"Oh, you do! Well, then, buy all the contraptions that are necessary, but don't omit the plain gridirons and frying-pans."

Then Aunt Alice and Patty put their heads together in a most sensible fashion, and ordered a kitchen outfit that would have delighted the heart of any well-organised housekeeper. Not only kitchen utensils, but laundry fittings, and household furnishings generally; including patent labour-saving devices, and newly invented contrivances which were supposed to be of great aid to any housewife.

"If I can only live up to it all," sighed Patty, as she looked at the enormous collection of iron, tin, wood, and granite.

"Or down to it," said Marian.

CHAPTER VI

SERVANTS

"I did think," said Patty, in a disgusted tone, "that we could get settled in the house in time to eat our Christmas dinner there, but it doesn't look a bit like it. I was over there this afternoon, and such a hopeless-looking mess of papering and painting and plumbing I never saw in my life. I don't believe it will _ever_ be done!"

"I don't either," said Marian; "those men work as slow as mud-turtles."

The conversation was taking place at the Elliotts' dinner-table, and Uncle Charley looked up from his carving to say:

"It's an ill wind that blows n.o.body good, and the slower the mud-turtles are, the longer we shall have our guests with us. For my part, I shall be very sorry to see pretty Patty go out of this house."

Patty smiled gaily at her uncle, for they were great friends, and said:

"Then I shall expect you to visit me very often in my new home,--that is, if I ever get there."

"I can't see our way clear to a Christmas dinner in Boxley Hall," said Mr. Fairfield; "but I think I can promise you, chick, that you can invite your revered uncle and his family to dine with you there on New Year's day."

There were general exclamations of delight at this from all except Patty, who looked a little bewildered.

"What's the matter, Patsie?" said her uncle. "Don't you want to entertain your admiring relatives?"

"Yes," said Patty, "of course I do; but it scares me to death to think of it! How can I have a dinner party, when I don't know anything about anything?"

"Aunt Alice will tell you something about something," said her father; "and I'll tell you the rest about the rest."

"Oh, I know it will be all right," said Patty, quickly regaining confidence, as she looked at her father. "If papa says the house will be ready, I know it will be, and if he says we'll have a dinner party on New Year's day, I know we will; and so I now invite you all, and I expect you all to accept; and I hope Aunt Alice will come early."

"I shall come the night before," said Marian, "so as to be sure to be there in time."

"I'm not sure that any of us will be there the night before," said Mr.

Fairfield, laughing. "I've guaranteed the house for the dinner, but I didn't say we would be living there at the time."

"That's a good idea," said Aunt Alice; "let Patty entertain her first company there, and then come back here for the reaction."

"Well, we'll see," said Patty; "but I'd like to go there the first day of January, and stay there."

By some unknown methods, Mr. Fairfield managed to stir up the mud-turtle workmen to greater activity, and the work went rapidly on. The wall-papers seemed to get themselves into place, and the floors took on a beautiful polish; bustling men came out from the city and put up window-shades, and curtains, and draperies; and, under Mr. Fairfield's supervision, laid rugs and hung pictures.

The ladies of the Elliott household organised themselves into a most active sewing-society.

Grandma, Aunt Alice, Marian, and Patty hemmed tablecloths and napkins with great diligence, and even little Edith was allowed to help with the kitchen towels.

Everybody was so kind that Patty began to feel weighed down with grat.i.tude. The girls of the Tea Club made the tea-cloth that they had proposed, and they also brought offerings of pin-cushions, and doilies and centre-pieces, until Patty's room began to look like a booth at a fancy bazaar.

One Sat.u.r.day morning, as the sewing-circle was hard at work, little Gilbert came in carrying a paper bag, which evidently contained something valuable.

"It's for you, Patty," he said. "I brought it for you, to help keep house; and its name is Pudgy."

Depositing the bag in his cousin's lap, little Gilbert knelt beside her.

"You needn't open it," he cried; "it will open itself!"

And, sure enough, the mouth of the bag untwisted, and a little grey head came poking out.

"A kitten!" exclaimed Patty; "a Maltese kitten. Why, that's just the very thing I wanted! Where did you get it, Gilbert, dear?"

"From the milkman," said Gilbert proudly. "We always get kitties from him, and I telled him to pick out a nice pretty one for you. Do you like it?"

"I love it," said Patty, cuddling the little bunch of grey fur; "and Pudgy is just the right name for it. It's the fattest little cat I ever saw."

"Yes," said Gilbert gravely; "don't let it get thin, will you?"

"No, indeed," said Patty; "I'll feed it on strawberries and cream all the year round!"

That same afternoon Patty and Aunt Alice started out on a cook-hunting expedition. A Cook's Tour, Frank called it; and the tourists took it very seriously.

"Much of the success of your home, Patty," said Aunt Alice, as they were going to the Intelligence Office, "depends upon your cook; for she will be not only a cook, but, in part, housekeeper, and overseer of the whole place. And while you must, of course, exercise your authority and demand respect, yet at the same time you will find it necessary to defer to her judgment and experience on many occasions."

"I know it, Aunt Alice," said Patty very earnestly; "and I do want to do what is right. I want to be the head of papa's home, and yet there are a great many things that my servants will know more about than I do. I shall have to be very careful about my proportion; but if you and papa will help me, I think I'll come out all right."

"I think you will," said Aunt Alice, but she smiled a little at the a.s.sured toss of her niece's head.

The Intelligence Office proved to be as much misnamed as those inst.i.tutions usually are, and varying degrees of unintelligence were shown in the candidates offered for the position of cook at Boxley Hall; though, if the applicants seemed unsatisfactory to Patty, in many cases she was no less so to them.

One tall, rawboned Irishwoman seemed hopefully good-tempered and capable, but when she discovered that Patty was to be her mistress, instead of Mrs. Elliott, as she had supposed, she exclaimed:

"Go 'way wid yez! Wud I be workin' for the likes of a child like that?

No, mum, I ain't no nurse; I'm a cook, and I want a mistress as has got past playing wid dolls."

"I hope you'll find one," said Patty politely; "and I'm afraid we wouldn't suit each other."

Another Irish girl, with a merry rosy face and frizzled blonde hair, was very anxious to go to work for Patty.

"Sure, it will be fun!" she said. "I'd like to work for such a pretty little lady; and, sure, we'd have the good times. Could I have all me afternoons out, miss?"

"Not if you lived with me," said Patty, laughing. "My house is large, and there's a great deal of work to be done by somebody. I think my cook couldn't do her share if she went out every afternoon."