"I think you're perfectly horrid!"
"Will you apologize to Rosalie?" Priscilla asked again.
"Yes—if you'll promise not to tell."
"We'll promise on one condition—you're to break your engagement to Cuthbert St. John, and never refer to it again."
Cuthbert sailed for England on the Oceanic the following Thursday; St.
Ursula's plunged into a fever of basket-ball, and the atmosphere became
bracingly free of Romance.
III
The Virgil Strike
"This makes the third time they've taken away our holiday for the sake of a beastly lecture," Priscilla grumbled, as she peered over Patty's shoulder to read the notice on the bulletin board, in Miss Lord's perpendicular library hand.
It informed the school that instead of the usual shopping expedition to the village, they would have the pleasure that afternoon of listening to a talk by Professor McVey of Columbia University. The subject would be the strike of the women laundry workers. Tea would be served in the drawing-room afterwards, with Mae Van Arsdale, Harriet Gladden, and Patty Wyatt as hostesses.
"It's not my turn!" objected Patty, as she noted the latter item. "I was hostess two weeks ago."
"That's because you wrote an essay on the 'Eight Hour Day.' Lordie thinks you will ask the professor-man intelligent questions; and show him that St. Ursula's is not a common boarding-school where only superficial accomplishments are taught, but one in which the actual problems of—"
"And I did want to go shopping!" Patty mourned. "I need some new shoe-strings. I've been tying a knot in my old ones every day for a week."
"Here she comes," whispered Priscilla. "Look happy or she'll make you translate the whole—Good morning, Miss Lord! We were just noticing about the lecture. It sounds extremely interesting."
The two smiled a perfunctory greeting, and followed their teacher to the morning's Latin.
Miss Lord was the one who struck the modern note at St. Ursula's. She believed in militant suffragism and unions and boycotts and strikes; and she labored hard to bring her little charges to her own advanced position. But it was against a heavy inertia that she worked. Her little charges didn't care a rap about receiving their rights, in the dim future of twenty-one; but they were very much concerned about losing a present half-holiday. On Friday afternoons, they were ordinarily allowed to draw checks on the school bank for their allowances, and march in a procession—a teacher forming the head and tail—to the village stores, where they laid in their weekly supply of hair ribbons and soda water and kodak films. Even had one acquired so many demerits that her weekly stipend was entirely eaten up by fines, still she marched to the village and watched the lucky ones disburse. It made a break in the monotony of six days of bounds.
But every cloud has its silver lining.
Miss Lord preceded the Virgil recitation that morning by a discussion of the lecture to come. The laundry strike, she told them, marked an epoch in industrial history. It proved that women, as well as men, were capable of standing by each other. The solidarity of labor was a point she wished her girls to grasp. Her girls listened with grave attention; and by eagerly putting a question, whenever she showed signs of running down, they managed to stave off the Latin recitation for three quarters of an hour.
The professor, a mild man with a Van Dyke beard, came and lectured exhaustively upon the relations of employer and employed. His audience listened with politely intelligent smiles, but with minds serenely occupied elsewhere. The great questions of Capital and Labor, were not half so important to them, as the fact of the lost afternoon, or the essays that must be written for to-morrow's English, or even that this was ice-cream night with dancing class to follow. But Patty, on the front seat, sat with wide, serious eyes fixed on the lecturer's face. She was absorbing his arguments—and storing them for use.
Tea followed according to schedule. The three chosen ones received their guests with the facility of long-tried hostesses. The fact that their bearing was under inspection, with marks to follow, did not appreciably diminish their case. They were learning by the laboratory method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger world. Harriet and Mae presided at the tea table, while Patty engaged the personage in conversation. He commented later, to Miss Lord, upon the students' rare understanding in economic subjects.
Miss Lord replied with some complaisance that she endeavored to have her girls think for themselves. Sociology was a field in which lessons could not be taught by rote. Each must work out her own conclusions, and act upon them.
Ice-cream and dancing restored the balance of St. Ursula's, after the mental exertions of the afternoon. At half-past nine—the school did not retire until ten on dancing nights—Patty and Priscilla dropped their goodnight courtesy, murmured a polite "Bon soir, Mam'selle," and scampered upstairs, still very wide awake. Instead of preparing for bed with all dispatch, as well-conducted school girls should, they engaged themselves in practising the steps of their new Spanish dance down the length of the South Corridor. They brought up with a pirouette at Rosalie Patton's door.
