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After breakfast they went to the sunny, pleasant morning room, and Patty made up her mind to a hard day.
Then she had an inspiration. She remembered how susceptible Mrs. Van Reypen was to flattery, and she determined to see if large doses of it wouldn’t cure her ill temper.
“How lovely your hair is,” said Patty, apropos of nothing. “I do so admire white hair, and yours is so abundant and of such fine texture.”
As she had hoped, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled in a pleased way.
“Ah, Miss Fairfield, you should have seen it when I was a girl. It was phenomenal. But of late years it has come out sadly.”
“You still have quantities,” said Patty, and very truthfully, too, “and its silvery whiteness is so becoming to your complexion.”
“Do you think so?” said Mrs. Van Reypen, smiling most amiably. “I think it’s much wiser not to colour one’s hair, for now-a-days so many people turn gray quite young.”
“Yes, they do. I’ve several friends with gray hair who are very young women indeed.”
“Yes,” agreed the other, comfortably, “white hair no longer indicates that a woman is advanced in years. You speak very sensibly, Miss Fairfield.”
Patty smiled to herself at the success of her little ruse, “And, after all,” she thought, “I’m telling her only the truth. Her hair is lovely, and she may as well know I appreciate it.”
“Have you ever tried,” she went on, “wearing it in a coronet braid?”
“No; I’ve thought I should like to, but I’ve worn puffs so long I don’t know how to change.”
“Let me do it for you,” said Patty. “I’m sure I could dress it to please you. At any rate, it would do no harm to try.”
So up they went to Mrs. Van Reypen’s dressing room, and Patty spent most of the morning trying and discussing different modes of hair-dressing.
Mrs. Van Reypen’s maid was present, and she admired Patty’s cleverness and deftness at the work.
“You have a touch,” declared Mrs. Van Reypen, as she surveyed herself by the aid of a hand-mirror. “You’re positively Frenchy in your touch. Where did you learn it? Have you ever been a lady’s-maid?”
“No,” said Patty, suppressing her smiles, “I never have. But I’ve spent a winter in Paris, and I picked up some French notions, I suppose.”
“You certainly did. You are clever with your fingers, I can see that. Can you trim hats?”
“Yes, I can,” said Patty, smiling to herself at the recollection of her experiences with Mme. Villard.
“Humph! You seem pretty sure of yourself. I wish you’d trim one for me, then; but I don’t want you to spoil the materials.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Patty, meekly, and Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to bring out some boxes.
“This,” she said, taking up a finished hat, “is one my milliner has just sent home, and I think it a fright. Now here’s a last year’s hat, but the plumes are lovely. If you could untrim this first one, and transfer these plumes, and then add these roses—what do you think?”
Secretly Patty thought the new hat was lovely just as it was, but her plan that morning was to humour the testy old lady and, if possible, make her forget her neuralgic pains.
So she took the hats, and sat down to rip and retrim them.
Meantime, Mrs. Van Reypen instructed her maid to practise dressing her hair in the fashion Patty had done it.
But the maid was not very deft in the art, and soon Patty heard Mrs. Van Reypen shrilly exclaiming:
“Stupid! Not that way! You have neither taste nor brains! Place the braid higher. No, not so high as that! Oh, you are an idiot!”
Deeming it best not to interfere, Patty went on with her work.
Also, Mrs. Van Reypen went on with her scolding, which so upset the long-suffering maid that she fell to weeping and thereby roused her mistress to still greater ire.
“Crying, are you!” she exclaimed. “If you had such a painful neck and shoulder as I have you well might cry. But to cry about nothing! Bah! Leave me, and do not return until you can be pleasant. Miss Fairfield, will you please finish putting up my hair?”
Patty laid down her work, and did as she was requested. She was sorry for the maid and incensed at Mrs. Van Reypen’s injustice and disagreeableness, but she felt intuitively that it was the best plan to be, herself, kind and affable.
“Oh, yes, I’ll do it!” she said, pleasantly. “Your hat is almost finished, and we can try it on with your hair done this way. I’m sure the effect will be charming.”
Mollified at this, Mrs. Van Reypen smiled benignly on her companion, and also smiled admiringly at her own mirrored reflection.
“Now,” said Patty, as, a little later, she brought the completed hat for inspection, “I will try this on and see how it looks.”
Mrs. Van Reypen seated herself again in front of her dressing mirror, and with gestures worthy of Madame Villard herself, Patty placed the hat on her head.
“It’s most becoming,” began Patty, when Mrs. Van Reypen interrupted her.
“Becoming?” she cried. “It is dreadful! It is fearful. It makes me look like an old woman!”
With an angry jerk she snatched the offending hat from her head and threw it across the room.
Patty was about to give a horrified exclamation when the funny side of it struck her, and she burst into laughter. Mrs. Van Reypen was really an elderly lady, and her angry surprise at being made to look like one seemed very funny to Patty.
But in a moment she understood the case.
She had thought the hat in question of too youthful a type for Mrs. Van Reypen, and in retrimming it had made it more subdued and of a quieter, more elderly fashion.
