Part 14 (1/2)

Patricia was touched by the fondness in the sweet voice, though she was immensely relieved, too, for she knew that if Elinor vetoed her plan she must give it up.

”I might come over after I'm dressed,” she suggested gratefully, with a smile at the discomfited Judith. ”I wanted to ask if Bruce would walk over with me--it's in one of those old houses across the Square--but Ju was so fierce I was afraid to open my lips.”

Elinor promised for Bruce and after a little chat Patricia left, feeling that she was making quite a concession to the family tie.

”As Rosamond says, I can't give up everything to other people, or I'd lose my personality,” she mused as she went briskly along the frosty streets toward the Lodge. ”And personality means so much to a singer.”

She felt rather proud of herself now. It had been difficult for her to come to this point of view and Rosamond had rambled on in her amiable fas.h.i.+on many a time on the subject before she had brought her impressionable room-mate to see it as she did.

”If I merely went to the studio and nowhere else, I'd grow one-sided,”

thought Patricia, cheerfully ignoring the fact that she spent most of her time nowadays between her lessons and practicing either at home with Rosamond or doing errands for that luxuriant young lady.

In the weeks she had been in Artemis Lodge she had been absorbing Rosamond, living, breathing and sleeping Rosamond, until she was merely a variation of the older girl's charming self. She did not see that Rosamond was more self-centered than anyone she knew. She forgot how eager she had once been, and how proud, to mingle with the people who were always dropping in to see Bruce and Elinor. In a word, she was, for the time, like the man who points his telescope at the flower by his side and cries out that the world is made of pink petals and yellow stamen. She was no longer Patricia--she was Rosamond Merton's version of Patricia.

And the most remarkable part was that she had come to this state of mind through her best impulses and by the way of her generous admirations.

The manner of her coming had been so whole-souled and liberal, too, that she deserved to have arrived at more than this.

She went to the studio on Sunday evening and showed her pretty simple evening frock, decorated with a wide band of glittering tr.i.m.m.i.n.g from Rosamond's ample store, and she had the one real quarrel of her life with Elinor because that tender sister made her rip it off before she would consent to her either appearing at the studio spread or going to the musical.

Patricia never forgot that evening.

The supper, with its merry chat, was gall and wormwood to her. Mrs.

Nat's kind eyes seemed probing for something Patricia could not show her. Doris Leighton's quiet pleasantries and Constance's gay quips were dust and ashes in her mouth, and when finally she had walked across the Square to the big brick house and the door had closed on Bruce and the outside world, she was actually ready for tears.

”I'll never go anywhere again, if this is the way they are going to fuss about it,” she said to herself, as she went slowly upstairs to the dressing-room. ”I don't see how they can be so mean.”

The brilliance of the house and the guests, together with Rosamond's gracious greeting as she met her and led her to be introduced to the hostess, soon worked a cure for her low spirits and she began to enjoy herself at once.

”This is real life,” she thought joyfully.

”Milano was asking me about you,” said Rosamond as they threaded their way through the crowded rooms.

Patricia nodded. ”I know,” she returned brightly. ”At her tea-party the other day. You told me about it.”

She was so taken up with the delightful agitation of finding herself in such a large and imposing a.s.sembly that she scarcely thought of her words.

Rosamond laughed her slow laugh. ”No, tonight,” she corrected. ”She is here, you know. Mrs. Filmore is giving the dinner in her honor.”

Patricia had room for swift surprise. ”Why, you never told me!” she exclaimed impetuously. ”How strange!”

”I imagine it slipped your mind,” suggested Rosamond carelessly. ”I am sure I told you. Come, let us speak to her before she sings. Mrs.

Filmore has persuaded her to give just one song, and I don't know when she will choose.”

Patricia demurred, feeling suddenly rather small and insignificant in her girlish white net frock among all the glittering costumes about her.

It is sad to confess that her anger at Elinor returned hotly as she thought of the forbidden tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. That Rosamond had tactfully ignored to speak of its absence made her more angry at Elinor.

”I'd rather sit down here and look about for a while,” she said, dropping into a tiny divan in a half-deserted corner with such a determined air of gayety that Rosamond, after a rather weak protest, went off by herself to make one of the group about the prima donna.