Rosalie, still in the pale blue fluffiness of her dancing frock, was sitting cross-legged on the couch, her yellow curls bent over the open pages of a Virgil, tears spattering with dreary regularity on the lines she was conning.
The course of Rosalie's progress through senior Latin might be marked by blistered pages. She was a pretty, cuddling, helpless little thing, deplorably babyish for a senior; but irresistibly appealing. Everyone teased her, and protected her, and loved her. She was irrevocably predestined to bowl over the first man who came along, with her ultra feminine irresponsibility. Rosalie very often dreamed—when she ought to have been concentrating upon Latin grammar—of that happy future state in which smiles and kisses would take the place of gerunds and gerundives.
"You silly little muff!" cried Patty. "Why on earth are you bothering with Latin on a Friday night?"
She landed herself with a plump on Rosalie's right, and took away the book.
"I have to," Rosalie sobbed. "I'd never finish if I didn't begin. I don't see any sense to it. I can't do eighty lines in two hours. Miss Lord always calls on me for the end, because she knows I won't know that."
"Why don't you begin at the end and read backwards?" Patty practically suggested.
"But that wouldn't be fair, and I can't do it so fast as the others. I work more than two hours every day, but I simply never get through. I know I shan't pass."
"Eighty lines is a good deal," Patty agreed.
"It's easy for you, because you know all the words, but—"
"I worked more than two hours on mine yesterday," said Priscilla, "and I can't afford it either. I have to save some time for geometry."
"I just simply can't do it," Rosalie wailed. "And she thinks I'm stupid because I don't keep up with Patty."
Conny Wilder drifted in.
"What's the matter?" she asked, viewing Rosalie's tear-streaked face. "Cry on the pillow, child. Don't spoil your dress."
The Latin situation was explained.
"Oh, it's awful the way Lordie works us! She would like to have us spend every moment grubbing over Latin and sociology. She—"
"Doesn't think dancing and French and manners are any good at all," sobbed Rosalie, mentioning the three branches in which she excelled, "and I think they're a lot more sensible than subjunctives. You can put them to practical use, and you can't sociology and Latin."
Patty emerged from a moment of revery.
"There's not much use in Latin," she agreed, "but I should think that something might be done with sociology. Miss Lord told us to apply it to our everyday problems."
Rosalie swept the idea aside with a gesture of disdain.
"Listen!" Patty commanded, springing to her feet and pacing the floor in an ecstasy of enthusiasm. "I've got an idea! It's perfectly true. Eighty lines of Virgil is too much for anybody to learn—particularly Rosalie. And you heard what the man said: it isn't fair to gage the working day by the capacity of the strongest. The weakest has to set the pace, or else he's left behind. That's what Lordy means when she talks about the solidarity of labor. In any trade, the workers have got to stand by each other. The strong must protect the weak. It's the duty of the rest of the class to stand by Rosalie."
"Yes, but how?" inquired Priscilla, breaking into the tirade.
"We'll form a Virgil Union, and strike for sixty lines a day."
"Oh!" gasped Rosalie, horrified at the audacity of the suggestion.
"Let's!" cried Conny, rising to the call.
"Do you think we can?" asked Priscilla, dubiously.
"What will Miss Lord say?" Rosalie quavered.
"She can't say anything. Didn't she tell us to listen to the lecture and apply its teaching?" Patty reminded.
"She'll be delighted to find we have," said Conny.
"But what if she doesn't give in?"
"We'll call out the Cicero and Cæsar classes in a sympathetic strike."
"Hooray!" cried Conny.
"Lordy does believe in Unions," Priscilla conceded. "She ought to see the justice of it."
"Of course she'll see the justice of it," Patty insisted. "We're exactly like the laundry workers—in the position of dependents, and the only way we can match strength with our employer, is by standing together. If Rosalie alone drops back to sixty lines, she'll be flunked; but if the whole class does, Lordie will have to give in."
"Maybe the whole class won't want to join the union," said Priscilla.
