Part 9 (1/2)

”It's sweet of you to ask me,” she said with a good deal of courage.

”And I can't be horrid enough to refuse this first time, but I do want you to understand that I can't spend money like you do. I'm not really stingy, as you may think--I'm only trying to be careful. I'm so afraid of being selfish.”

Her speech was rather unintelligible to Rosamond, who could not know of Bruce's compact with Patricia, but she smiled pleasantly and took down the receiver.

”I don't think you could be stingy or selfish or anything that wasn't sweet,” she said and then proceeded to announce to Miss Tatten that Miss Kendall and she were dining in their own rooms that evening, and would she please see that dinner was sent up promptly at six-thirty, adding a list of dishes that seemed to the anxious Patricia recklessly expensive.

The dinner was great fun, however, and Patricia felt very pleasantly luxurious as she slipped into her new kimono, a poor affair indeed compared to the fur and crepe robe, and lounged before the fire listening to Rosamond's accounts of the travels and studies which had filled her life.

”You must have been almost everywhere,” she murmured admiringly. ”You have seen such a lot--for a girl. I'm only two years younger, but I've never been to Niagara Falls, nor Hot Springs, nor the Tower of London----”

A ripple of laughter broke in on her confession. ”What a delicious jumble!” cried Rosamond, springing up to adjust a lock that had fallen.

”One can't tell which is the place of confinement and which the playground. For Heaven's sake, though, don't _complain_ that you've never seen Niagara Falls, no self-respecting person nowadays is willing to confess that such a place even exists. It went out of date with the bridal bonnet and the what-not.”

Patricia laughed, but this troubled her, and later on she recurred to it while they were beginning on their salad.

”Why shouldn't one see all the wonderful places and things in the world?” she asked. ”I should think Niagara Falls was quite as important as those snippy little falls at that camp in the Adirondacks that you said were so much admired.”

Rosamond laid down her fork and looked at her very carefully. ”Are you actually in earnest?” she inquired with a polite repression of any hint of a smile. ”My dear Miss Patricia Kendall, you forget that the most exclusive families have their camps near that snippy falls, while only the cheap tourist makes the pilgrimage to Niagara.”

Patricia was obstinate. ”I don't see what that has to do with it. The falls were there before the exclusive families were thought of, and it's a wonderful, wonderful falls. It seems rather stupid to me to ignore such a big thing in nature,” she insisted with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks.

Rosamond waved the argument away. ”Never mind the falls, large or small,” she said, with unruffled amiability. ”Tell me some more about yourself and your doings.”

Patricia was won instantly. She was to learn later on in her friends.h.i.+p with Rosamond Merton that this was one of her readiest answers to argument, particularly when she was not faring so well as she would like. As yet, however, she had not learned the skilled defences which Rosamond kept for her protection against better logic than her own, and she responded with her usual impetuous generosity.

”I've told you almost everything,” she said brightly. ”I'd rather hear about you. It's twice as exciting as my humdrum accounts of myself. Tell me about your studio at home. Is it so gorgeous as the peac.o.c.k panels that Constance Fellows is doing for you?”

”It's hardly gorgeous, but it's rather good.” Rosamond's interest was plainly forced. ”Constance is getting on with them, is she? I must see them in the morning. How do you like her? I suppose you have heard that she is very eccentric. She refused to live in a perfect palace with an aunt of hers, merely because the aunt objected to her going to life cla.s.s. Fancy her giving up such a life for a mere trifle.”

”She didn't feel that it was a trifle, I suppose,” replied Patricia lightly. She did not sympathize with Rosamond's view of the matter, but she had learned in this short hour to steer her bark away from the shoals.

”I think she showed very little judgment,” said Rosamond, selecting a bonbon with care. ”She should have lived peaceably with her aunt and had her own models in her own studio, and she'd have been comfortable and the aunt would have been happy. There is always a way of doing as one wishes if one will only take the trouble to look it up.”

Patricia hid her uneasy feelings as best she could, but her face was never hard to read, and Rosamond shook her head at her with the slow smile curving her red lips.

”You think me a monster of deceit,” she accused. ”Your big eyes are quite horrified at such shallow cunning. Don't worry, my dear Miss Kendall. I'm not half so bad as you think me.”

Patricia flushed. ”I know you are far above any such mean doings,” she said stoutly, ”but I wish you wouldn't talk that way. It makes me feel--but I'm not going to be such a goose as to preach. Do go on about the yachting trip. You were in the middle of it when dinner came in.”

Rosamond, always graceful, responded readily enough, and the evening sped rapidly. Patricia had enjoyed herself tremendously, as she very truthfully told her hostess when she said good-night and shut herself into her own snug little room, and she looked forward to the morrow with Rosamond Merton with a thrill of pleasure.

She could not help wondering, though, as she shook out the kinks and tangles of her bright hair, why she had not told about the Sunday evening supper in the studio, nor the spread in Ethel Walters' room.

”I must be getting terribly secret and crafty,” she thought with some surprise. ”I suppose that's the effect of being thrown with so many strangers all at once.”

She did not realize that it was Rosamond Merton's slow smile that had held her confidences back and if anyone had told her so, she would have denied it most emphatically.

Ethel Walters' spread had consisted of crackers and sardines, with olives and oranges and walnut bars for side dishes. The studio supper, though beautifully correct in most details, had Constance Fellows and a very shabby yet delightfully entertaining friend of hers, as chief guests. And how was anyone to know what Rosamond Merton might think of such swift intimacies?