Pattys Butterfly Days | Page 4

don't you, now?"
"Who New York chaps?" asked Patty, opening her eyes wide, with an over-innocent stare.
"Oh, that Harper kid and that Farrington cub and that Hepworth old gentleman!"
"What pretty pet names you call them! Yes, I get letters from them, but they're my lifelong friends."
"That's the position I'm applying for. Don't you need one more L. L. F.?" But Patty had turned to the girls, and they were counting up what few parties were to take place before Patty went away.
"I'd have a farewell party myself," said Patty, thoughtfully, "but there's so little time now, and Nan's pretty busy. I hate to bother her with it. You see, we leave next week,--Thursday."
"And our house party comes that very day!" said Beatrice, regretfully. "And Captain Sayre is coming. He's the most stunning man! He's our second cousin, and older than we are, but he's just grand, isn't he, Lora?"
"Yes; and he'd adore Patty. Oh, girlie, DON'T go!"
"I think I'll kidnap Patty," said Jack. "The day they start, I'll waylay the party as they board the train, and carry Patty off by force."
"You'd have to get out a force of militia," laughed Patty. "My father Fairfield is of a sharp-eyed disposition. You couldn't carry off his daughter under his nose."
"Strategy!" whispered Jack, in a deep, mysterious voice. "I could manage it, somehow, I'm sure."
"Well, it wouldn't do any good. He'd just come back after me, and we'd take the next train. But, oh, girls, I do wish I could stay here! I never had such a disappointment before. I've grown to love this place; and all you people; and my dear Camilla!" Patty's blue eyes filled with real tears, as she dropped her light and bantering manner, and spoke earnestly.
"It's a shame!" declared Jack, as he noted the drops trembling on the long, curled lashes. "Come on, girls, I'm going home before I express myself too strongly."
So Jack and the Sayre girls went away, and Patty went up to her own room.
CHAPTER II
MONA'S PLAN
That night, when Patty was alone in her own room, she threw herself into a rocking chair, and rocked violently, as was her habit, when she had anything to bother her. She looked about at the pretty room, furnished with all her dear and cherished belongings.
"To go away from all this," she thought, "and be mewed up in a little bare room, with a few sticks of horrid old furniture, and nowhere to put things away decently!"
She glanced at her room wardrobes and numerous chiffoniers and dressing-tables.
"Live in a trunk, I s'pose," she went on to herself; "all my best frocks in a mess of wrinkles, all my best hats smashed to windmills! No broad ocean to look at! Nothing but mountains with trees all over their sides! Nothing to do but walk up rocky, steep paths to a spring, take a drink of water, and come stumbling down again! In the evenings, dress up, and promenade eighty thousand feet of veranda, AS ADVERTISED!"
Roused to a frenzy by her own self-pity and indignation, Patty got up and stalked about the room. She flung off her pretty summer frock, and slipped on a blue silk kimono. Then she sat down in front of her dressing-table to brush her hair for the night.
She drew out the pins, and great curly masses came tumbling down around her shoulders. Patty's hair was truly golden, and did not turn darker as she grew older.
She brushed away slowly, and looked at herself in the mirror. What she saw must have surprised her, for she dropped her brush in astonishment.
"Well, Patricia Fairfield!" she exclaimed to her own reflection. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! YOU, who are supposed to be of amiable disposition, YOU whom people call 'Sunshine,' because of your good nature, YOU who have every joy and every blessing that heart can wish, you look like a sour-faced, cross-grained, disgruntled old maid! So there now! And, Miss, do you want to know what I think of you?" She picked up her hair brush, and shook it at the flushed, angry face in the mirror. "Well, I think you're a monster of selfishness! You're a dragon of ingratitude! And a griffin of cross-patchedness! Now, Miss, WILL you drop this attitude of injured innocence, and act like a civilised human being?"
Patty was a little over hard on herself. She hadn't at all exhibited such traits as she charged herself with, but she was not a girl to do things by halves. She sat, calmly looking at her own face, until the lines smoothed themselves out of her forehead, the dimples came back to her cheeks, and the laughter to her blue eyes.
"That's better!" she said, wagging her head at the pretty, smiling face. "Now, never again, Patty Fairfield, let me see you looking mopy or