"Nonsense!"

"It's so. He doesn't care for me--really. He likes girls to be jolly and pretty and clever like you."

"Well, then--_be_ jolly and pretty and clever like me."

Harriet's eyes sought the mirror, and filled with tears.

"You're a perfect idiot!" said Patty, despairingly.

"I'm an awful fright in my green dress," said Harriet.

"Yes," Patty grudgingly conceded. "You are."

"The skirt is too short, and the waist is too long."

"And the sleeves are sort of queer," said Patty.

Faced by these dispiriting facts, she felt her enthusiasm ebbing.

"What time is he coming?" she asked.

"Four o'clock."

"That gives us two hours," Patty rallied her forces. "One can do an awful lot in two hours. If you were only nearer my size, you could wear my new pink dress--but I'm afraid--" She regarded Harriet's long legs dubiously. "I'll tell you!" she added, in a rush of generosity. "We'll take out the tucks and let down the hem."

"Oh, Patty!" Harriet was tearfully afraid of spoiling the gown. But when Patty's zeal in any cause was roused, all other considerations were swept aside. The new frock was fetched from the closet, and the ripping began.

"And you can wear Kid's new pearl necklace and pink scarf, and my silk stockings and slippers--if you can get 'em on--and I think Conny left a lace petticoat that came back from the laundry too late to pack--and--Here's Kid now!"

Miss McCoy's sympathies were enlisted and in fifteen minutes the task of transforming a remonstrating, excited, and occasionally tearful Harriet into the school beauty, was going gaily forward. Kid McCoy was supposed to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal feminine came triumphantly to the fore. She sat herself down, with Patty's manicure scissors, and for three-quarters of an hour painstakingly ripped out tucks.

Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.

"Don't strain it back so tight," she ordered. "It looks as though you'd done it with a monkey-wrench. Here! Give me the comb."

She pushed Harriet into a chair, tied a towel about her neck, and accomplished the coifing by force.

"How's that?" she demanded of Kid.

"Bully!" Kid mumbled, her mouth full of pins.

Harriet's hair was rippled loosely about her face, and tied with a pink ribbon bow. The ribbon belonged to Conny Wilder, and had heretofore figured as a belt; but individual property rights were forced to bow before the cause.

The slippers and stockings did prove too small, and Patty frenziedly ransacked the bureaus of a dozen of her absent friends in the vain hope of unearthing pink footwear. In the end, she had reluctantly to permit Harriet's appearing in her own simple cotton hose and patent leather pumps.

"But after all," Patty rea.s.sured her, "it's better for you to wear black. Your feet would be sort of conspicuous in pink." She was still in her truthful mood. "I'll tell you!" she cried, "you can wear my silver buckles." And she commenced cruelly wrenching them from their pink chiffon setting.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Patty meanwhile addressed her attention to Harriet's hair.]

"Patty! _Don't!_" Harriet gasped at the sacrilege.

"They're just the last touch that your costume needs." Patty ruthlessly carried on the work of destruction. "When your father sees those buckles, he'll think you're _beautiful_!"

For a feverish hour they worked. They clothed her triumphantly in all the grandeur that they could command. The entire corridor had contributed its quota, even to the lace-edged handkerchief with a hand-embroidered "H" that had been left behind in Hester Pringle's top drawer. The two turned her critically before the mirror, the pride of creation in their eyes. As Kid had truly presaged, she was the ravingest beauty in all the school.

Irish Maggie appeared in the door.

"Mr. Gladden is in the drawin'-room, Miss Harriet." She stopped and stared. "Sure, ye're that beautiful I didn't know ye!"

Harriet went with a laugh--and a fighting light in her eyes.

Patty and Kid restlessly set themselves to reducing the chaos that this sudden b.u.t.terfly flight had caused in Paradise Alley--it is always dreary work setting things to rights, after the climax of an event has been reached.

It was an hour later that the sudden quick patter of feet sounded in the hall, and Harriet ran in--danced in--her eyes were shining; she was a picture of youth and happiness and bubbling spirits.

"Well?" cried Patty and Kid in a breath.

She stretched out her wrist and displayed a gold-linked bracelet set with a tiny watch.

"Look!" she cried, "he brought me that for Christmas. And I'm going to have all the dresses I want, and Miss Sallie isn't going to pick them out ever again. And he's going to stay for dinner to-night, and eat at the little table with us. And he's going to take us into town next Sat.u.r.day for luncheon and the matinee, and the Dowager says we may go!"

"Gee!" observed the Kid. "It paid for all the trouble we took."

"And what do you think?" Harriet caught her breath in a little gasp.

"_He likes me!_"

"I knew those silver buckles would fetch him!" said Patty.

VII

"Uncle Bobby"

While St. Ursula's was still dallying with a belated morning-after-Christmas breakfast, the mail arrived, bringing among other matters, a letter for Patty from her mother. It contained cheering news as to Tommy's scarlet fever, and the expressed hope that school was not too lonely during the holidays; it ended with the statement that Mr.

Robert Pendleton was going to be in the city on business, and had promised to run out to St. Ursula's to see her little daughter.

The last item Patty read aloud to Harriet Gladden and Kid McCoy (christened Margarite). The three "left-behinds" were occupying a table together in a secluded corner of the dining-room.

"Who's Mr. Robert Pendleton?" inquired Kid, looking up from her own letter.

"He used to be my father's private secretary when I was a little girl. I always called him 'Uncle Bobby.'"

Kid returned to her mail. She took no interest in the race of uncles, either real or fict.i.tious. But Patty, being in a reminiscent mood, continued the conversation with Harriet, who had no mail to deflect her.

"Then he went away and commenced practising for himself. It's been ages since I've seen him; but he was really awfully nice. He used to spend his entire time--when he wasn't writing Father's speeches--in getting me out of sc.r.a.pes. I had a goat named Billy-Boy--"