"We'll make 'em!" said Patty. In accordance with Miss Lord's desire, she had grasped some basic principles.
"We'll have to hurry," she added, glancing at the clock. "Pris, you run and find Irene and Harriet and Florence Hissop; and Conny, you route out Nancy Lee—she's up in Evalina Smith's room telling ghost stories. Here, Rosalie, stop crying and dump the things off those chairs so somebody can sit down."
Priscilla started obediently, but paused on the threshold.
"And what will you do?" she inquired with meaning.
"I," said Patty, "will be labor leader."
The meeting was convened, and Patty, a self-constituted chairman, outlined the tenets of the Virgil Union. Sixty lines was to constitute a working day. The class was to explain the case to Miss Lord at the regular session on Monday morning, and politely but positively refuse to read the last twenty lines that had been assigned. If Miss Lord proved insistent, the girls were to close their books and go out on strike.
The majority of the class, hypnotized by Patty's eloquence, dazedly accepted the program; but Rosalie, for whose special benefit the union had been formed, had to be coerced into signing the constitution. Finally, after a wealth of argument had been expended, she wrote her name in a very wobbly hand, and sealed it with a tear. By nature, Rosalie was not a fighter; she preferred gaining her rights by more feminine methods.
Irene McCullough had also to be forced. She was a cautious soul who looked forward to consequences. One of the most frequently applied of St. Ursula's punishments was to make the culprit miss desserts. Irene suffered keenly under this form of chastisement; and she carefully refrained from misdemeanors which might bring it upon her. But Conny produced a convincing argument. She threatened to tell that the chambermaid was in the habit of smuggling in chocolates—and poor harassed Irene, threatened with the two-fold loss of chocolates and dessert, sullenly added her signature.
"Lights-out" rang. The Virgil Union adjourned its first meeting and went to bed.
Senior Latin came the last hour of the morning, when everyone was tired and hungry. On the Monday following the founding of the Union, the Virgil class gathered outside the door, in growing perturbation as the actual time for the battle approached. Patty rallied them in a brief address.
"Brace up, Rosalie! Don't be a cry-baby. We'll help you out if the last lines come to you. And for goodness' sake, girls, don't look so scared. Remember you're suffering, not only for yourselves, but for all the generations of Virgil classes that come after you. Anyone who backs down now is a coward!"
Patty established herself on the front seat, directly in the line of the fire, and a slight skirmish occurred at the outset. Her heavy walking boots were conspicuously laced with pale blue baby ribbon, which caught the enemy's eye.
"That is scarcely the kind of shoe laces that a lady adopts. May I ask, Patty—?"
"I broke my other laces," Patty affably explained, "and since we didn't go shopping on Friday, I couldn't get any more. I don't quite like the effect myself," she conceded, as she stuck out a foot and critically surveyed it.
"See that you find some black ones immediately after class," Miss Lord acidly suggested. "Priscilla, you may read the first ten lines."
The lesson progressed in the usual manner, except that there was a visible tightening of nerves as each recitation was finished, and they waited to hear the next name called. Conny's turn ended with the sixtieth line. No one had gone beyond that; all ahead was virgin jungle. This was the point for the Union to declare itself; and the burden, true to her forebodings, fell upon poor trembling little Rosalie.
She cast an imploring glance toward Patty's sternly waiting countenance, stammered, hesitated, and miserably plunged into a sight translation. Rosalie never had the slightest luck at sight translations; even after two hours of patient work with a dictionary, she was still extremely hesitant as to meanings. Now, she blindly forged ahead,—amid a profound hush—attributing to the Pious Æneas a most amazing set of actions. She finished; and the slaughter commenced. Miss Lord spent three minutes in obliterating Rosalie; then passed the lines to Irene McCullough.
Irene drew a deep breath—she felt Conny encouragingly patting her on the back, while Patty and Priscilla, at either hand, jogged her elbow with insistent touch. She opened her mouth to declare the principles that had been foisted upon her over night; then she caught the cold gleam of Miss Lord's eye. Rosalie's sobs filled the room. And she fell. Irene was fairly good at Latin—her sight translation was at least intelligible. Miss Lord's comment was merely sarcastic, as she passed to Florence Hissop. By this time the panic had swept through the ranks. Florence would like to have been true to her pledged troth, but the instinct of self-preservation is strong. She improved on Irene's performance.
