Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge | Page 3

alongside of Elinor and censor her reports when they get too highly colored."
Mrs. Spicer chuckled, rubbed her frosty fingers before the leaping blaze and then plunged into the story of their fortnight's journey southward with Miriam Halden, whom they had left with her mother in New Orleans, looking forward, in spite of crutches, to the festivities of her friends' coming-out parties.
Elinor and Judith asked a great many questions and Patricia threw in a word or two occasionally, but for the most part she was silent, reveling in the cosy warmth of the big room, with its easels and casts and canvases and all the other familiar delightful implements of the painter's craft.
As Mrs. Spicer finished and Patricia was beginning to bubble over with eager questions about friends and acquaintances, Bruce came back into the room, and, lighting a cigar, flung himself into the vacant lounging chair at the other side of the hearth. He was smiling and Patricia knew his expression meant something agreeable.
"What is it, Bruce?" she asked eagerly. "I know you've something up your sleeve. Is it a surprise? Does Elinor know? Is anyone coming?"
Bruce pretended to be absorbed in his cigar and said not a word.
The others looked expectantly at him, and Judith, catching the infection, slipped over to him and taking him gently by the ears, turned his head directly toward them.
"You may as well tell us, Mr. Bruce," she urged firmly. "We haven't any time to waste this evening on conundrums, you know."
Elinor suddenly seemed enlightened. "Oh, I think I know--" she began, when Bruce interrupted her.
"No, you don't know it all," he announced loudly, as if fearful that the news might come from some other source. "You may know that I was going to order dinner served here in the studio, and you might guess that it was to be a very festive one, but you couldn't possibly foresee who was to share the humble board with us, no, not if you guessed a hundred years."
"Pooh, I'm sure I could do it in one little hour if I tried," laughed Patricia. "We don't know such a horde of people that it would take long to run over every name we know."
"Oh, don't try, please don't!" cried Judith in alarm, lest valuable time be lost. "Tell us, Bruce, do, Mrs. Nat hates to haggle over news."
There was a merry outcry at this transparent plea and then Bruce, with a pretense of reluctance, gave in.
"We're going to have dinner here in the studio with real waiters, Judy, and a bunch of flowers for each lady--don't interrupt, please, till I've done. A bunch of violets for you and Elinor and Mrs. Spicer and the happy song-bird there, and also for Miss Margaret Howes and Mrs. Hiram Todd."
There was such a chorus of questions that Bruce held up his hands in protest.
"Give me time, and I'll confess all," he entreated. "Don't be too hard on a poor solitary man-body. Remember, you're four to one, and be easy. I had asked the Todds for a surprise to you all, and today I met Miss Howes on the street--just back in town and honing for a sight of old friends, and I nailed her on the spot. Fortunately I could get them all on the phone and they one and all bubbled with joy at the prospect of a quiet little dinner in the shelter of our roof-tree. Margaret Howes is sick of hotel life and Mrs. Todd isn't quite acclimated to it yet."
Mrs. Spicer shook her head. "We didn't even know there was a Mrs. Hiram," she said with a chuckle. "When did it happen?"
"The very day after you left," replied Elinor. "They went to Washington--Hiram had some more business there--and Marian had the time of her life. She looks like a different girl, too. She's taken Hiram in hand already, and he is beginning to seem like other people. She told me the day we called on them here that she had given all of Hiram's wedding outfit to the Salvation Army, and she meant to fit him out right here in New York."
Patricia puckered her brow. "I thought Hiram was very well as he was," she said doubtfully. "He was the sort that couldn't be much changed, and it seems silly to deck him out----"
Bruce interrupted her. "That isn't the idea, my dear Pat," he explained, smiling. "Marian says Hiram has too much brains to look like a scarecrow for ignorant people to look down on, so she's making him fit, merely to enlighten them as to his merit."
Patricia was silenced, though not yet convinced. She turned to the subject of Margaret Howes with eager interest, asking all sorts of questions as to her progress in painting and her appearance and her life of the past year,