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

take me to the circus next Wednesday," she ended, "to see the elephunts!"

"The Dowager will never let you go," objected Harriet.

"Oh, yes, she will!" said Patty. "It's perfectly proper to go to the circus with your uncle--'specially in vacation. We've got it all planned. I'm to go into town with Waddy. I heard her say she had an appointment at the dentist's--and he'll be at the station with a hansom--"

"More likely a baby carriage," Kid put in quickly.

"Miss Wadsworth will never take you into town in those clothes," Harriet objected.

Patty hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, while her dimples came and went.

"I think," she said, "that the next time I'll give him an entirely different kind of a sensation."

And she did.

Anticipatory of the coming event, she sent her suit to the tailor's and had him lengthen the hem of the skirt two inches. She spent an entire morning retrimming her hat along more mature lines, and she purchased a veil--with spots! She also spent twenty-five cents for hairpins, and did up her hair on the top of her head. She wore Kid McCoy's Christmas furs and Harriet's bracelet watch; and, as she set off with a somewhat bewildered Miss Wadsworth, they assured her that she looked old.

They reached the city a trifle late for Miss Wadsworth's appointment. Patty spied Mr. Pendleton across the waiting-room.

"There's Uncle Robert!" she said; and to her intense satisfaction, Miss Wadsworth left her to accost him alone.

She sauntered over in a very blasé fashion and held out her hand. The spots in the veil seemed to dazzle him; for a moment he did not recognize her.

"Mr. Pendleton! How do you do?" Patty smiled cordially. "It's really awfully good of you to devote so much time to my entertainment. And so original of you to think of a circus! I haven't attended a circus for years. It's really refreshing after such a dose of Shakespeare and Ibsen as the theaters have been offering this winter."

Mr. Pendleton offered a limp hand and hailed a hansom without comment. He leaned back in the corner and continued to stare for three silent minutes; then he threw back his head and laughed.

"Good Lord, Patty! Do you mean to tell me that you've grown up?"

Patty laughed too.

"Well, Uncle Bobby, what do you think about it?"

* * * * *

Dinner was half over that night before the two travelers returned. Patty dropped into her seat and unfolded her napkin, with the weary air of a society woman of many engagements.

"What happened?" the other two clamored. "Tell us about it! Was the circus nice?"

Patty nodded.

"The circus was charming--and so were the elephants--and so was Uncle Bobby. We had tea afterwards; and he gave me a bunch of violets and a box of candy, instead of the fairy book. He said he wouldn't be called 'Uncle Bobby' by anyone as old as me--that I'd got to drop the 'Uncle'--It's funny, you know, but he really seems younger than he did seven years ago."

Patty dimpled and cast a wary eye toward the faculty table across the room.

"He says he has business quite often in this neighborhood."

VIII

The Society of Associated Sirens

Conny had gone home to recuperate from a severe attack of pink-eye. Priscilla had gone to Porto Rico to spend two weeks with her father and the Atlantic Fleet. Patty, lonely and abandoned, was thrown upon the school for society; and Patty at large, was very likely to get into trouble.

On the Saturday following the double departure, she, with Rosalie Patton and Mae Van Arsdale, made a trip into the city in charge of Miss Wadsworth, to accomplish some spring shopping. Patty and Rosalie each needed new hats--besides such minor matters as gloves and shoes and petticoats--and Mae was to have a fitting for her new tailor suit. These duties performed, the afternoon was to be given over to relaxation; at least to such relaxation as a Shakespearean tragedy affords.

But when they presented themselves at the theater, they were faced by the announcement that the star had met with an automobile accident on his way to the performance, and that he was too damaged to appear; money would be refunded at the box office. The girls still clamored for their matinée, and Miss Wadsworth hurriedly cast about for a fitting substitute for Hamlet.

Miss Wadsworth was middle-aged and vacillating and easily-led and ladylike and shockable. She herself knew that she had no strength of character; and she conscientiously strove to overcome this cardinal defect in a chaperon, by stubbornly opposing whatever her charges elected to do.

To-day they voted for a French farce with John Drew as hero. Miss Wadsworth said "no" with all the firmness she could assume, and herself picked out a drama entitled "The Wizard of the Nile," under the impression that it would assist their knowledge of ancient Egypt.

But the Wizard turned out to be a recent and spurious imitation of the original historical wizard. She was ultra-modern English, with a French flavor. The time was to-morrow, and the scene the terrace of Shepherd's Hotel. She wore long, clinging robes of chiffon and gold cut in the style of Cleopatra along Parisian lines. Her rose-tinted ears were enhanced by drooping earrings, and her eyes were cunningly lengthened at the corners, in a fetching Egyptian slant. She was very beautiful and very merciless; she broke every masculine heart in Cairo. As a climax to her shocking career of wickedness, she smoked cigarettes!

Poor bewildered Miss Wadsworth sat through the four acts, worried, breathless, horrified--fascinated; but the three girls were simply fascinated. They thrilled over the scenery and music and costumes all the way back in the train. Cairo, to their dazzled eyes, opened up realms of adventure, undreamed of in the proper bounds of St. Ursula's. The Mecca of all travel had become Shepherd's Hotel.

That night, long after "Lights-out" had rung, when Patty's mind was becoming an agreeable jumble of sphinxes and pyramids and English officers, she was suddenly startled wide awake by feeling