"Take the next ten lines, Patty, and endeavor to extract a glimmering of sense. Please bear in mind that we are reading poetry."
Patty raised her head and faced her superior in the manner of a Christian martyr.
"I only prepared the first sixty lines, Miss Lord."
"Why did you not finish the lesson that I gave out?" Miss Lord inquired sharply.
"We have decided that eighty lines are more than we can do in a day. It takes too much time away from our other lessons. We are perfectly willing to do sixty lines, and do them thoroughly, but we can't consider any more."
Miss Lord for a moment simply stared. Never had she known such a flagrant case of insubordination. And it was purely insubordination, for Patty was the most capable person in the class.
"What do you mean?" she gasped at last.
"We have formed a Virgil Union," Patty gravely explained. "You, Miss Lord, will appreciate the fairness of our demands better than any of the other teachers, because you believe in unions. Now, the girls in this class feel that they are overworked and underpa—er—that is, I mean the lessons are too long."
Patty fetched a deep breath and started again.
"Eighty lines a day doesn't leave us any time for recreation, so we have determined to join together and demand our rights. We occupy the position of skilled laborers. You can get all the girls you want for Cæsar and beginning Latin, but you can't find anybody but us to read Virgil. It's like the laundry trade. We are not just plain boilers and starchers; we are fancy ironers. If you want to have a Virgil class, you have got to have us. You can't call in scab labor. Now, we aren't trying to take advantage because of our superior strength. We are perfectly willing to do an honest day's work, but we can't allow ourselves to be—er—to be—"
Patty fumbled a moment for her word, but in the end she brought it out triumphantly.
"We can't allow ourselves to be exploited. Singly, we are no match for you, but together, we can dictate our own terms. Because two or three of us can keep up the pace you set, is no reason why we should allow the others to be overworked. It is our duty to stand by one another against the encroachments of our employer. We women are not so advanced as men. But we are learning. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the life of Rosalie. In case you refuse to meet our demands, the Virgil class will be obliged to go out on strike."
Patty pronounced her ultimatum, and leaned back with folded arms.
A moment of silence followed. Then Miss Lord spoke. The class went down in hopeless, abject terror before the storm. Miss Lord's icy sarcasm was, in moments of intensity, lightened by gleams of fire. She had Irish ancestors and red hair. Patty alone listened with head erect and steely eyes. The red blood of martyrs dyed her cheeks. She was fighting for a cause. Weak, helpless, little Rosalie, sniffling at her elbow, should be saved—the cowardice of her comrades put to shame. She, single-handed, would fight and win.
Miss Lord finally drew breath.
"The class is dismissed. Patty will remain in the schoolroom until she has translated perfectly the last twenty lines. I will hear her read them after luncheon."
The girls rose and pressed in a huddled body toward the hall, while Patty turned into the empty schoolroom. On the threshold she paused to hurl one contemptuous word over her shoulder:
"Scabs!"
The lunch bell rang, and Patty at her desk in the empty schoolroom heard the girls laughing and talking, as they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs to the dining-room. She was very tired and very hungry. She had had five hours of work since breakfast, with only a glass of milk at eleven o'clock. Even the pleasurable sensation of being abused did not quite offset the pangs of hunger. She listlessly set about learning the morrow's lesson in French History. It dealt with another martyr. Louis the Ninth left his bones bleaching on the plains of Antioch. The cause was different, but the principle remained. If she was not to be fed until she learned the Latin—very well—she would leave her bones bleaching in the schoolroom of St. Ursula's.
An insistent tapping sounded on the window. She glanced across an angle, to find Osaki, the Japanese butler, leaning far out from his pantry window, and extending toward her a dinner plate containing a large, lone slab of turkey.
"Leave plate in wastebasket, Missy," he whispered hoarsely.
Patty, for an instant, struggled with dignity and martyrdom, but hunger and a love of intrigue triumphed. She tiptoed over and received the offering. There was no knife or fork, but primitive methods suffice in a case of real starvation. She finished the turkey and buried the plate beneath a pile of algebra papers. It was Osaki's daily business to empty the wastebasket; the plate in due course would be restored to its shelf.
