CHAPTER VIII A TEA-PARTY

On Saturday, when Patty saw the Harts in the dining-room, she asked them to come to see her that afternoon. Jeannette was going out with her mother, but the other two willingly accepted the invitation.

“I’ll ask Lorraine, too,” said Patty, “and we’ll make tea and have a real cosey time.”

“The tea sounds cheerful,” said Adelaide, “but if you’re going to have Lorraine, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.”

“Oh, then of course I won’t ask her,” said Patty, quickly, for she did not think it just to the others to insist upon Lorraine’s presence; “I can have her some other time just as well. But Clementine Morse said she would come and see me this afternoon.”

“That’s all right,” said Editha; “everybody likes Clementine.”

In a gay mood Patty prepared for her little tea-party. She easily persuaded Grandma to send out for a box of marshmallows and a big bag of chestnuts. “For,” she said, “that lovely wood fire is just the very place to toast marshmallows and roast chestnuts. I know you’ll like Clementine Morse, Grandma, she’s so sweet and pretty, and I know she’ll like you—for the very same reasons.” Patty paused in her preparations to bestow a butterfly kiss on Grandma’s forehead, and then went on arranging her dainty tea-table.

“It’ll be almost like the Tea Club,” she said, as she piled up the sugar lumps and cut thin slices of lemon. “I suppose they’re having a meeting this afternoon, and Marian is being president. Do you know, Grandma, sometimes I get a little homesick for the Tea Club.”

“I should think you would, my dear. The Vernondale girls are a nice set. But perhaps you can get up a Tea Club here.”

“I’d like that,” said Patty, “but the girls are all so different here. They seem divided, and in Vernondale we were all united, just like one big family.”

The Harts came early. Editha brought a piece of exquisite fancy-work. She was a dainty, fragile girl, like a piece of Dresden china, and Patty looked at her in admiration as she deftly worked at the beautiful embroidery.

“What clever girls you are,” said Patty; “I couldn’t do anything like that, if I tried; and I couldn’t make the things Adelaide makes.”

“Probably you can do a lot of things that we can’t do,” said Editha, as she threaded her needle.

“I can do lots of things,” said Patty, laughing, “but I can’t do anything very well. I’m a Jack-of-all-trades. The only thing I really understand is housekeeping; and here, of course, I’ve no opportunity for that.”

“Housekeeping!” exclaimed Adelaide, “do you really know how to do that? Wherever did you learn?”

“I used to keep house in my home in New Jersey,” said Patty, quite ignoring the fact that Lorraine had warned her against mentioning her country home.

But Adelaide apparently did not share Lorraine’s views on this subject.

“How lovely!” she cried. “Did you have a whole house of your own, where you could drive tacks in the wall and do whatever you pleased?”

“Yes,” said Patty, “and I had entire charge of it. I always ordered everything; and I can cook, too.”

“Then you’re cleverer than we are,” said Editha, with an air of decision; “cooking is much more difficult than embroidering centre-pieces or nailing boards together.”

“Speak for yourself,” cried Adelaide; “of course anybody can do embroidery, but it isn’t so awful easy to nail boards together properly!”

“Why do you do it then?” retorted her sister; “I’m sure nobody wants the ridiculous things you make.”

“All right then,” said Adelaide, “give me back that book-rack I gave you yesterday. I’ll be glad to have it for myself.”

“Injun giver!” cried Editha, looking at her sister, angrily at first and then breaking into a laugh. “Take it, if you want it. I don’t care for it.”

“Wild horses couldn’t get that thing away from her,” said Adelaide to Patty; “she’s just crazy over it.”

“I am not!” cried Editha; “it’s nothing but useless rubbish.”

“All right, then I will take it, and I’ll give it to Patty. And just you wait till I ever make you anything again, Editha Hart!”

“I won’t have to wait long,” said Editha, smiling good-naturedly once more; and then suddenly Adelaide laughed, too, and harmony was restored.

Soon Clementine Morse came.

“My brother brought me,” she explained, as she came in, “and he’s coming for me again at five o’clock.”

Patty introduced her new friend to Grandma, and then Clementine greeted the Hart girls gaily.

“Isn’t it lovely,” she exclaimed, “for you all to live in this same house together! Where you can visit each other whenever you like, without waiting for a brother to come and bring you or take you home.”

“We’d wait a long while for our brother,” said Adelaide, laughing, “and so would Patty. You’re lucky to have a brother, Clem.”

“Yes, I know it; and Clifford is an awful nice boy, but just so sure as I want him he wants to be going somewhere else. Still, he’s pretty good to me. Oh, what lovely marshmallows! are you going to toast them on hat-pins?”

“Good guesser!” cried Patty, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it right now. I’ll toast yours, Editha, and pop them into your mouth, so you won’t get your fingers sticky.”

“No, thank you,” said Editha, rolling up her work; “half the fun is in the toasting. Let’s all do it together.”

“We didn’t wear any hats,” said Adelaide, “so we haven’t any hat-pins with us.”

“That’s one of the disadvantages of living in the same hotel, after all,” said Clementine; “of course having no hat-pins, you can’t be in the toasting party at all.”

But Grandma came to the rescue with some knitting-needles, and soon four laughing girls with very red cheeks were sitting on the floor in front of the fire, and the marshmallows were rapidly disappearing. The chestnuts were voted to be nearly as much fun as the confections, and the feast was at its height when the doorbell rang and Kenneth Harper was announced.

