Jean Webster - Just Patty

He muttered something under his breath. She could not make out whether he was praying or swearing.

"Don't be afraid," she added kindly. "I won't hurt you."

"Is it a bloomin' insane asylum?"

"Just a girl's school."

"Gosh!" he observed.

"Hush!" said Patty. "They're coming this way now!"

The sound of running feet became audible in the kitchen above, while bass voices were added to the shrill soprano that had sounded the former tocsin. The men had arrived from the stables. The burglar and the ghost regarded each other for a moment of suspended breathing; their mutual danger drew them together. Patty hesitated an instant, while she studied his face as it showed through the interstices of the meringue. He had honest blue eyes and yellow curls. She suddenly stretched out a hand and grasped him by an elbow.

"Quick! They'll be here in a minute. I know a place to hide. Come with me."

She pushed him unresisting down a passage and into a storeroom, boarded off from the main cellar, where the scenery of the dramatic society was kept.

"Get down on your hands and knees and follow me," she ordered, as she stooped low and dived behind a pile of canvas.

The man crawled after. They emerged at the farther end into a small recess behind some canvas trees. Patty sat on a stump and offered a wooden rock to her companion.

"They'll never think of looking here," she whispered. "Martin's too fat to crawl through."

A small barred window let in some faint moonlight and they had an opportunity to study each other more at leisure. The man did not yet seem comfortable in Patty's presence; he was occupying the farthest possible corner of his rock. Presently he rubbed his coat sleeve over his head and looked long and earnestly at the meringue. He was evidently at a loss to identify the substance; in the rush of events he had taken no note of the pie.

Patty brought her one eye to bear down upon him.

"I'm simply melting!" she whispered. "Do you think you could untie that knot?"

She bent her head and presented the back of her neck.

The man by now was partially reassured as to the humanness of his companion, and he obediently worked at the knot but with hands that trembled. At last it came loose, and Patty with a sigh of relief emerged into the open. Her hair was somewhat tousled and her face was streaked with burnt cork, but her blue eyes were as honest as his own. The sight reassured him.

"Gee!" he muttered in a wave of relief.

"Keep still!" Patty warned.

The hunt was growing nearer. There was the sound of tramping feet in the laundry and they could hear the men talking.

"A ghost and a burglar!" said Martin, in fine scorn. "That's a likely combination, ain't it now?"

They made an obligatory and superficial search through the coal cellar. Martin jocularly inquiring:

"Did ye look in the furnace, Mike? Here Osaki, me lad, ye're small. Take a crawl oop the poipes and see if the ghost ain't hidin' there."

They opened the door of the property-room and glanced inside. The burglar ducked his head and held his breath, while Patty struggled with an ill-timed desire to giggle. Martin was in a facetious mood. He whistled in the manner of calling a dog.

"Here, Ghostie! Here, Burgie! Come here, old fellow!"

They banged the door shut and their footsteps receded. Patty was rocking back and forth in a species of hysterics, stuffing the corner of the sheet into her mouth to keep from laughing audibly. The burglar's teeth were chattering.

"Lord!" he breathed. "It may be funny for you, Miss. But it means the penitentiary for me."

Patty interrupted her hysterics and regarded him with disgust.

"It would mean expulsion for me, or at least something awfully unpleasant. But that's no reason for going all to pieces. You're a nice sort of a burglar! Brace up and be a sport!"

He mopped his brow and removed another portion of icing.

"You must be an awful amateur to break into a house like this," she said contemptuously. "Don't you know the silver's plated?"

"I didn't know nuthin' about it," he said sullenly. "I see the window open over the shed roof and I clum up. I was hungry and was lookin' for somethin' to eat. I ain't had nothin' since yesterday mornin'."

Patty reached to the floor beside her.

"Have some pie."

The man ducked aside as it was poked at him.

"W-what's that?" he gasped.

He was as nervous as a mouse in a cage.

"Lemon pie. It looks a little messy but it's all right. The only thing the matter with it is that it has lost its meringue top. That's mostly on your head. The rest of it is spread over me and the laundry floor and Evalina Smith's bed and the clothes chute."

"Oh!" he murmured in evident relief, as he rubbed his hand over his hair for the fourth time. "I was wonderin' what the blame stuff was."

"But the lemon's all here," she urged. "You'd better eat it. It's quite nourishing, I believe."

He accepted the pie and fell to eating it with an eagerness that carried out the truth of his assertion as to yesterday's breakfast.

Patty watched him, her natural curiosity struggling with her acquired politeness. The curiosity triumphed.

"Do you mind telling me how you came to be a burglar? You make such a remarkably bad one, that I should think you would have chosen almost any other profession."

He told his story between bites. To one more experienced in police records, it might have sounded a trifle fishy, but he had an honest face and blue eyes, and it never entered her head to doubt him. The burglar commenced it sullenly; no one had ever believed him yet and he wasn't expecting her to. He would like to have invented something a little more plausible, but he lacked the imagination to tell a convincing lie. So, as usual, he lamely told the truth.

Patty listened with strained attention. His tale was somewhat muffled by lemon pie, and his vocabulary did not always coincide with her own, but she managed to get the gist of it.

By rights he was a gardener. In the last place where he worked he used to sleep in the attic, because the gentleman he was away a lot, and the lady she was afraid not to have a man in the house. And a gas-fitter, that he had always thought was his friend, give him some beer one night and got him drunk, and took away the key of the back door. And while he (the gardener) was sound asleep on the children's sand pile under the apple tree in the back yard, the gas-fitter entered the house and stole an overcoat and a silver coffee-pot and a box of cigars and a bottle of whisky and two umbrellas. And they proved it on him (the gardener) and he was sent up for two years. And when he come out, no one wouldn't give him no work.

"An' ye can't make me believe," he added bitterly, "that that beer wasn't doped!"

"Oh, but it was terrible of you to get drunk!" said Patty, shocked.

"'Twas an accident," he insisted.

"If you are sure that you'll never do it again," she said, "I'll get you a job. But you must promise, on your word of honor as a gentleman. You know I couldn't recommend a drunkard."

The man grinned feebly.

"I guess ye'll not be findin' anybody that will be wantin' a jailbird."

"Oh, yes, I will! I know exactly the man. He's a friend of mine, and he likes jailbirds. He realizes that it's only luck that made him a millionaire instead of a convict. He always gives a man a chance to start again. He used to have a murderer in charge of his greenhouses, and a cattle thief to milk the cows. I'm sure he'll like you. Come with me, and I'll write you a letter of introduction."

Patty gathered her sheets about her and prepared to crawl out.

"What are ye doin'?" he demanded quickly. "Y' aren't goin' to hand me over?"

"Is it likely?" She regarded him with scorn. "How could I hand you over, without handing myself over at the same time?"