A few moments later a scurrying footfall sounded at the door, and a little Junior A. darted to Patty's side. She cast a conspiratorial glance over her shoulder as she drew from a bulging blouse two buttered rolls.
"Take 'em quick!" she panted. "I must hurry back, or they'll suspect. I asked to be excused to get a handkerchief. Keep up your courage. We won't let you starve. It's splendid!"
She thrust the rolls into Patty's lap and vanished.
Patty found it comforting to know that the school was with her. The attractions of martyrdom are enhanced by the knowledge of an audience. Also, the rolls were a grateful addition to the turkey; her five-hour appetite was still insistent. She finished one of them and was about to begin on the second, when furtive footfalls sounded behind her, and one of the maids slipped a paper plate over her shoulder.
"Here's some fresh gingerbread, Miss Patty. Cook says—"
The sound of a closing door startled her, and she scurried off like a detected thief.
Patty placed her second roll in the wastebasket in company with the turkey plate, and was just starting on the gingerbread, when a scrambling sounded at the end window. A blue hat appeared momentarily over the sill, its owner boosted from below, and an unidentified hand sent an orange rolling down the center aisle. Patty hastily intercepted its course and dropped it into the wastebasket. Luncheon would be over momentarily, and a visit from Miss Lord was imminent. This influx of supplies was growing embarrassing.
She heard the rising flood of talk as the girls poured from the dining-room. She knew that sympathetic groups were viewing her from the open doors behind. Judging from the ceaseless shuffle of footsteps, all Saint Ursula's had errands that led past the schoolroom door. Patty did not cast a glance behind, but with rigid shoulders stared into space. Presently a rattling sounded above her head. She raised startled eyes to a register set in the ceiling, and saw Irene McCullough's anxious face peering through the opening.
"You can live for days on chocolates," came in a stage whisper. "I'm awfully sorry there's only half a pound; I ate the rest last night."
The register was lifted out, and a box was swiftly lowered by a string. Irene was chief of the scabs.
"Thank you, Irene," Patty returned in a haughty stage whisper. "I do not care to accept any—"
Miss Lord's voice became audible in the hall.
"I thought, young ladies, that afternoon recreation was to be spent out of doors?"
Patty just had time to snatch the box and drop it in her lap, with an open essay book above, when Miss Lord advanced into the room. Patty's face assumed an air of suffering stoicism, as she stared ahead, in the profound hope that Irene would have sense enough to remove eight feet of dangling string. Miss Lord was followed by Osaki, carrying a tray with two slices of dry bread and a glass of water.
"Have you finished your Latin, Patty?"
"No, Miss Lord."
"Why not?"
"I am going to do to-morrow's lesson in afternoon study hour."
Patty's tone was respectful, but her meaning was clear. She emphasized slightly the word "to-morrow."
"You will do the twenty lines immediately."
A speaking silence from Patty.
"Do you hear me?"
"Yes, Miss Lord."
"Well?" The monosyllable was sharp enough to cut.
"I stand by my principles," said Patty. "I am not a scab."
"You may sit here until those twenty lines are finished."
"Very well, Miss Lord."
"I do not wish you to suffer. Here is bread and water."
She motioned Osaki to set down the tray.
Patty waved it aside.
"I am not a convict," she said with dignity. "I refuse to eat until I am served properly at the dining-room table."
A fleeting grin replaced for a moment Osaki's Oriental calm. Miss Lord set the bread on a neighboring desk, and the two withdrew.
All through recreation and afternoon study, Patty sat at her desk, the plate of bread conspicuously untouched at her elbow. Then the five-o'clock bell rang, and the girls trooped out and dispersed on their various businesses. The hour between afternoon study and dressing bell, was the one hour of the day entirely their own. Patty could hear them romping up the back stairs, and racing through the corridors. Kid McCoy was conducting a pillow fight in Paradise Alley above her head. Groups passed the schoolroom window with happy calls and laughter. Pepper and Tabasco, the two riding horses, were saddled and brought out. She could see the girls taking turns in galloping around the oval, while Martin, as ringmaster, waved his whip and urged them on. Martin now was bent with rheumatism, but in his far-off reckless youth he had been a cowboy, and when he taught the girls to ride, it was with a disregard of broken bones that dismayed even the adventurous gymnasium teacher. Patty was his star pupil; she could stick on Red Pepper's back with nothing but a blanket to hold her. It was only very occasionally, when Martin was in a propitious mood, that the horses were saddled for mere public amusement. Patty's heart was sore as she watched Priscilla and Conny, her two dearest friends, disport themselves regardless of their incarcerated mate.
