“Perhaps Mr. Hepworth will help us with the scenery,” said Patty. “He did once when we had a kind of a little play in Vernondale, where I used to live. He’s an artist, you know, and he can sketch in scenes in a minute, and make them look as if they had taken days to do. He’s awfully clever at it, and so kind that I think he’ll consent to do it.”
“That will be regularly splendid!” said Elise, “and you’d better ask him at once, Patty, so as to give him as much time as possible.”
“No, I won’t ask him quite yet,” said Patty, laughing. “I think I’ll wait until the play is written, first. I don’t believe it’s customary to engage a scene painter before a play is scarcely begun.”
“Well, then, let’s get at it,” said Hilda, who was practical.
So to work they went, and really wrote the actual lines of a good part of the first act.
“Now, that’s something like,” said Patty, as, when the clock struck noon, she looked with satisfaction on a dozen or more pages, neatly written in Hilda’s pretty penmanship. “If we keep on like that, we can get this thing done in five or six Saturday mornings, and then I’ll ask Mr. Hepworth about the scenery. Then we can begin to rehearse, and we’ll just about be ready for commencement day.”
While Patty was with the girls, her interest and enthusiasm were so great that the play seemed the only thing to be thought of. But when she reached home and saw the pile of untouched schoolbooks and remembered that she would be away all the afternoon, she felt many misgivings.
However, she had promised to go, so off she went to the matinée, and had a thoroughly pleasant and enjoyable time. Mrs. Morse invited her to go home to dinner with Clementine, saying that she would send her home safely afterward.
Clementine added her plea that this invitation might be accepted, but Patty said no. Although she wanted very much to go with the Morses, yet she knew that duty called her home. So she regretfully declined, giving her reason, and went home, determined to work hard at her themes and her lessons. But after her merry day with her young friends, she was not only tired physically, but found great difficulty in concentrating her thoughts on more prosaic subjects. But Patty had pretty strong will-power, and she forced herself to go at her work in earnest. Grandma Elliott watched her, as she pored over one book after another, or hastily scribbled her themes. A little pucker formed itself between her brows, and a crimson flush appeared on her cheeks.
At ten o’clock Mrs. Elliott asserted her authority.
“Patty,” she said, “you must go to bed. You’ll make yourself ill if you work so hard.”
Patty pushed back her books. “I believe I’ll have to, grandma,” she said. “My head’s all in a whirl, and the letters are dancing jigs before my eyes.”
Exhausted, Patty crept into bed, and though she slept late next morning, Grandma Elliott imagined that her face still bore traces of worry and hard work.
“Nonsense, grandma,” said Patty, laughing. “I guess my robust constitution can stand a little extra exertion once in a while. I’ll try to take it easier this week, and I believe I’ll give up my gymnasium work. That will give me more time, and won’t interfere with getting my diploma.”
But though Patty gained a few extra half hours by omitting the gymnasium class, she missed the daily exercise more than she would admit even to herself.
“You’re getting round-shouldered, Patty,” said Lorraine, one day; “and I believe it’s because you work so hard over those old lessons.”
“It isn’t the work, Lorraine,” said Patty, laughing. “It’s the play. I had to rewrite the whole of that garden scene last night, after I finished my lessons.”
“Why, what was the matter with it?”
“It was all wrong. We didn’t think of it at the time, but in one place Elise has to go off at one side of the stage, and, immediately after, come on at the other side, in different dress. Now, of course, that won’t do; it has to be arranged so that she will have time to change her costume. So I had to write in some lines for the others. And there were several little things like that to be looked after, so I had to do over pretty nearly the whole scene.”
“It’s a shame, Patty! We make you do all the hardest of the work.”
“Not a bit of it. I love to do it; and when we all work together and chatter so, of course we don’t think it out carefully enough, and so these mistakes creep in. Don’t say anything about it, Lorraine. The girls will never notice my little changes and corrections, and I don’t want to pose as a poor, pale martyr, growing round-shouldered in her efforts to help her fellow-sisters!”
“You’re a brick, Patty, but I will tell them, all the same. If we’re all going to write this play together, we’re going to do it all, and not have you doing our work for us.”
Lorraine’s loyalty to Patty was unbounded, and as she had, moreover, a trace of stubbornness in her character, Patty knew that no amount of argument would move her from her determination to straighten matters out. So she gave up the discussion, only saying, “You won’t do a bit of good, Lorraine; and anyway, somebody ought to revise the thing, and if I don’t do it, who will?”
Patty said this without a trace of egotism, for she and Lorraine both knew that none of the other girls had enough constructive talent or dramatic capability to put the finishing touches on the lines of the play. That was Patty’s special forte, just as Clementine Morse was the one best fitted to plan the scenic effects, and Elise Farrington to design the costumes.
“That’s so,” said Lorraine, with a little sigh, “and I suppose, Patty, you’ll just go on in your mad career, and do exactly as you please.”
“I suppose I shall,” said Patty, laughing at Lorraine’s hopeless expression; “but I do want this play to be a success, and I mean to help all I can, in any way I can.”
“It’s bound to be a success,” said Lorraine with enthusiasm, “because the girls are all so interested, and I think we’re all working hard in our different ways. Of course I don’t have anything to do except to look after the incidental music, but I do hope that will turn out all right.”
“Of course it will, Lorraine,” said Patty. “Your selections are perfect so far; and you do look after more than that. Those two little songs you wrote are gems, and they fit into the second act just exactly right. I think you’re a real poet, Lorraine, and after the play is over I wish you’d get those little songs published. I’m sure they’re worth it.”
“I wish I could,” said Lorraine, “and I do mean to try.”
CHAPTER V
A NEW HOME
Great was the rejoicing and celebration when Mr. and Mrs. Fairfield returned from their wedding trip. They came to the apartment to remain there for a few days before moving to the new house.
Patty welcomed Nan with open arms, and it was harder than ever for her to attend to her studies when there was so much going on in the family.
The furnishing of the new house was almost completed, but there remained several finishing touches to be attended to. As Patty’s time was so much occupied, she was not allowed to have any hand in this work. Mrs. Allen had come on from Philadelphia to help her daughter, and Grandma Elliott assisted in dismantling the apartment, preparatory to giving it up.
So when Patty started to school one Friday morning, and was told that when the session was over she was to go to her new home to stay, she felt as if she were going to an unexplored country.
It was with joyful anticipations that she put on her hat and coat, after school, and started home.
Her father had given her a latch-key, and as she stepped in at the front door, Nan, in a pretty house dress, stood ready to welcome her.
“My dear child,” she said, “welcome home. How do you like the prospect?”
“It’s