They read both the plays, and so interested were they in the reading and discussing them that before they knew it the afternoon slipped away, and Pansy Potts came in to announce that the tea was ready.

"Goodness," cried Patty, "I forgot all about it! Come on, girls, we can discuss the play just as well at the table."

"Yes, and better," said Elsie.

Such a shout of exclamation as went up from the Tea Club girls when they saw Patty's table.

"Why didn't you tell us there was to be a wedding?" said Ethel, "and we would have brought presents."

"Is it an African jungle?" said Laura, "or is it only Smith's flower store moved up here bodily?"

"I think it looks like a page out of the _Misses' Home Guide_" said Polly Stevens. "You ought to have this table photographed, it would take the first prize! But where are we going to eat? Surely you don't expect us to sit down at this Louis XlV. gimcrack?"

"Nonsense," said Patty. "I fixed it up pretty because I thought it would please you. If you don't like it--"

"Oh, we like it," cried Christine Converse, "we love it! We want to take it home with us and put it under a gla.s.s case."

"Stop your nonsense, girls," said Marian, who had noticed Patty's rising colour, "and take your places. It's a beautiful party, and a lot too good for such ungrateful wretches! If you can read writing, you'll find your names on your cards."

"I can read writing," said Lillian Desmond, "but not such elegant gold curlycues as these. Won't you please spell it out for me, Miss Fairfield?"

"Oh, take any place you choose," said Patty, laughing good-naturedly. She didn't really mind their chaff, but she began to think herself that she had been a little absurd.

Then Pansy brought in the various dishes that Patty had worked so hard over, and perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that they were almost uneatable, or, at least, very far from the dainty perfection they ought to have shown.

On discovering this, the girls, who were really well-bred, in spite of their love of chaffing, quite changed their manner and, ignoring the situation, began merrily to discuss the play.

But as the various viands proved a continuous succession of failures, Patty became really embarra.s.sed and began to make apologies.

"Don't say a word," said Marian; "it was all my fault. I insisted on spending the day here, and I nearly bothered the life out of my poor cousin. Indeed, I carried her off bodily from the kitchen just at a dozen critical moments."

"No, it wasn't that," said honest Patty, "but I did just what I'm always doing, trying to make a lot of things I don't know anything about"

"Well," said Elsie, "if you couldn't try them on us girls, I don't know who you could try them on; I'm more than willing to be a martyr to the cause, and I say three cheers for our n.o.ble President!"

The cheers were given with a will, and Patty's equanimity being restored, she was her own merry self again, and they all laughed and chatted as only a lot of happy girls can.

And that's how it happened that when Mr. Fairfield reached home at about six o'clock he heard what sounded like a general pandemonium in the dining-room. As he appeared in the doorway he was greeted by a merry ovation, for most of the Tea Club members knew and liked Patty's pleasant and genial father.

Then the girls, realising how late it was, began to take their leave.

Marian went with them, and Patty, after the last one had gone, returned to the dining-room, to find her father regarding the table with a look of comical dismay.

It was indeed a magnificent ruin. Besides the dishes of almost untasted delicacies, the flowers had been pushed into disarray, one small vase had been upset and broken; owing to improper adjustment the candles had dripped pink wax on the table-cloth; and the ice cream, which Pansy had mistakenly served on open-work plates, had melted and run through.

Patty didn't say a word, indeed there was nothing to say. She went and stood very close to her father, as if expecting him to put his arm around her, which he promptly did.

"You see, Pitty-Pat," he said, "it wouldn't have made any difference at all--not _any_ difference at all, _except_ that I have brought my friend Mr. Hepworth, the artist, home to dinner; and you see, misled by the experiences of last night, I promised him we would find a tidy little dinner awaiting us."

"Oh, papa," cried Patty, "I _am_ sorry. If I had only known! I wouldn't have failed you for worlds."

"I know it, my girl, and though this Lucullus feast does seem out of proportion to a young misses' Tea Club, yet we won't say a word about that now. We'll just get snow shovels and set to work and clear this table and let Mancy get a simple little dinner as quickly as she can."

"But, papa," and here Patty met what was, perhaps, so far, the hardest experience of her life, "I forgot to order anything for dinner at all!"

"Why, Patty Fairfield! consider yourself discharged, and I shall suit myself at once with another housekeeperess!"

"You are the dearest, best, sweetest father!" she exclaimed. "How can you be so good-natured and gay when my heart is breaking?"

"Oh, don't let your heart break over such prosaic things as dinners!

We'll crawl out of this hole somehow."

"But what can we do, papa? It's after six o'clock, and all the markets are shut up, and there isn't a thing in the house except those horrible things I tried to make."

"Patty," said her father, struck by a sudden thought, "to-morrow is Sunday. Do you mean to say you haven't ordered for over Sunday?"

"No, I haven't," said Patty, aghast at the enormity of her offence.

Mr. Fairfield laughed at the horror-stricken look on his daughter's face.

"I always thought you couldn't keep house," he said, with an air of resignation. "On Monday I shall advertise for a housekeeper."

"Oh, please don't," pleaded Patty. "Give me one more trial. I've had a good lesson, and truly I'll profit by it. Let me try again."

"But you can't try again before Monday, and by that time we'll all be dead of starvation."

"Of course we will," said Patty despairingly. "I wish we were Robinson Crusoes and could eat bark or something."

"Well, baby, I think you _have_ had a pretty good lesson, and we can't put old heads on young shoulders all at once, so I'll help you out this time, and then, the next time you go back on me in this heartless fashion, I'll discharge you."

"Papa, you're a _dear_! But what can we do?"

"Well, the first thing for you to do is to go and brush your hair and make yourself tidy, then come down and meet Mr. Hepworth; and then we'll all go over to the hotel for dinner. Meanwhile I'll call in the Street Cleaning Department to attend to this dining-room."

CHAPTER XIII

A NEW FRIEND

"Patty," said her father, a week or two later, "Mr. Hepworth has invited us to a tea in his studio in New York tomorrow afternoon, and if you care to go, I'll take you."

"Yes, I'd love to go; I've always wanted to go to a studio tea. It's very kind of Mr. Hepworth to ask us after the way he was treated here."

Mr. Fairfield laughed, but Patty looked decidedly sober. She still felt very much crestfallen to think that the first guest her father brought home should be obliged to dine at the hotel, or at a neighbour's. Aunt Alice had invited them to dinner on that memorable Sunday, and though she said she had expected to ask the Fairfields anyway, still Patty felt that, as a housekeeper, she had been weighed in the balances and found sadly wanting.

According to arrangement, she met her father in New York the day of the tea, and together they went to Mr. Hepworth's studio.