”
“Good for you, Patty! If you play the game, play it well. I expect you’re a prim, demure companion as ever was.”
“Of course I am. And if the lady didn’t have such a fishy nephew I’d get along beautifully.”
“Oho! A nephew, eh? And he’s smitten with your charms, as they always are in novels.”
“Yes,” said Patty, in a simpering tone.
“Oh, yes! I can’t see you, but I know you have your finger in your mouth and your eyes shyly cast down.”
“You’re so clever!” murmured Patty, giggling. “But now you may go, Ken, for I don’t want to talk to you any more. Come round Thursday night, can’t you, and welcome me home?”
“Pooh, you’re late with your invitation. Mrs. Fairfield has already invited me to dinner that very evening.”
“Good! Well, good-by for now. I have reasons for wishing to discontinue this conversation.”
“And I have reasons for wishing to keep on. If you’re tired talking, sing to me.”
“‘Thou art so near and yet so far,’” hummed Patty, in her clear, sweet voice.
“No, don’t sing. Central will think you’re a concert. Well, good-by till Thursday.”
“Good-by,” said Patty, and hung up the receiver.
But she felt much more cheerful at having talked with Kenneth, and the coming days seemed easier to bear.
They proved, however, to be quite hard enough.
The very next day, when Patty went down to the breakfast room, determined to do her best to please Mrs. Van Reypen, she found that lady suffering from an attack of neuralgia.
Though not a serious one, it seriously affected her temper, and she was cross and irritable to a degree that Patty had never seen equalled.
She snapped at the servants; she was short of speech to Patty; she found fault with everything, from the coffee to the cat.
After breakfast they went to the sunny, pleasant morning room, and Patty made up her mind to a hard day.
Then she had an inspiration. She remembered how susceptible Mrs. Van Reypen was to flattery, and she determined to see if large doses of it wouldn’t cure her ill temper.
“How lovely your hair is,” said Patty, apropos of nothing. “I do so admire white hair, and yours is so abundant and of such fine texture.”
As she had hoped, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled in a pleased way.
“Ah, Miss Fairfield, you should have seen it when I was a girl. It was phenomenal. But of late years it has come out sadly.”
“You still have quantities,” said Patty, and very truthfully, too, “and its silvery whiteness is so becoming to your complexion.”
“Do you think so?” said Mrs. Van Reypen, smiling most amiably. “I think it’s much wiser not to colour one’s hair, for now-a-days so many people turn gray quite young.”
“Yes, they do. I’ve several friends with gray hair who are very young women indeed.”
“Yes,” agreed the other, comfortably, “white hair no longer indicates that a woman is advanced in years. You speak very sensibly, Miss Fairfield.”
Patty smiled to herself at the success of her little ruse, “And, after all,” she thought, “I’m telling her only the truth. Her hair is lovely, and she may as well know I appreciate it.”
“Have you ever tried,” she went on, “wearing it in a coronet braid?”
“No; I’ve thought I should like to, but I’ve worn puffs so long I don’t know how to change.”
“Let me do it for you,” said Patty. “I’m sure I could dress it to please you. At any rate, it would do no harm to try.”
So up they went to Mrs. Van Reypen’s dressing room, and Patty spent most of the morning trying and discussing different modes of hair-dressing.
Mrs. Van Reypen’s maid was present, and she admired Patty’s cleverness and deftness at the work.
“You have a touch,” declared Mrs. Van Reypen, as she surveyed herself by the aid of a hand-mirror. “You’re positively Frenchy in your touch. Where did you learn it? Have you ever been a lady’s-maid?”
“No,” said Patty, suppressing her smiles, “I never have. But I’ve spent a winter in Paris, and I picked up some French notions, I suppose.”
“You certainly did. You are clever with your fingers, I can see that. Can you trim hats?”
“Yes, I can,” said Patty, smiling to herself at the recollection of her experiences with Mme. Villard.
“Humph! You seem pretty sure of yourself. I wish you’d trim one for me, then; but I don’t want you to spoil the materials.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Patty, meekly, and Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to bring out some boxes.
“This,” she said, taking up a finished hat, “is one my milliner has just sent home, and I think it a fright. Now here’s a last year’s hat, but the plumes are lovely. If you could untrim this first one, and transfer these plumes, and then add these roses—what do you think?”
Secretly Patty thought the new hat was lovely just as it was, but her plan that morning was to humour the testy old lady and, if possible, make her forget her neuralgic pains.
So she took the hats, and sat down to rip and retrim them.
Meantime, Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to practise dressing her hair in the fashion Patty had done it.
But the maid was not very deft in the art, and soon Patty heard Mrs. Van Reypen shrilly exclaiming:
“Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you are an idiot!”
Deeming it best not to interfere, Patty went on with her work.
Also, Mrs. Van Reypen went on with her scolding, which so upset the long-suffering maid that she fell to weeping and thereby roused her mistress to still greater ire.
“Crying, are you!” she exclaimed. “If you had such a painful neck and shoulder as I have you well might cry. But to cry about nothing! Bah! Leave me, and do not return until you can be pleasant. Miss Fairfield, will you please finish putting up my hair?”
Patty laid down her work, and did as she was requested. She was sorry for the maid and incensed at Mrs. Van Reypen’s injustice and disagreeableness, but she felt intuitively that it was the best plan to be, herself, kind