"Well, I'm glad somebody's coming," said Nan; "but, no,--they aren't turning in, they're driving by!"

"Sure enough," said Bob; "mean old things,--if they couldn't come, they might at least have sent regrets."

"Here are the Stanton girls, anyway," said Patty, as two young ladies came walking towards them.

Elsie and Mildred Stanton came up to the group on the veranda with a slightly embarra.s.sed air.

"Good-evening," said Mildred; "you look as if you were going to have a lawn-party."

"Why, we are," said b.u.mble, "if anybody comes to it. I'm glad you've arrived, anyway, Come in."

"But,--we weren't invited," said Elsie, a little stiffly. "We came over on an errand."

"Indeed you were invited," said b.u.mble, warmly. "Do you suppose I'd leave you out, my dearest chums? But really, didn't you get an invitation? How funny! They were sent out on Tuesday."

"No," said Elsie, "but if it was a mistake, and you meant to invite us, it's all right. But we didn't know it, you see, so we're not in party frocks. As n.o.body else is here yet, I think we'll run home and dress up a bit, and then come back again."

"All right," said b.u.mble, knowing her guests would feel more comfortable if suitably dressed,--and they lived near by. "Skip along, girls, and hurry back."

After they had gone it was nearly seven o'clock, and n.o.body else appeared.

Great consternation was felt by all, and suddenly Patty said, "Who mailed those invitations?"

"b.u.mble did," said Bob.

"No, I didn't," said b.u.mble, "I thought you attended to it. Why, Bob, I asked you particularly to look after them."

"I didn't hear you," said Bob; "do you suppose--"

But Patty had already run into the house and returned with her hands full of the invitations to the party.

"Oh," groaned everybody, quite overcome by the calamity.

Nan was the first to recover herself.

"There's only one thing to do," she said; "we must go around and pick up as many guests as we can in a hurry. It won't do to let all this nice garden-party go to waste. Bob and I will take the runabout, and b.u.mble, you and Patty can take the trap, and we'll scour the country as far as possible."

In a few minutes the two turnouts dashed away in opposite directions, and all the near-by neighbors were bidden to come to the garden-party at once.

Much laughter and fun was caused by the sudden and peremptory invitations, which were, for the most part, gladly accepted.

When the guests finally arrived, the party was a grand success, though of much smaller proportions than was originally intended. The gayly-lighted veranda was a fine place for dancing and games, and supper, served in the tent, was very novel and attractive.

As Nan said, after the party was over, "It was just perfect, except that we couldn't invite the ones that lived at any distance."

But Uncle Ted said, "Never mind, we'll have another party, and invite them; and I'll see to mailing the invitations myself."

"Oh, ho," laughed Nan, "then we needn't even get ready for the party, for you'll never remember to post them."

At which Uncle Ted called her a saucy minx, and sent them all to bed.

CHAPTER XVI

UNBOUNDED HOSPITALITY

Although life at the Hurly-Burly was full of irritating incidents and even serious disappointments which were caused by the general forgetfulness and careless habits of the family, yet there were also many pleasures, and Patty enjoyed the summer very much and became warmly attached to her happy-go-lucky relatives.

Uncle Ted was kindness itself, and Aunt Grace was very loving and affectionate towards her motherless niece. Bob and b.u.mble were trumps, and Nan was so irresistibly funny that she made merry jokes of what would otherwise have been real troubles.

The days flew by and Patty thought she had never known a summer to pa.s.s so rapidly.

She almost lived out of doors, for Uncle Ted said he was determined to transform the little Boston bluestocking into a wild Indian; and so Patty had become browned by the sun, and her rowing and swimming had developed a fine amount of muscle. But as we are always more or less influenced by the character of those about us, Patty had also imbibed much of the spirit of the Hurly-Burly family and lived as if the pleasure of the present moment were the only thing to be considered.

"Be careful, my Patty," her father wrote to her, "you do not send me letters as regularly as you used to, and what you tell me sometimes sounds as if you thought it no harm to break a promise or to fail to keep an engagement you have made. You know I want you to _learn_ by your experiences, and imitate only the best qualities of those about you. I'm not going to have my house run on any Hurly-Burly plan, Miss Pattikins, so if you expect to secure the position of housekeeper, you must be prepared to keep things right up to the mark. We will have an exact proportion of methodical regularity, without having so much of it that it will be a bugbear. Oh, I tell you, my lady, our home is going to be a veritable Paradise on earth, and I am impatient to get it started. You have only one more visit to make, and then I will come and kidnap my own daughter and carry her off with me for a Christmas present."

"What a dear, wise father I've got," mused Patty, after reading this letter, "and how he understands everything, even without my telling him. I _will_ try not to grow heedless and rattle-pated, though it's hard to be any other way in this house."

One morning in August, Mrs. Barlow said to her husband, "Ted, you know the Carletons are coming this afternoon to stay several days, and I want you to go over to the three o'clock train to meet them. Don't forget it, will you?

And you'll have to engage a stage to bring them over, for there'll be Mr.

and Mrs. Carleton and four children, and perhaps a nurse. I don't know where we're going to put them all to sleep, but we must stow them away somehow. Patty, would you mind giving up your room for a time?"

"Not a bit, Aunt Grace. Put me wherever you like."

"That's a good girl. Well, suppose you sleep with b.u.mble. She has only a three-quarter bed, but if you don't quarrel you won't fall out."

"All right," said Patty. "I'll move my things at once."

"Very well, my dear; then we can give your room to Mr. and Mrs. Carleton, and Gertrude will have to room with Nan, and the other children must go up in the third story; no,--Harry can sleep with Bob. I declare I didn't think it would crowd us so, when I invited the whole family. But it will be only for a week, and we'll get along somehow."

"Many hands make light work," and with much flurrying and scurrying the rooms were made ready for the expected guests.

About noon the expressman came, bringing two trunks.

"'Coming events cast their shadows before,'" said Uncle Ted; "here come the wardrobes of the Carleton family."

"They must have sent them by express yesterday," said Aunt Grace; "dear me, how forehanded some people are. I wish I had been born that way. But when I go anywhere I take my trunk with me, and then I always leave it behind."

They all laughed at this paradoxical statement, and Uncle Ted said, "That's where you differ from an elephant." Then as the trunks were set out on the veranda, he exclaimed, "Good gracious, my dear, these aren't the Carleton's trunks. They're marked 'F. M. T.,'--both of them."

"'F.M.T.,'" echoed Mrs. Barlow, "why, who can that be?"

"The Carletons have borrowed other people's trunks to come with," suggested Nan.

"Not they," returned Aunt Grace; "they're the most particular people on the face of the earth. Why Kate Carleton would as soon think of borrowing a house as a trunk. No, these belong to somebody else. And I know who it is!

It's f.a.n.n.y Todd. Before I left home I asked her to come down here the first week in August, and I never thought of it again from that day to this. But I should think she would have written."