Miss Pat at School | Page 4

of desolation.
Elinor glanced beyond, through the low doorway to the next room.
"Suppose we do without hot things today?" she proposed. "The tables look pretty full in there. We mightn't get a place if we delay too long."
"Suits me to a gnat's heel," declared Patricia eagerly. "Food is a secondary article, anyway, when it comes to character study. I'm not so keen on cookery since I sighted this tasteful apartment."
She followed Elinor into the larger room where a feeble daylight, filtering in through heavily grated basement windows, struggled with the flaring gas jets, and the odor of cocoa and bread and butter mingled with sachet and the fumes of turpentine and paint.
Elinor made her way over the mottled stone floor with as easy a grace as though it were a flowery turf, but Patricia, not so well schooled in concealing her feelings, made a wry mouth.
"If this is where the celebrities eat, I don't wonder they're smudgy," she said in an undertone, as they seated themselves at the last vacant table and spread their purchases on its discolored surface. "This doesn't strike me as being very appetizing."
"It's clean, anyway, Miss Pat," said Elinor, whose practiced eyes had been busy. "It looks soiled because the table-tops are old marble and the floor is mottled cement, but it is really clean, though I can't honestly say it is attractive on first sight."
"One gets used to anything in time," said Patricia airily. "You remember how Sally Lukes missed the doing of those five weekly washes after Johnny got prosperous enough to keep her in comfort. I reckon we'll be just like that after a while--can't eat without smudges on the table and paint-splotches on the dining-room walls."
Her eyes strayed about, resting on one group after another till they lighted with sudden interest.
"There she is," she said ardently. "You can't deny, Elinor, that she's terribly good to look at. Why, the very way she manipulates that frilly napkin reconciles me to my food. I declare I'm twice as hungry as I was before."
The girl certainly did make a charming and refreshing picture in her pretty gown, and with a dainty lunch covering the objectionable table. Opposite to her sat the drab young woman, silently eating while she read hurriedly from a technical magazine. The contrast between the two was so great that it made Elinor wonder.
"She must be unselfish and agreeable," she said, forgetting her momentary prejudice, "particularly when the other doesn't seem to appreciate her society very highly. I fancy that one isn't very diverting. I wonder why they are such chums."
"Relatives, perhaps," hazarded Patricia, reveling in Elinor's conversion. "I hope we get to know her soon, don't you, Norn? She must be awfully popular. See how they all turn when she passes. I'm sorry she's going, though, for I could simply feast my eyes on her for hours."
Their new acquaintance of the corridor stopped at their table as she, too, made her way out.
"I am going into the portrait class when I go up," she said, her dark-fringed eyes smiling frankly down on Elinor. "They tell me you are going to take your first plunge this afternoon. I'll be glad to show you about if you need any chaperoning."
Elinor's eyes met hers gratefully. "I'll be so glad to have you tell me what I should do," she said with relief and instant friendliness in her soft voice. "I'm just a beginner, you know. I've never been in a class in my life and I'm rather scared about it."
The lips that Patricia had designated as "nice and crinkly" widened in a bright smile that held no hint of hauteur.
"I'll be about in the corridor when you come up," she promised. "You don't need to feel that way about it. It's the simplest thing in the world--after you once get settled. You're in great luck to get into life and head classes without ever having gone to school before. I fancy you are a very special brand of genius to have such privileges."
Elinor blushed and shook her head.
"I studied with Bruce Haydon last summer," she said. "He got me in here."
"O--oh," responded the girl, her face suddenly alight. "That is splendid. You know he's the most severe critic we have, but we all adore his work." Then she added as an afterthought: "He's tremendously popular with the men. He studied here, you know."
Patricia opened her eyes wide. "Why, Bruce is the most amiable sort," she protested. "He'll simply eat out of your hand up at home. I didn't know he ever criticized here," she ended, rather suspiciously.
Elinor's new friend smiled good-naturedly. "He only drops in once in a while," she said. "He was here pretty often last month, but he hadn't been here before that for nearly four years, they said. He's abroad now, isn't