Just Patty

by Jean Webster

  "The most awful thing has happened!"

  "What?" Patty demanded.

  "The S. A. S. All is discovered!"

  "Not really!" cried Patty, aghast.

  "Yes! Come in here."

  Rosalie drew her into the empty cloak-room and shut the door.

  "You mean--they've found out the name--and everything?" Patty demanded breathlessly.

  "Not quite everything, but they would have if it hadn't been for Lordy. She saved us for once."

  "Lordy saved us!" There was incredulity mixed with Patty's horror. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, yesterday, Mae went shopping in the village with Miss Wadsworth--and you know what kind of a chaperone Waddy makes." Patty nodded impatiently. "Anybody could fool her. And Mae, right under her very nose, commenced a flirtation with the Soda-Water Clerk."

  "Oh!" said Patty hotly. "How perfectly horrid!"

  "She didn't care anything about it, really. She was just trying to put the principles of the S. A. S. into practice."

  "She might at least have picked out somebody decent!"

  "Well, he is quite decent. He's engaged to the girl at the underwear counter in Bloodgood's, and he didn't want to be flirted with a bit. But you know how persistent Mae Mertelle is, when she makes up her mind. The poor young man just couldn't help himself. He was so embarrassed that he didn't know what he was doing. He gave Hester Pringle half chocolate and half sarsaparilla, and she says it was a perfectly awful combination. It made her feel so sick that she couldn't eat any dinner. And all this time Waddy just sat and smiled into space and saw nothing; but all the girls saw,--and so did the drugstore man!"

  "Oh!" said Patty breathlessly.

  "And this morning Miss Sallie went to the drugstore to get some potash for Harriet Gladden's sore throat, and he told her all about it."

  "What did Miss Sallie do?" Patty asked faintly.

  "Do! She came back with blood in her eye, and told the Dowager, and they called up Mae Mertelle and then--" Rosalie closed her eyes and shuddered.

  "Well," said Patty impatiently. "What happened?"

  "The Dowager was perfectly outraged! She told Mae that she had disgraced the school and that she would be expelled. And she wrote a telegram to Mae's father to come and take her away. And she asked Mae if she had anything to say for herself, and Mae said it wasn't her fault. That you and I were to blame just as much as she, because we were all in a society together, but that she couldn't tell about it because she'd sworn."

  "Beast!" said Patty.

  "So then they sent for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A. S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything it knew, and I never did pretend to be a sphinx."

  "All right," said Patty, bracing herself for the shock. "What did they say when they heard?"

  "They didn't hear! I was just on the point of breaking my vows and telling all, when who should pop in but Lordy. And she was perfectly splendid! She said she knew all about the S. A. S. That it was a very admirable institution, and that she was a member herself! She said it was a branch of the Sunshine Society, and that Mae had never meant to flirt with the young man. She had just meant to smile and be kind to everybody she came in contact with, and he had taken advantage. And Mae said, yes, that was the way of it, and she shoved off all the blame on that poor innocent soda-water clerk."

  "Just like her," Patty nodded.

  "And now Mae is perfectly furious with him for getting her into trouble. She says that he's a horrid little thing with a turn-up nose, and that she'll never drink another glass of soda-water as long as she stays in St. Ursula's."

  "And they're going to let her stay?"

  "Yes. The Dowager tore up the telegram. But she gave Mae ten demerits, and made her go without dessert for a week, and learn Thanatopsis by heart. And she can't ever go shopping in the village any more. When she needs new hair ribbons or stockings or anything, she must send for them by some of the other girls."

  "And what's the Dowager going to do to us?"

  "Nothing at all--and if it hadn't been for Lordy, we'd all three have been expelled."

  "And I've always detested Lordy," said Patty contritely. "Isn't it dreadful? You simply can't keep enemies. Just as you think people are perfectly horrid, and begin to enjoy hating them, they all of a sudden turn out nice."

  "I hate Mae Mertelle," said Rosalie.

  "So do I!" Patty agreed cordially.

  "I'm going to leave her old society."

  "I'm already out." Patty glanced toward the mirror. "And I'm not freckled and I'm not squint-eyed."

  "What do you mean?" Rosalie stared; she had for the moment forgotten the dread nature of the oath.

  "I've told Uncle Bobby."

  "Oh, Patty! How could you?"

  "I--I--that is--" Patty appeared momentarily confused. "You see," she confessed, "I thought myself that it would be sort of interesting to practice on somebody, so I--I--just tried--"

  "And did he--"

  Patty shook her head.

  "It was awfully uphill work. He never helped a bit. And then he noticed my bracelet and wanted to know what S. A. S. meant. And before I knew it, I was telling him!"

  "What did he say?"