“Oh, Ken!” cried Patty, scrambling to her feet, “I’m so glad to see you. We’re having a roasting and toasting party, and it’s lucky you came before it’s all eaten up.”

Kenneth shook hands with Patty, and then politely greeted Grandma Elliott, who was always glad to welcome the boy.

Then he was presented to the girls, and in a few minutes the young people were chattering like friendly and well-acquainted magpies.

Patty, quite in her element, hovered round the tea-table and made tea in her usual successful fashion. Grandma produced a surprise in the shape of dear little frosted cakes, and the healthy young appetites did full justice to all these things.

“How is the farm growing, Patty?” inquired Kenneth; “I thought I’d come down and mow the grass for you.”

“I wish you would,” said Patty. “It’s growing all over the place and threatens to choke the tulip bulbs before they sprout. But oh, Ken, you ought to see Adelaide’s palmery, or palmistry, or whatever it is. She has an old Venetian fountain that plays all the time, and goldfish swim in it, and the palms grow on its banks, and it’s perfectly lovely, and she made it all herself.”

“I always told you that the city girls were clever,” said Kenneth, smiling at Patty. “Still, a home-made fountain is really outside of my experience.”

“It wasn’t difficult,” said Adelaide; “I have a mechanical turn of mind, and the fountain was an easy matter. But what I’m puzzling over now is how to build a suspension bridge across the library table. Our library is so small and the table is so big and there are so many of us to sit around it that you can’t cross the room at all. And so I thought a suspension bridge would be both useful and ornamental.”

“I’m sure it would,” said Kenneth, “and as I expect to be a bridge-builder some day, I might help you draw your plans now; it will be good practise.”

“I wish you’d hurry up and get it built,” said Editha; “it will be useful for a great many purposes. I would stand on it sometimes and recite ‘I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight’; it would be so very appropriate.”

“I hope you’ll do it at midnight, and then the rest of us needn’t hear your recitation,” put in Adelaide.

Patty feared one of the sisterly squabbles, and hastened to interrupt it. “I would come over and stand on your bridge and recite ‘How Horatius Kept the Bridge.’?”

“?‘And I will stand at thy right hand and keep the bridge with thee,’?” said Kenneth in exaggerated dramatic tones.

“Well, a bridge seems to be a household necessity,” said Clementine. “I don’t see how we’ve worried along without one as long as we have.”

In merry nonsense and chaff the time slipped away, and everyone was surprised when Clifford Morse came for his sister, and said it was after five o’clock. The boy was invited in, and Patty begged of him that Clementine might stay a few moments longer.

Although Clifford Morse was only eighteen, he was a young giant. More than six feet tall, he was broad-shouldered and strong-limbed. His good-looking boyish face was framed in a thick close-cut crop of brown hair, and his athletic carriage and bearing was marked by the usual athlete’s grace.

The courteous respect he showed to Grandma Elliott, and his frank pleasant manner toward the girls, proved him a well-born and well-bred young American citizen, and, though meeting for the first time, he and Kenneth Harper instinctively felt a mutual friendliness.

“This is right down jolly,” he exclaimed, as he took the cup of tea Patty offered him. “I have attended affairs that were called afternoon teas, but there must have been a mistake somewhere; they were oppressive and awe-inspiring functions, but this is the real thing. Is it of frequent occurrence, Miss Fairfield, or must I wait a long and weary while before I may come again—to take my sister home?”

“You must ask Grandma,” said Patty, laughing; “she is the captain and the cook and the crew of this Nancy Bell. I am only the midshipmite.”

Young Morse turned to Grandma Elliott with his merry smile. “May I hope to come again,” he said, “if I promise to be very good and not drink up all the tea?”

“You may come any Saturday afternoon when we are at home,” said Grandma, smiling; “but it’s only fair to warn you that we’re very rarely home on Saturdays.”

“I shall come,” said Clifford, “and I’ll come early, and I’ll make myself so charming that you’ll quite forget all other engagements.”

“You may try it,” said Grandma, looking kindly at the merry boy.

The click of the key was heard in the front door and in a few moments Mr. Fairfield joined the party.

Then there were more introductions and more jokes, and much laughter, for Mr. Fairfield was a universal favourite with children and young people, and had a talent for always saying and doing exactly the right thing.

He was as courteous to the girls, including Patty, as though they had been grown-up ladies, and he greeted the boys with a frank cordiality as of man to man, which delighted their young souls.

Then Clementine declared she must go home, and, accompanied by Kenneth, she and her brother took their departure.

Then Editha and Adelaide went away, and Patty sat down by her father’s side to talk it all over.

“We had a beautiful time, papa,” she said, “and they’re a nice crowd. But what do you think? The Hart girls said they wouldn’t come if I asked Lorraine. So I didn’t ask her: and I’m glad of it, for she would have spoiled the whole party. But it does seem too bad, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does, Puss, but you mustn’t take it too much to heart. You’re not responsible for Lorraine’s unpopularity, and you mustn’t allow it to spoil your good times. Whenever you can help her, or give her pleasure in any way that she will accept graciously, I know you’ll do it.”

“Indeed I will, for I’m really going to try to make that girl happier. But of course I can’t force the other girls to help me, though after I know them better I may be able to coax them to.”

“You’re a good little girl, Patty, and you’re showing a kind and generous spirit. Let the good work go on, and some day when you least expect it I’ll help you out with it.”