Just Patty by Jean Webster (best romance ebooks txt) 📗

frock from the path of the runaway. They were shrieking with laughter, even Harriet, the tearful.

"Now you see!" said Patty, suddenly interrupting her mirth. "It's perfectly easy to laugh if you just let yourself go. Kid isn't really funny. She's just as silly as she can be."

Kid brought her horse to a stand.

"Well I like that!"

"Excuse me for telling the truth," said Patty politely, "I'm just using you for an illustration--Heavens! There's the bell!"

She commenced unlacing her blouse with one hand, while she pushed her guests to the door with the other.

"Hurry and dress, and come back to button me up. It would be a very delicate attention for us to be on time to-night. We've been late for every meal since vacation began."

* * * * *

The girls spent Christmas morning coasting. They were on time for luncheon--and with appetites!

The meal was half over when Osaki appeared with a telegram, which he handed to the Dowager. She read it with agitated surprise and passed it to Miss Sallie, who raised her eyebrows and handed it to Miss Wadsworth, who was thrown into a very visible flutter.

"What on earth can it be?" Kid wondered.

"Lordy's eloped, and they've got to hunt for a new Latin teacher," was Patty's interpretation.

As the three girls left the table, the Dowager waylaid Harriet.

"Step into my study a moment. A telegram has just come--"

Patty and Kid climbed the stairs in wide-eyed wonder.

"It can't be bad news, for Miss Sallie was smiling--" meditated Patty. "And I can't think of any good news that can be happening to Harriet."

Ten minutes later there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Harriet burst into Patty's room wild with excitement.

"He's coming!"

"Who?"

"My father."

"When?"

"Right now--this afternoon--He's been in New York on business, and is coming to see me for Christmas."

"I'm so glad!" said Patty heartily. "Now, you see the reason he hasn't come before is because he has been away off in Mexico."

Harriet shook her head, with a sudden drop in her animation.

"I suppose he thinks he ought."

"Nonsense!"

"It's so. He doesn't care for me--really. He likes girls to be jolly and pretty and clever like you."

"Well, then--be jolly and pretty and clever like me."

Harriet's eyes sought the mirror, and filled with tears.

"You're a perfect idiot!" said Patty, despairingly.

"I'm an awful fright in my green dress," said Harriet.

"Yes," Patty grudgingly conceded. "You are."

"The skirt is too short, and the waist is too long."

"And the sleeves are sort of queer," said Patty.

Faced by these dispiriting facts, she felt her enthusiasm ebbing.

"What time is he coming?" she asked.

"Four o'clock."

"That gives us two hours," Patty rallied her forces. "One can do an awful lot in two hours. If you were only nearer my size, you could wear my new pink dress--but I'm afraid--" She regarded Harriet's long legs dubiously. "I'll tell you!" she added, in a rush of generosity. "We'll take out the tucks and let down the hem."

"Oh, Patty!" Harriet was tearfully afraid of spoiling the gown. But when Patty's zeal in any cause was roused, all other considerations were swept aside. The new frock was fetched from the closet, and the ripping began.

"And you can wear Kid's new pearl necklace and pink scarf, and my silk stockings and slippers--if you can get 'em on--and I think Conny left a lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late to pack--and--Here's Kid now!"

Miss McCoy's sympathies were enlisted and in fifteen minutes the task of transforming a remonstrating, excited, and occasionally tearful Harriet into the school beauty, was going gaily forward. Kid McCoy was supposed to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal feminine came triumphantly to the fore. She sat herself down, with Patty's manicure scissors, and for three-quarters of an hour painstakingly ripped out tucks.

Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.

"Don't strain it back so tight," she ordered. "It looks as though you'd done it with a monkey-wrench. Here! Give me the comb."

She pushed Harriet into a chair, tied a towel about her neck, and accomplished the coifing by force.

"How's that?" she demanded of Kid.

"Bully!" Kid mumbled, her mouth full of pins.

Harriet's hair was rippled loosely about her face, and tied with a pink ribbon bow. The ribbon belonged to Conny Wilder, and had heretofore figured as a belt; but individual property rights were forced to bow before the cause.

The slippers and stockings did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent leather pumps.

"But after all," Patty reassured her, "it's better for you to wear black. Your feet would be sort of conspicuous in pink." She was still in her truthful mood. "I'll tell you!" she cried, "you can wear my silver buckles." And she commenced cruelly wrenching them from their pink chiffon setting.

[Illustration: Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.]

"Patty! Don't!" Harriet gasped at the sacrilege.

"They're just the last touch that your costume needs." Patty ruthlessly carried on the work of destruction. "When your father sees those buckles, he'll think you're beautiful!"

For a feverish hour they worked. They clothed her triumphantly in all the grandeur that they could command. The entire corridor had contributed its quota, even to the lace-edged handkerchief with a hand-embroidered "H" that had been left behind in Hester Pringle's top drawer. The two turned her critically before the mirror, the pride of creation in their eyes. As Kid had truly presaged, she was the ravingest beauty in all the school.

Irish Maggie appeared in the door.

"Mr. Gladden is in the drawin'-room, Miss Harriet." She stopped and stared. "Sure, ye're that beautiful I didn't know ye!"

Harriet went with a laugh--and a fighting light in her eyes.

Patty and Kid restlessly set themselves to reducing the chaos that this sudden butterfly flight had caused in Paradise Alley--it is always dreary work setting things to rights, after the climax of an event