  "First he roared; then he got awfully sober, and he gave me a long lecture--it was really very impressive--sort of like Sunday School, you know. And he took the bracelet away from me and put it in his pocket. He told me he'd send me something nicer."

  "What do you s'pose it will be?" asked Rosalie interestedly.

  "I hope it won't be a doll!"

  Two days later the morning mail brought a small parcel for Miss Patty Wyatt. She opened it under her desk in geometry class. Buried in jeweler's cotton she found a gold linked bracelet that fastened with a padlock in the shape of a heart. On the back of one of Uncle Bobby's cards was written:--

  "This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key."

  Patty deflected Rosalie as she was turning into French and privately exhibited the bracelet with pride.

  Rosalie regarded it with sentimental interest.

  "What has he done with the key?" she wondered.

  "I s'pose," said Patty, "he's got it in his pocket."

  "How awfully romantic!"

  "It sounds sort of romantic," Patty agreed with the suggestion of a sigh. "But it isn't really. He's thirty years old, and beginning to be bald."

  * * *

  IX

  The Reformation of Kid McCoy

  Miss McCoy, of Texas, had been subjected to the softening influences of St. Ursula's School for three years, without any perceptible result. She was the toughest little tomboy that was ever received--and retained--in a respectable-boarding-school.

  "Margarite" was the name her parents had chosen, when the itinerant bishop made his quarterly visit to the mining-camp where she happened to be born. It was the name still used by her teachers, and on the written reports that were mailed monthly to her Texas guardian. But "Kid" was the more appropriate name that the cowboys on the ranch had given her; and "Kid" she remained at St. Ursula's, in spite of the distressed expostulation of the ladies in charge.

  Kid's childhood had been picturesque to a degree rarely found outside the pages of a Nick Carter novel. She had possessed an adventurous father, who drifted from mining-camp to mining-camp, making fortunes and losing them. She had cut her teeth on a poker chip, and drunk her milk from a champagne glass. Her father had died--quite opportunely--while his latest fortune was at its height, and had left his little daughter to the guardianship of an English friend who lived in Texas. The next three turbulent years of her life were spent on a cattle range with "Guardie," and the ensuing three in the quiet confines of St. Ursula's.

  The guardian had brought her himself, and after an earnest conference with the Dowager, had left her behind to be molded by the culture of the East. But so far, the culture of the East had left her untouched.
If any molding had taken place, it was Kid herself who shaped the clay.

  Her spicy reminiscences of mining-camps and cattle ranches made all permissible works of fiction tame. She had given the French dancing master, who was teaching them a polite version of a Spanish waltz, an exposition of the real thing, as practised by the Mexican cow-punchers on her guardian's ranch. It was a performance that left him sympathetically breathless. The English riding master, who came weekly in the spring and autumn, to teach the girls a correct trot, had received a lesson in bareback riding that caused the dazed query:

  "Was the young lady trained in a circus?"

  The Kid was noisy and slangy and romping and boisterous; her way was beset with reproofs and demerits and minor punishments, but she had never yet been guilty of any actual felony. For three years, however, St. Ursula's had been holding its breath waiting for the crash. Miss McCoy, from her very nature, was bound to give them a sensation sometime.

  When at last it came, it was of an entirely unexpected order.

  Rosalie Patton was the Kid's latest room-mate--- she wore her room-mates out as fast as she did her shoes. Rosalie was a lovable little soul, the essence of everything feminine. The Dowager had put the two together, in the hope that Rosalie's gentle example might calm the Kid's tempestuous mood. But so far, the Kid was in her usual spirits, while Rosalie was looking worn.

  Then the change came.

  Rosalie burst into Patty Wyatt's room one evening in a state of wide-eyed amazement.

  "What do you think?" she cried. "Kid McCoy says she's going to be a lady!"

  "A what?" Patty emerged from the bath towel with which she had been polishing her face.

  "A lady. She's sitting down now, running pale blue baby ribbon through the embroidery in her night gown."

  "What's happened to her?" was Patty's question.

  "She's been reading a book that Mae Mertelle brought back."

  Rosalie settled herself, Turk fashion, on the window seat, disposed the folds of her pink kimono in graceful billows about her knees, and allowed two braids of curly yellow hair to hang picturesquely over her shoulders. She was ready for bed and could extend her call until the last stroke of the "Lights-out" bell.

  "What kind of a book?" asked Patty with a slightly perfunctory note in her voice.

  Rosalie was apt to burst into one's room with a startling announcement and then, having engaged everybody's attention, settle down to an endless, meandering recital sprinkled with anti-climaxes.

  "It's about a sweet young English girl whose father owned a tea estate in Asia--or maybe Africa. But anyway, where it was hot, and there were a lot of natives and snakes and centipedes. Her mother died and she was sent back home to boarding-school when she was a tiny little thing. Her father was quite bad. He drank and swore and smoked. The only thing that kept him from being awfully bad, was the thought of his sweet little golden-haired daughter in England."