It grew dusk; nobody came to furnish a light, and Patty sat in the semi-darkness, her head bent wearily on her arms. Finally she heard footsteps in the hall, and Miss Sallie entered and closed the door behind her. Patty braced herself anew; one needed keen wits to match the "Dragonette."
Miss Sallie had been talking with Miss Lord, and she was inclined to think that Patty needed chastisement of a rare sort; but it was her practice to hear both sides. She drew up a chair, and commenced with business-like directness.
"See here, Patty, what is the meaning of all this nonsense?"
Patty raised reproachful eyes.
"Nonsense, Miss Sallie?"
"Yes, nonsense! Miss Lord says that you refused to learn the lesson that she assigned, and that you incited the rest of the girls to mutiny. You are one of the most able pupils in the class, and your failure to finish the lesson is nothing in the world but stubbornness. If it were Rosalie Patton now, there might be some sense in it."
"I don't think you understand," said Patty gently.
"It might be well for you to explain," suggested Miss Sallie.
"I must stand by my principles."
"By all means!" Miss Sallie affably agreed. "And what are your principles?"
"To hold out for sixty lines of Virgil. It isn't because I want to strike, Miss Sallie. It would be much easier for me to do the eighty lines, but that wouldn't be fair to Rosalie. The working day should not be gaged by the capacity of the strongest. Miss Lord will flunk Rosalie if the rest of us don't take care of her. Upon the solidarity of labor depends the welfare of the individual worker. It is the fight of the oppressed against the encroachments of—of—er—organized authority."
"Um—I see!—I really begin to believe that you listened to that lecture, Patty."
"Of course I listened," Patty nodded, "and I must say that I am awfully disappointed in Miss Lord. She told us to apply our knowledge of sociology to the problems of our daily lives, and when we do, she backs down. But anyway, we intend to maintain the strike, until she is ready to meet our just demands. It isn't through selfish motives that I am acting, Miss Sallie. I should a lot rather have something to eat and go horseback riding. I am fighting for the cause of my suffering sisters."
The ceiling above shook at the impact, as four of her suffering sisters came down on top of one another, while the walls resounded with their shrieks and laughter.
Miss Sallie's lip twitched, but she controlled herself and spoke with serious gravity.
"Very well, Patty, I am glad to know that this unprecedented behavior is caused by charitable motives. I am sure that when Miss Lord fully understands the case she will feel gratified. Suppose I act as intermediary and lay the matter before her? We may be able to arrive at an—er—compromise."
The half hour that followed dinner was usually devoted to dancing in the big square hall, but to-night the girls were inclined to stand about in groups with furtive glances toward the schoolroom. A conference was going on inside. Miss Lord, the Dowager and the Dragonette had passed in and shut the door. Kid McCoy, returning from Paradise Alley, where she had been stretched on her stomach with her face to the register, reported that Patty had fainted through lack of food, that the Dowager had revived her with whiskey, and that she had come to, still cheering for the Union. Kid McCoy's statements, however, were apt to be touched by imagination. The school was divided in its opinion of Patty's course. The scabs were inclined to make light of her achievement, but Conny and Priscilla staunchly fanned enthusiasm.
Finally, the schoolroom door opened, and the faculty emerged and passed into the Dowager's private study, while the dancing commenced with sudden fervor. No one to-day liked to be caught by Miss Lord whispering in a corner.
Patty followed alone. Her face was pale, and there were weary circles about her eyes, but in them shone the light of victory.
"Patty!"
"Are you dead?"
"How'd it come out?"
"Was she furious?"
"What did she say?"
"We arbitrated the question and have settled on a compromise," Patty replied with quiet dignity. "Hereafter the lesson will be seventy lines. The Virgil strike is declared off."
They pressed about her eager for details, but she separated herself, and kept on toward the dining-room door. There was an aloofness about her, an air of having experienced the heights alone. She was not quite ready to rub shoulders with common humanity.