But she now realised that she had been expected to make it of even gayer effect than it had shown at first. This was an easy matter, and picking up the hat she straightened it out, and hastily catching up a bunch of pink roses and a glittering buckle, she said:
“Oh, it isn’t finished yet; these other trimmings I want to put in place while the hat is on your head.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Van Reypen, only half-convinced.
But she sat down again, and Patty replaced the hat, and then adjusted the roses and the buckle, giving the whole a dainty, pretty effect, which though over-youthful, perhaps, was really very becoming to the fine-looking old lady.
“Charming!” she exclaimed, letting her recent display of bad temper go without apology. “I felt sure you could do it. This afternoon we will go out to the shops and buy some materials, and you shall make me another hat.”
They did so, and, though it meant an afternoon of rather strenuous shopping, Patty didn’t mind it much, for Mrs. Van Reypen couldn’t fly into a rage in the presence of the salespeople.
And so the days dragged by. Patty had hard work to keep her own temper when her employer was unreasonably cross and snappish, but she stuck to her plan of flattering her, and it worked well more often than not.
Nor was she insincere. There were so many admirable qualities and traits of Mrs. Van Reypen that she really admired, it was easy enough to tell her so, and invariably the lady was pleased.
But she often broke out into foolish, unjustifiable rages, and then Patty had to wait meekly until they passed over.
But when, at last, Wednesday evening had gone by, and she went to her room, knowing it was the last night she should spend under that roof, she was glad indeed.
“Another week of this would give me nervous prostration!” she said to herself. “But to-morrow my week is up, and that means Success! I have really and truly succeeded in earning my own living for a week, and I’m glad and proud of it. I knew I should succeed, but I confess I didn’t think I’d score so many failures first. But perhaps that makes my success all the sweeter. Anyway, I’m jolly glad I’m going home to-morrow. Wow! but I’m homesick.”
Then she tumbled into bed, and soon forgot her homesickness in a sound, dreamless sleep.
Patty had been uncertain whether to tell Mrs. Van Reypen the true story of her week of companionship or not; but on Thursday morning she decided she would do so.
And, as it chanced, after breakfast Mrs. Van Reypen herself opened the way for Patty’s confidences.
“Miss Fairfield,” she said, as they sat down in the library, “you know our trial week is up to-day.”
“Yes, Mrs. Van Reypen, and you remember that either of us has the privilege of terminating our engagement to-day.”
“I do remember, and, though I fear you will be greatly disappointed, I must tell you that I have decided that I cannot keep you as my companion.”
As Patty afterward told Nan, she was “struck all of a heap.”
She had been wondering how she should persuade Mrs. Van Reypen to let her go, and now the lady was voluntarily dismissing her! It was so sudden and so unexpected that Patty showed her surprise by her look of blank amazement.
“I knew you’d feel dreadful about it,” went on Mrs. Van Reypen, with real regret in her tone, “but I cannot help it. You are not, by nature, fitted for the position. You are—I don’t exactly know how to express it, but you are not of a subservient disposition.”
“No,” said Patty, “I’m not. But I have tried to do as you wanted me to.”
“Yes, I could see that. But you are too high-strung to be successful in a position of this kind. You should be more deferential in spirit as well as in manner. Do I make myself clear?”
“You do, Mrs. Van Reypen,” said Patty, smiling; “so clear that I am going to tell you the truth about this whole business. I’m not really obliged to earn my own living. I have a happy home and loving parents. My father, though not a millionaire, is wealthy and generous enough to supply all my wants, and the reason I took this position with you is a special and peculiar one, which I will tell you about if you care to hear.”
“You sly puss!” cried Mrs. Van Reypen, with a smile that indicated relief rather than dismay at Patty’s revelation. “Then you’ve been only masquerading as a companion?”
“Yes,” said Patty, smiling back at her, “that’s about the size of it.”
CHAPTER XVIII
HOME AGAIN
After Patty had told Mrs. Van Reypen the whole story of her efforts to earn her living for a week, and why she had undertaken such a thing, she found herself occupying a changed place in that lady’s regard.
“It was fine of you, perfectly fine!” Mrs. Van Reypen declared, “to sacrifice yourself, your tastes, and your time for a noble end like that.”
“Don’t praise me more than I deserve,” said Patty, smiling. “I did begin the game with a charitable motive, but I thought it was going to be easy. When I found it difficult I fear I kept on rather from stubbornness than anything else.”
“I don’t call it stubbornness, Miss Fairfield; I call it commendable perseverance, and I’m glad you’ve told me your story. Of course, I wouldn’t have wished you to tell me at first, for had I known it I wouldn’t have taken you. But you have honestly tried to do your work well, and you succeeded as well as you could. But, as I told you, you are not made for that sort of thing. Your disposition is not that of a subordinate, and I am glad you do not really have to be one. You have earned your salary this week, however, and I gladly pay you the fifteen dollars we agreed upon.”
