Part 8 (1/2)
The hall clock sounded again, this time heard clearly through the open door, and Patricia was astonished to find that the tea-hour had arrived without her knowing it.
”Am I all right to go down just as I am?” she inquired rather anxiously of her new friend. ”Ought I put on a hat or something?”
”Put on anything you please. Take a parasol or a pair of galoshes if you feel that your system craves them,” replied Constance calmly. ”I am going just as I am. We girls who are in the house usually are glad to sneak in without prinking.”
Patricia giggled. ”Lead me down,” she commanded briskly. ”I'm perfectly crazy to see what's what and who's who. I was going to find out all about the various girls from Doris Leighton, but I'm sure you'll do very well in her place.”
”I call that a real compliment,” declared Constance with evident sincerity. ”Leighton is the squarest damsel in the whole troupe and she isn't spoiled by her beauty either.”
They found the tea-room filled as on the other day, and Patricia, thanks to Constance Fellows' kindness, found herself one of a gay group near the piano, as much at home among the chattering girls as though she had known them for weeks.
”I tell you what it is, Avis Coulter,” Constance was saying to a very plain, angular girl with large spectacles when the tea was almost over, ”we've got to show this budding genius a little friendly attention, or she'll get homesick and mopey before the resplendent Merton returns to coddle her. What are you going to do to liven her dragging days?”
The spectacled girl rubbed her nose thoughtfully. ”I've tickets for a concert at Carnegie Hall tomorrow afternoon,” she hazarded doubtfully.
”And I have a perfectly good studio party at my cousin Emily's,” said another girl.
”And I'm going to have a spread in my room tomorrow night,” volunteered a third member of the party.
Constance Fellows nodded approval. ”That sounds very well to me,” she said. ”I accept for Miss P. Kendall and myself. Who's to bring the chaperone for these festivities?”
Avis Coulter, on the score of the concert being in the afternoon, declared that it was all stuff to think of such a thing, while Marie Jones said that her cousin Emily was chaperone enough for an army of buds, and Ethel Walters sniffed at the idea of a chaperone for a spread in one's very own room, under the roof with Miss Ardsley and the dependable Miss Tatten, the house-keeper, whom Patricia had not yet seen.
Constance would have none of their reasoning, however, and insisted that one of the older students at Artemis Lodge be in charge of all the festivities shown Patricia in the interval of Miss Merton's absence.
”I am responsible for her,” she said firmly, ”and I am not going to present her to Merton with the slightest social blot upon her dazzling whiteness. Chaperoned she must and shall be, or she doesn't budge a step.”
Patricia was very much amused and surprised to see that Constance had her way. Instead of rebelling, as she had expected, the girls gave in at once, showing as much meekness in fulfilling the wishes of this decided young person as though it were she and not they that was granting the favors.
Patricia went back to her room cheered and exhilarated, and found the brief time before the dinner hour all too short for the necessary amount of practicing she had portioned off for herself.
Dinner in the gay little restaurant with its decorated walls and sociable small tables was a far more enjoyable affair than she had thought it could be when she had looked forward to it in her lonely interval, and after another half hour of chat by the fire-side in the library she went to her room highly delighted with her first day at Artemis Lodge.
Stopping at the public telephone in the hall--she decided not to use the one in Miss Merton's sitting-room until the owner was at home again--she called up Elinor and gave her a brief report.
”I'm having a perfectly lovely time,” she told her. ”And as Doris isn't coming back till next week, I am going to bring someone who has been very nice to me home to supper on Sunday, in her place. I know you'll like her, and,” here she laughed a little, ”tell Judy she isn't at all pretty.”
CHAPTER VII
A DINNER FOR TWO
Rosamond Merton came home unexpectedly to find Patricia grown very much at home indeed during the four days of her absence.
She opened the door of the sitting-room, after a light tap of the tiny bra.s.s knocker, to find Patricia rising from the piano-stool with pleased expectation in her face, an expression which rapidly became one of joyful surprise. Rosamond was so much prettier than Patricia had been picturing her that she fairly beamed as she came to greet her.
”How lovely of you to come back so soon,” she said with such warmth that Rosamond Merton felt glad that she had been compelled to cut her visit short.
”It's lovely to be welcomed home,” she returned, beginning to pull off her gloves. ”I always dreaded the empty rooms after I had been away.
Have you been quite comfortable? I left so hurriedly that I hadn't time to arrange for your arrival.”