The school settled itself to evening study, and Patty to her dinner.
They could see her across the court, through the lighted window, as she
sat in state at the end of a long table. Osaki on one side, tendered
preserved strawberries, and Maggie on the other, frosted cakes. The
rewards of martyrdom, in Patty's case, were solidly substantial.
IV
The Third Man from the End
"Did you have any adventures?"
Conny and Priscilla, with the dexterity of practice, sprang upon the rear step of the hearse as it turned in at the school gate, and rolled up the curving drive to the porte-cochère. The "hearse" was the popular name for the black varnished wagonette which conveyed the pupils of St. Ursula's from church and station. It was planned to accommodate twenty. Patty and her suit-case, alone in the capacious interior, were jolting about like two tiny peas in a very big pod.
"Adventures!" she called back excitedly. "Wait till you hear!"
As they came to a stop, they were besieged by a crowd of blue-coated girls. It was afternoon recreation, and the whole school was abroad. The welcome that she received, would have led an onlooker to infer that Patty had been gone three months instead of three days. She and her two postilions descended, and Martin gathered up his reins.
"Come on, youse! All who wants a ride to the stables," was his hospitable invitation.
It inundated him with passengers. They crowded inside—twice as many as the hearse would hold—they swarmed over the driver's seat and the steps; and two equestriennes even perched themselves on the horses' backs.
"What's the adventure?" demanded Conny and Priscilla in a breath, as the cavalcade rattled off.
Patty waved her hand toward the suit-case.
"There it is. Take it upstairs. I'll be with you as soon as I've reported."
"But that isn't your suit-case."
Patty shook her head mysteriously.
"If you tried a thousand years you'd never guess who owns it."
"Who?"
Patty laughed.
"Looks like a man's," said Conny.
"It is."
"Oh, Patty! Don't be so exasperating. Where'd you get it?"
"Just a little souvenir that I picked up. I'll tell you as soon as I've interviewed the Dowager. Hurry, and slip in while Jelly isn't looking."
They cast a quick glance over their shoulders toward the gymnasium instructor, who was arguing fat Irene McCullough into faster movements on the tennis court. Miss Jellings was insistent that "recreation" should be actively pursued out of doors. The two could easily have obtained permission to greet Patty's return inside; but it was the policy of the trio never to ask permission in minor matters. It wasted one's credit unnecessarily.
Priscilla and Conny turned upstairs lugging the suit-case between them, while Patty approached the principal's study. Ten minutes later she joined her companions in Seven, Paradise Alley. They were sitting on the bed, their chins in their hands, studying the suit-case propped on a chair before them.
"Well?" they inquired in a breath.
"She says she's glad to see me back, and hopes I didn't eat too much wedding cake. If my lessons show any falling off—"
"Who owns it?"
"The man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the funny songs third from the end on the right hand side."
"Jermyn Hilliard, Junior?" Priscilla asked breathlessly.
"Not really?" Conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh.
"Truly and honest!" Patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on the end. "J. H., Jr."
"It is his!" cried Priscilla.
"Where on earth did you get it, Patty?"
"Yes," Patty nodded, "but my key will open it."
"What's in it?"
"Oh, a dress suit, and collars, and—and things."
"Where'd you get it?"
"Well," said Patty languidly, "it's a long story. I don't know that I have time before study hour—"
"Oh, tell us, please. I think you're beastly!"
"Well—the glee club was last Thursday night."
They nodded impatiently at this useless piece of information.
"And it was Friday morning that I left. As I was listening to the Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we got in, it was cram full of men. The entire Yale Glee Club was going to the station! There were so many of them that they were sitting in each other's laps. The whole top layer rose, and said perfectly gravely and politely: 'Madame, take my seat.'
"Mam'selle was outraged. She said in French, which of course they all understood, that she thought American college boys had disgraceful manners; but I smiled a little—I couldn't help it, they were so funny. And then two of the bottom ones offered their seats, and we sat down. And you'll never believe it, but the third man from the end was sitting right next to me!"
"Not really?"
"Oh, Patty!"
"Is he as good-looking near to, as he was on the stage?"
"Better."
"Are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked?"
"They looked real but I couldn't examine them closely."
