Part 17 (1/2)

”Married!” cried Agnes, with wide-open eyes. ”How funny! I thought only people who are young got married. Can we go to the wedding, do you suppose, Patty?”

”Oh, perhaps we shall be bridesmaids! I'd like that,” added Susy.

”And have black cake in little white boxes, just as many as we want.

Goody!” put in Hal.

”Oh, children, how can you talk so?” cried Patty, all her half-formed resolutions of keeping silence and not letting the others know how she felt about it flying to the winds. ”Do you really want a stepmother to come in and scold and interfere and spoil all our comfort? Do you want some one else to tell you what to do, and make you mind, instead of me?

You're too little to know about such things, but I know what stepmothers are. I read about them in a book once, and they're dreadful creatures, and always hate the children, and try to make their Papas hate them too.

It will be awful to have one, I think.”

Patty was absolutely crying as she finished this outburst; and, emotion being contagious, the little ones began to cry also.

”Why does Papa want to marry her, if she's so horrid?” sobbed Agnes.

”I'll never love her!” declared Susy.

”And I'll set my wooden dog on her!” added Hal.

”Oh, Hal,” protested Patty, alarmed at the effect of her own injudicious explosion, ”don't talk like that! We mustn't be rude to her. Papa wouldn't like it. Of course, we needn't love her, or tell her things, or call her 'mother,' but we _must_ be polite to her.”

”I don't know what you mean exactly, but I'm not going to be it, anyway,” said Agnes.

And, indeed, Patty's notion of a politeness which was to include neither liking nor confidence nor respect _was_ rather a difficult one to comprehend.

None of the children went to the wedding, which was a very quiet one.

Patty declared that she was glad; but in her heart I think she regretted the loss of the excitement, and the opportunity for criticism. A big loaf of thickly frosted sponge cake arrived for the children, with some bon-bons, and a kind little note from the bride; and these offerings might easily have placated the younger ones, had not Patty diligently fanned the embers of discontent and kept them from dying out.

And all the time she had no idea that she was doing wrong. She felt ill-treated and injured, and her imagination played all sorts of unhappy tricks. She made pictures of the future, in which she saw herself neglected and unloved, her little sisters and brother ill-treated, her father estranged, and the household under the rule of an enemy, unscrupulous, selfish, and cruel. Over these purely imaginary pictures she shed many needless tears.

”But there's one thing,” she told herself,--”it can't last always. When girls are eighteen, they come of age, and can go away if they like; and I _shall_ go away! And I shall take the children with me. Papa won't care for any of us by that time; so he will not object.”

So with this league, offensive and defensive, formed against her, the new Mrs. Flint came home. Mary the cook and Ann the housemaid joined in it to a degree.

”To be sure, it's provoking enough that Miss Patty can be when she's a mind,” observed Mary; ”a-laying down the law, and ordering me about, when she knows no more than the babe unborn how things should be done!

Still, I'd rather keep on wid her than be thrying my hand at a stranger.

This'll prove a hard missis, mark my word for it, Ann! See how the children is set against her from the first! That's a sign.”

Everything was neat and in order on the afternoon when Dr. and Mrs.

Flint were expected. Patty had worked hard to produce this result. ”She shall see that I know how to keep house,” she said to herself. All the rooms had received thorough sweeping, all the rugs had been beaten and the curtains shaken out, the chairs had their backs exactly to the wall, and every book on the centre table lay precisely at right angles with a second book underneath it. Patty's ideas of decoration had not got beyond a stiff neatness. She had yet to learn how charming an easy disorder can be made.

The children, in immaculate white ap.r.o.ns, waited with her in the parlor.

They did not run out into the hall when the carriage stopped. The malcontent Ann opened the door in silence.

”Where are the children?” were the first words that Patty heard her stepmother say.