Patty Blossom | Page 2

a mere swift and sudden flurry.
Patty, with her usual adaptability to circumstances, didn't care much, and felt pretty sure the storm would depart as quickly as it had gathered. She was quite willing to stay indoors a day or two if need be, and could easily amuse herself in many ways. Not so Elise. She was impatient and impetuous, and was always greatly put out if her plans went awry. But the diversion of an unexpected guest roused her to animation and she poked the logs to a brighter blaze by way of welcome.
After the sound of stamping and whisking off snow in the hall, a young man came into the pleasant sun-parlour where the girls were.
It was with difficulty that Patty concealed her amazement as she looked at him. He was of a type that she had heard of, but had never before chanced to meet.
Mechanically, she went through the formalities of the introduction, and sat staring at him, without realising that she was doing so.
"Well," said Sam Blaney, at last, "what about it? Do I get a blue ribbon?"
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" and Patty blushed at her rudeness. "You see, you er--you reminded me of somebody I have met----"
"No, you mean I remind you of somebody you never have met, but are glad to discover at last."
Patty laughed outright, for the words so definitely expressed her state of mind. Thus encouraged, she continued to look at him.
Blaney was not so extraordinary of appearance, but he presented the effects of the class known as artistic. His thick, fair hair, while it could scarcely be called long, was a trifle longer than the conventional cut. His collar, while not Byronic, was low, and he wore a Windsor tie, of a sickly, pale green. He was a big man, but loose-jointed and ungainly of build. His manners were careless, and his voice was low and soft. He had big grey eyes, which seemed especially noticeable by reason of enormous tortoise-rimmed glasses, whose long, thick bows hooked over his ears.
"You are a poet," Patty said, decisively, after a smiling survey; "and you are right, I have always wanted to know a live poet."
"I hope," said Blaney, in a mournful way, "that you don't agree with those wiseacres who think the only good poet is a dead poet."
"Oh, goodness, no!" said Patty, quickly. "But most of the poetry with which I am familiar was written by dead men--that is, they weren't dead when they wrote it, you know----"
"But died from the shock?"
"Now you're making fun of me," and Patty pouted, but as Patty's pout was only a shade less charming than her smile, the live poet didn't seem to resent it.
"Doubtless," he went on, "my work will not be really famous until after I am dead, but some day I shall read them to you, and get your opinion as to their hopes for a future."
"Oh, do read them to Patty," exclaimed Elise; "read them now. That's the very thing for a stormy day!"
"Yes," Patty agreed; "if you have an Ode to Spring, or Lines on a Blooming Daffodil, it would be fine to fling them in the teeth of this storm."
"I see you're by way of being a wag, Miss Fairfield," Blaney returned, good-naturedly. "But you've misapprehended my vein. I write poems, not jingles."
"He does," averred Elise, earnestly. "Oh, Sam, do recite some--won't you?"
"Not now, Lady fair. The setting isn't right, and the flowers are too vivid."
Patty looked at the two large vases of scarlet carnations that stood on the long, massive table in the middle of the room. She had thought them a very pleasant and appropriate decoration for the snowy day, but Blaney's glance at them was disdainful.
"He's an affected idiot!" she exclaimed to herself. "I don't like him one bit!"
"Please like me," said the poet's soft voice, and Patty fairly jumped to realise that he had read her thought in her face.
"Oh, I do!" she said, with mock fervour, and a slight flush of embarrassment at her carelessness. "I like you heaps!"
"Don't be too set up over that," laughed Elise, "for Patty likes everybody. She's the greatest little old liker you ever saw! Why, she even likes people who don't like her."
"Are there such?" asked Blaney, properly.
"Yes, indeed," Patty declared; "and I can't help admiring their good taste."
"I can't either," and Blaney spoke so seriously, that Patty almost gasped.
"That isn't the answer," she smiled; "you should have contradicted me."
"No," the poet went on; "people who don't like you show real discrimination. It is because you are so crude and unformed of soul."
But Patty was too wise to be caught with such chaff.
"Yes, that's it," she said, and nodded her curly head in assent.
"You say yes, because you don't know what I'm talking about. But it's true. If you