"Of course they're real!" said Conny indignantly.
"And what do you think?" Patty demanded. "They were going on my train. Did you ever hear of such a coincidence?"
"What did Mam'selle think of that?"
"She was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me right into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite."
"Patty!" they cried in shocked chorus. "You surely didn't speak to him?"
"Of course not. I looked out of the window and pretended he wasn't there."
"Oh!" Conny murmured disappointedly.
"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.
"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my suit-case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack. That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.
"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't understand."
Conny nodded feelingly.
"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown people have horrid manners."
"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time, what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."
"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.
"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for dinner, the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her head.
"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'
"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with it?'
"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And there it was, wide open!"
Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles filling in the interstices.
"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.
"They belong to him," Conny murmured fervently.
Patty nodded.
"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle Tom lives five miles from town, and there simply wasn't anything we could do that night."
"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert, and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested Priscilla.
"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.
"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to fit."
"I hope it looked all right?"
"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon. I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."
"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?" asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the dressmaker's.
"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it—just like all my dancing dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash. I hated it anyway."
"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until—"
"Just wait till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of her dresses—one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It was white crêpe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet, and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I looked perfectly beautiful—I did, honestly—you wouldn't have known me. I looked at least twenty!
"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as though I were flirting with my grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a good time—if you're pretty."
Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed her chronicle.
"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table. Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper—the man next to me—said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life; that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."
"But about the suit-case," they prompted. "Didn't you do anything more?"
"Uncle Tom telephoned again in the morning, and the station agent said he'd got the party on the wire as had the young lady's case. And he was coming back here in two days, and I was to leave his suit-case with the baggage man at the station, and he would leave mine."
"But you didn't leave it."
"I came on the other road. I'm going to send it down."
"And what did you wear at the wedding?"
"Louise's clothes. It didn't matter a bit, my not matching the other bridesmaids, because I was maid of honor, and ought to dress differently anyway. I've been grown up for three days—and I just wish Miss Lord could have seen me with my hair on the top of my head talking to men!"
"Did you tell the Dowager?"
"Yes, I told her about getting the wrong suit-case; I didn't mention the fact that it belonged to the third man from the end."
"What did she say?"
"She said it was very careless of me to run off with a strange man's luggage; and she hoped he was a gentleman and would take it nicely. She telephoned to the baggage man that it was here, but she couldn't send Martin with it this afternoon because he had to go to the farm for some eggs."
Recreation was over, and the girls came trooping in to gather books and pads and pencils for the approaching study hour. Everyone who passed number Seven dropped in to hear the news. Each in turn received the story of the suit-case, and each in turn gasped anew at sight of the contents.
"Doesn't it smell tobaccoey and bay rummish?" said Rosalie Patton, sniffing.
"Oh, there's a button loose!" cried Florence Hissop, the careful housewife. "Where's some black silk, Patty?"
She threaded a needle and secured the button. Then she daringly tried on the coat. Eight others followed her example and thrilled at the touch. It was calculated to fit a far larger person than any present. Even Irene McCullough found it baggy.
"He had awfully broad shoulders," said Rosalie, stroking the satin lining.
They peered daintily at the other garments.
"Oh!" squealed Mae Mertelle. "He wears blue silk suspenders."
"And something else blue," chirped Edna Hartwell, peering over her shoulder. "They're pajamas!"
"And to think of such a thing happening to Patty!" sighed Mae Mertelle.
"Why not?" bristled Patty.
"You're so young and so—er—"
"Young!—Wait till you see me with my hair done up."
"I wonder what the end will be?" asked Rosalie.
"The end," said Mae unkindly, "will be that the baggage man will deliver the suit-case, and Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, will never know—"
A maid appeared at the door.
"If you please," she murmured, her amazed eyes on Irene who was still wearing the coat, "Mrs. Trent would like to have Miss Patty Wyatt come to the drawing-room, and I am to take the suit-case down. The gentleman is waiting."
"Oh, Patty!" a gasp went around the room.
"Do your hair up—quick!"
Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head, while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and relocked the suit-case.
They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close, with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head against the railing and laughed.
"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't mind at all not having his dress-suit—never feels comfortable in it anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study bell."
Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a further detail:
"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"