  "Well, what of it?" Patty inquired, politely suppressing a yawn. Rosalie had a way of trailing off into golden-haired sentiment if one didn't haul her up sharp.

  "Just wait! I'm coming to it. When she was seventeen she went back to India to take care of her father, but almost right off he got a sunstroke and died. And in his death-bed he entrusted Rosamond--that was her name--to his best friend to finish bringing up. So when Rosamond went to live with her guardian, and took charge of his bungalow and made it beautiful and homelike and comfortable--she wouldn't let him drink or smoke or swear any more. And as he looked back over the past--"

  "He was eaten with remorse at the thought of the wasted years," Patty glibly supplied, "and wished that he had lived so as to be more worthy of the sweet, womanly influence that had come into his wicked life."

  "You've read it!" said Rosalie.

  "Not that I know of," said Patty.

  "Anyway," said Rosalie, with an air of challenge, "they fell in love and were married--"

  "And her father and mother, looking down from heaven, smiled a blessing on the dear little daughter who had brought so much happiness to a lonely heart?"

  "Um--yes," agreed Rosalie, doubtfully.

  There was no amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious.

  "It's a very touching story," Patty commented, "but where does Kid McCoy come in?"

  "Why, don't you see?" Rosalie's violet eyes were big with interest. "It's exactly Kid's own story! I realized it the minute I saw the book, and I had the awfulest time making her read it. She made fun of it at first, but after she'd really got into it, she appreciated the resemblance. She says now it was the Hand of Fate."

  "Kid's story? What are you talking about?" Patty was commencing to be interested.

  "Kid has a wicked English guardian just like the Rosamond in the book. Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of his life."

  Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and regarded her with a touch of asperity.

  "I don't see anything so funny--I think it's very romantic."

  "Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can stay one--"

  "Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than that--you wait and see."

  And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed week, and it did last.

  Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of the school.

  They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their shoulders, gathered by the open window.

  Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.

  This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a lady.

  Then one day a letter came from Guardie with the news that he was coming East to visit his little girl. Subdued excitement prevailed in the South Corridor. Rosalie and Margarite and an assemblage of neighbors held earnest conferences as to what she should wear and how she should behave. They finally decided upon white muslin and blue ribbons. They pondered a long time over whether or not she should kiss him, but Rosalie decided in the negative.

  "When he sees you," she explained, "the realization will sweep over him that you are no longer a child. You have grown to womanhood in the past three years. And he will feel unaccountably shy in your presence."

  "Um," said Margarite, with a slightly doubtful note. "I hope so."

  It was on a Sunday that Guardie arrived. The school--in a body--flattened its nose against the window watching his approach. They had rather hoped for a flannel shirt a
nd boots and spurs, and, in any case, for a sombrero. But the horrible truth must be told. He wore a frock coat of the most unimpeachable cut, with a silk hat and a stick, and a white gardenia in his buttonhole. To look at him, one would swear that he had never seen a pistol or a lariat. He was born to pass the plate in church.

  But the worst is still to tell.

  He had planned a surprise for his little ward. When she should come back to the ranch, it would be to a real home. A sweet, womanly influence would have transformed it into a fitting abode for a young girl. Guardie was not alone. He was accompanied by his bride--a tall, fair, beautiful woman with a low voice and gracious manners. She sang for the girls after dinner, and as sixty-four pairs of eyes studied the beautiful presence, sixty-four--no, sixty-three--of her auditors decided to grow up to be exactly like her. Margarite did the honors in a state of dazed incomprehension. Her make-believe world of seven weeks had crumbled in an hour, and she had not had time to readjust herself. Never--she realized it perfectly--could she have competed in femininity with Guardie's wife. It wasn't in her, not even if she had commenced to practise from the cradle.

  They went back to the city in the evening, and before the entire school, Guardie patted her on the head and told her to be a good little kiddie and mind her teachers. His wife, with a protecting arm about her shoulders, kissed her forehead and called her "dear little daughter."

  After evensong on Sundays, came two hours of freedom. The teachers gathered in the Dowager's study for coffee and conversation, and the girls presumably wrote letters home. But that night, the South Corridor followed no such peaceful occupation. Margarite McCoy experienced a reversion to type. In her own picturesque language, she "shot up the town."

  The echoes of the orgie at last reached the kaffee klatsch below. Miss Lord came to investigate--and she came on her tiptoes.

  Miss McCoy, arrayed in a sometime picture hat cocked over one ear, a short gymnasium skirt, scarlet stockings and a scarlet sash, was mounted upon a table, giving an imitation of a clog dance in a mining-camp, while her audience played rag-time on combs and clapped.