Jean Webster - Just Patty

"She says she's glad to see me back, and hopes I didn't eat too much wedding cake. If my lessons show any falling off—"

" Who owns it?"

"The man with the black eyebrows and the dimple in his chin who sang the funny songs third from the end on the right hand side."

"Jermyn Hilliard, Junior?" Priscilla asked breathlessly.

"Not really?" Conny laid her hand on her heart with an exaggerated sigh.

"Truly and honest!" Patty turned it over and pointed to the initials on the end. "J. H., Jr."

"It is his!" cried Priscilla.

"Where on earth did you get it, Patty?"

"Is it locked?"

"Yes," Patty nodded, "but my key will open it."

"What's in it?"

"Oh, a dress suit, and collars, and—and things."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Well," said Patty languidly, "it's a long story. I don't know that I have time before study hour—"

"Oh, tell us, please. I think you're beastly!"

"Well—the glee club was last Thursday night."

They nodded impatiently at this useless piece of information.

"And it was Friday morning that I left. As I was listening to the Dowager's parting remarks about being inconspicuous and reflecting credit on the school by my nice manners, Martin sent in word that Princess was lame and couldn't be driven. So instead of going to the station in the hearse, I went with Mam'selle in the trolley car. When we got in, it was cram full of men. The entire Yale Glee Club was going to the station! There were so many of them that they were sitting in each other's laps. The whole top layer rose, and said perfectly gravely and politely: 'Madame, take my seat.'

"Mam'selle was outraged. She said in French, which of course they all understood, that she thought American college boys had disgraceful manners; but I smiled a little—I couldn't help it, they were so funny. And then two of the bottom ones offered their seats, and we sat down. And you'll never believe it, but the third man from the end was sitting right next to me!"

"Not really?"

"Oh, Patty!"

"Is he as good-looking near to, as he was on the stage?"

"Better."

"Are those his real eyebrows or were they blacked?"

"They looked real but I couldn't examine them closely."

"Of course they're real!" said Conny indignantly.

"And what do you think?" Patty demanded. "They were going on my train. Did you ever hear of such a coincidence?"

"What did Mam'selle think of that?"

"She was as flustered as an old hen with one chicken. She put me in charge of the conductor with so many instructions, that I know he felt like a newly engaged nursemaid. The Glee Club men rode in the smoking-car, except Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, and he followed me right into the parlor car and sat down in the chair exactly opposite."

"Patty!" they cried in shocked chorus. "You surely didn't speak to him?"

"Of course not. I looked out of the window and pretended he wasn't there."

"Oh!" Conny murmured disappointedly.

"Then what happened?" Priscilla asked.

"Nothing at all. I got out at Coomsdale, and Uncle Tom met me with the automobile. The chauffeur took my suit-case from the porter and I didn't see it near to at all. We reached the house just at tea time, and I went straight in to tea without going upstairs. The butler took up my suit-case and the maid came and asked for the key so she could unpack. That house is simply running over with servants; I'm always scared to death for fear I'll do something that they won't think is proper.

"All the ushers and bridesmaids were there, and everything was very jolly, only I couldn't make out what they were talking about half the time, because they all knew each other and had a lot of jokes I couldn't understand."

Conny nodded feelingly.

"That's the way they acted at the seaside last summer. I think grown people have horrid manners."

"I did feel sort of young," Patty acknowledged. "One of the men brought me some tea and asked what I was studying in school. He was trying to obey Louise and amuse little cousin, but he was thinking all the time, what an awful bore it was talking to a girl with her hair braided."

"I told you to put it up," said Priscilla.

"Just wait!" said Patty portentously. "When I went upstairs to dress for dinner, the maid met me in the hall with her eyes popping out of her head.

"'Beg pardon, Miss Patty,' she said. 'But is that your suit-case?'

"'Yes,' I said, 'of course it's my suit-case. What's the matter with it?'

"She just waved her hand toward the table and didn't say a word. And there it was, wide open!"

Patty took a key from her pocket, unlocked the suit-case, and threw back the lid. A man's dress suit was neatly folded on the top, with a pipe, a box of cigarettes, some collars, and various other masculine trifles filling in the interstices.

"Oh!" they gasped in breathless chorus.

"They belong to him," Conny murmured fervently.

Patty nodded.

"And when I showed Uncle Tom that suit-case, he nearly died laughing. He telephoned to the station, but they didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know where the glee club was going to perform, so we couldn't telegraph Mr. Hilliard. Uncle Tom lives five miles from town, and there simply wasn't anything we could do that night."

"And just imagine his feelings when he started to dress for the concert, and found Patty's new pink evening gown spread out on top!" suggested Priscilla.

"Oh, Patty! Do you s'pose he opened it?" asked Conny.

"I'm afraid he did. The cases are exact twins, and the keys both seem to fit."

"I hope it looked all right?"

"Oh, yes, it looked beautiful. Everything was trimmed with pink ribbon. I always pack with an eye to the maid, when I visit Uncle Tom."

"But the dinner and the wedding? What did you do without your clothes?" asked Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the dressmaker's.

"That was the best part of it!" Patty affirmed. "Miss Lord simply wouldn't let me get a respectable evening gown. She went with me herself, and told Miss Pringle how to make it—just like all my dancing dresses, nine inches off the floor, with elbow sleeves and a silly sash. I hated it anyway."

"You must remember you are a school girl," Conny quoted, "and until—"

"Just wait till I tell you!" Patty triumphed. "Louise brought me one of her dresses—one of her very best ball gowns, only she wasn't going to wear it any more, because she had all new clothes in her trousseau. It was white crêpe embroidered in gold spangles, and it had a train. It was long in front, too. I had to walk without lifting my feet. The maid came and dressed me; she did my hair up on top of my head with a gold fillet, and Aunt Emma loaned me a pearl necklace and some long gloves and I looked perfectly beautiful—I did, honestly—you wouldn't have known me. I looked at least twenty!

"The man who took me in to dinner never dreamed that I hadn't been out for years. And you know, he tried to flirt with me, he did, really. And he was getting awfully old. He must have been almost forty. I felt as though I were flirting with my grandfather. You know," Patty added, "it isn't so bad, being grown up. I believe you really do have sort of a good time—if you're pretty."

Six eyes sought the mirror for a reflective moment, before Patty resumed her chronicle.

"And Uncle Tom made me tell about the suit-case at the dinner table. Everybody laughed. It made a very exciting story. I told them about the whole school going to the Glee Club, and falling in love in a body with the third man from the end, and how we all cut his picture out of the program and pasted it in our watches. And then about my sitting across from him in the train and changing suit-cases. Mr. Harper—the man next to me—said it was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard in his life; that Louise's marriage was nothing to it."