"Well, then, Mancy, I'll tell you what: you make us a nice pot of chocolate, and fix us some thin bread and butter, and cut up some of the fruit cake to put with those little fancy cakes; won't that do?"
"Yas'm, I spec' so; but it's a mighty slim layout, 'specially for dem hearty young chaps. But you go 'long, honey, I'll fix it somehow."
And, sure enough, she did fix it somehow; for when, a little later, Patty invited her young friends out into the dining-room, the thin bread and butter had doubled itself up into most attractive and satisfying chicken-sandwiches, and there was also a plate of delicious toasted crackers and cheese.
Mr. Fairfield added a box of candy which he had brought home from New York, and the unpretentious little feast proved most enjoyable to all concerned.
"I should think you would feel all the time as if you were acting a play yourself, Patty," said Elsie Morris, taking her seat at the prettily laid table.
"I do," said Patty as she took her own place at the head; "it's awfully hard to realise that I am monarch of all I survey."
"But you have someone to dispute your right," said her father.
"And I'm glad of it," said Patty. "Whatever should I do living here all alone just with my rights?"
"By her rights, she means her cousins," put in Frank.
"Yes," said Patty; "they're about as right as anything I know."
And so the evening passed in merry chaff and good-natured fun; and at its close the young guests all went away except Marian, who was going to spend the night at Boxley Hall.
After her cousin had gone upstairs to her pretty blue bedroom, Patty lingered a moment in the library for a word with her father.
"How am I getting along, papa?" she said. "How about the proportion to-night?"
"The market seems pretty strong on proportion to-day, Patty, dear; your housekeeping is beginning wonderfully well. That little dinner you gave us was first-class in every respect, and the simple refreshments you had this evening were very pretty and graceful."
"Don't praise me too much, papa, or I'll grow conceited."
"You'll get praise from me, my lady, just when you deserve it, and at no other time. Now, skip along to bed, or you'll have too great a proportion of late hours."
With a good-night kiss Patty went singing upstairs, feeling sure that she was the happiest and most fortunate little girl in the world.
So impressed was she with her realisation of this fact that she announced it to Marian.
Marian looked at her curiously.
"You are fortunate in some ways," she said; "but the real reason you're always so happy, I think, is because of your happy disposition. A great many girls with no mother or brother or sister, who had all the care and responsibility of a big house, and whose father was away all day, would think they had a pretty miserable life. But that never seems to occur to you."
"No," said Patty contentedly; "and I don't believe it ever will."
The next morning Patty devoted all her energy to getting ready for the Tea Club. She declined Marian's offers of help, saying:
"No, I really don't need any help. If I can keep Pansy out of the conservatory, we three can accomplish all there is to be done; so you go and sit by the library fire, and toast your toes and read, or play with the cat, or do whatever you please. Remember, whenever you come here, you're one of the family."
So Marian went off by herself and played on the piano, and read, and had various kinds of good times, scrupulously keeping out of the way of her busy and preoccupied cousin.
"Now, Pansy," said Patty, as she captured that culprit in the conservatory, and led her off to the kitchen, "I want you to try especially hard to-day to do just as I want you to, and to help me in every possible way."
"Can I fix the flowers, Miss Patty?" said Pansy Potts, her eyes sparkling with delight.
"Where are there any flowers to fix? You've fussed over those in the conservatory until you've nearly worn them all out."
"Oh, Miss Patty, they're thriving beautifully. But I mean that big box of flowers that just came up from the flower man's. He said Mr. Fairfield sent it."
"Oh!" exclaimed Patty, "did papa really send me up flowers for the Tea Club? How perfectly lovely! I meant to order some myself, but I know his will be nicer."
By this time Patty was diving into the big box and scattering tissue paper all about.
"They're beautiful," she exclaimed, "and what lots of them! Yes, Pansy, you may arrange them; you really do it better than I do. Keep all the pink ones for the dining-room, and put the others wherever you like. Now, Mancy," she went on, "we'll discuss what to eat."
"Yas'm, and I s'pose it'll be some ob dem highfalutin fandangoes ob yo's, what nobody can't eat."
"You guessed right the very first time," said Patty, smiling back at the good-natured old cook, whose bark was so much worse than her bite. "You see, Mancy, this is my own party, and so I can have just what I like at it. Not even papa can object to the things that I have for my own Tea Club."
"Dat's so, chile, but co'se yo' knows you'se mighty likely to spoil dem good t'ings befo' yo' get 'em made."
"Oh, I don't think I will this time," said Patty, with that assured little toss of her head which always meant perfect confidence in her own ability.
Mancy said nothing, but grunted somewhat doubtfully as Patty went on to describe the beautiful things she intended to have.
"I want rissoles," she said, as she turned over the cookery-book, and looked in the index for R. "They're awfully good."
"What's dem, missy? I never heard tell of 'em."
"I forget what they are," said Patty, "but we had them at Delmonico's one day, when papa and I were there at lunch, and I remember thinking then they'd be nice for the Tea Club. They were either some little kind of a cake, or else a sort of croquette. Either would be nice, you know. Why, they're not here. What a silly book not to have them in! Oh, well, never mind, here's 'Richmond Maids of Honour.' We used to have those at Aunt Isabel's, and they're the loveliest things. I'll make those, Mancy; and while I'm doing it you make me some wine jelly and some Bavarian cream, and then I can put them together with marrons and candied cherries and whipped cream and things, and make a Royal Diplomatic Pudding."
"'Pears like yo's makin' things fine enough for a weddin'," growled Mancy.
"Well, now, look here, last night you thought the things I had for my evening company were too plain, and now you're grumbling because they're too fancy."
"Laws, honey, can't you see no diffunce 'tween plain bread and butter and a lot of pernicketty gimcracks that never turns out right nohow?"
A haunting doubt regarding the proportion between her elaborate plans and the simple Tea Club hovered round Patty's mind, but she resolutely put it aside, thinking to herself, "I don't care, it's my first function, and I'm going to have it just as nice as I can."
Patty always felt particularly grand and grown up when she used the word function, and now that she had mentally applied it to the Tea Club meeting, that simple affair seemed to take on a gigantic amplitude and fairly seemed to cry out for elaborate devices of all sorts.
"Never you mind, Mancy," she said, "you just go ahead and do as I tell you. Get the jelly and cream ready, and I'll do the rest."
"But ain't yo' gwine to have no solidstantial kind o' food?"
"Oh, yes, of course. I want a croustade of chicken and club-sandwiches."
"Humph," said Mancy, her patience giving out at this, "ef yo' does, yo'll hab to talk English."
Patty