Mrs. Van Reypen handed Patty the money, and as the girl took it she said, earnestly: “As you may well believe, Mrs. Van Reypen, this money means more to me than any I have ever before received in my life. It is the first I have ever earned by my own exertions, and, unless I meet with reverses of fortune, it will probably be the last. But, more than that, it proves my success in the somewhat doubtful enterprise I undertook and it assures a chance, at least, of another girl’s success in life.”
“I am greatly interested in your young art student,” went on Mrs. Van Reypen. “Can you not bring her to see me when she comes, and perhaps I may be of use to her in some friendly way?”
“How good you are!” exclaimed Patty.
She was surprised at the complete change of demeanour in Mrs. Van Reypen, though of course she realised it was due to the fact that she was now looked upon as a social equal and not a dependent.
“It is all so uncertain yet,” Patty went on. “I don’t know exactly how we are to persuade the girl to come North at all. She is of a proud and sensitive nature that would reject anything like charity.”
“Well, you will doubtless arrange the matter somehow, and when you do, remember that I shall be glad to help in any way I can.”
“Thank you very much,” said Patty. “It may be that you can indeed help us. And now, Mrs. Van Reypen, mayn’t I read to you, or something? You know my week isn’t up until this afternoon.”
“Not literally, perhaps; but for the few hours that are left of your stay with me I shall look upon you as a guest, not a ‘companion.’ And as I always like to entertain my guests pleasantly, I shall, if you agree, telephone for Philip to come to luncheon with us.”
The old lady’s eyes twinkled at the idea of Philip’s surprise at the changed conditions, and Patty smiled, too, as she expressed her assent.
When Philip arrived he was, of course, amazed at his aunt’s demeanour. She not only seemed to approve of Miss Fairfield, but treated her as an honoured guest and seemed more than willing that Philip should chat socially with her. Soon she explained to him the cause of her sudden change of attitude.
Philip laughed heartily. “I suspected something of the sort,” he said. “Miss Fairfield didn’t strike me as being of the ‘thankful and willin’ to please’ variety. She tried her best, but her deference was forced and her meekness assumed.”
“But she did it well,” said Mrs. Van Reypen.
“Oh, yes; very well. Still I like her better in her natural rôle of society lady.”
“Oh, not that!” protested Patty. “I’m not really a society lady. In fact, I’m not ‘out’ yet. I’m just a New York girl.”
“Were you born here?” asked Mrs. Van Reypen.
“No,” said Patty, laughing; “I was born South, and I’ve only lived North about five years. One of those I’ve spent abroad, and one or two outside of New York. So when I say I’m a New York girl I only mean that I live here now.”
“Mayn’t I come to see you?” asked Philip. “Where do you live?”
“I live on Seventy-second Street,” said Patty, “and you may come to tea some Wednesday if you like. That’s my mother’s ‘day,’ and I often receive with her.”
“I see you’re well brought up,” said Mrs. Van Reypen, nodding her head approvingly. “I’m a bit surprised though that your mother allowed you to undertake this escapade.”
“Well, you see, she’s my stepmother—she’s only six years older than I am. So she hasn’t much jurisdiction over me; and as for my father—well, really, I ran away!”
The luncheon was a merry feast, for Mrs. Van Reypen made a gala affair of it, and, though there were but the three at table, there was extra elaboration of viands and decorations.
Philip Van Reypen was in his gayest humour, and his aunt was beaming and affable.
So they were really sorry when it was time for Patty to say good-by.
At four o’clock Miller came for her, and when Patty saw the familiar motor-car her homesickness came back like a big wave, and with farewells, speedy though cordial, she gladly let Philip hand her into the limousine.
“Home, Miller!” she said, with a glad ring in her voice, and then, with a final bow and smile to the Van Reypens, she started off.
“Discharged!” she thought, smiling to herself. “Didn’t give satisfaction! Too high-falutin to be a companion! Huh, Patty Fairfield, I don’t think you’re much of a success!”
She was talking to the reflection of herself in the small mirror opposite her face, but the happy and smiling countenance she saw there didn’t tally with her remarks. “Oh, well,” she thought, “I only agreed to earn my living for a week, and I’ve done it—I’ve done it!”
She opened her purse to make sure the precious fifteen dollars was still there, and she looked at it proudly. She had more money than that in another part of her purse, but no bills could ever look so valuable as the ten and five Mrs. Van Reypen had paid her.
At last she reached home, and as she ran up the steps the door flew open, and she saw Nan and her father, with smiling faces, awaiting her.
“Oh, people!” she cried. “Oh, you dear people!”
She flung herself indiscriminately into their open arms, embracing both at once.
Then she produced her precious bills, and, waving them aloft, cried:
“I’ve succeeded! I’ve really succeeded! Behold the proofs of Patty’s success!”
“Good for you, girlie!” cried her father. “You have succeeded, indeed! But don’t you ever dare cut up such a prank again!”
“No, don’t!” implored Nan. “I’ve had the most awful time the whole week! Every night Fred vowed he was going to bring you home, and I had to beg him not to. I wanted you to win,—and I felt sure you would this time,—but you owe it to me. For if I hadn’t worked so hard to prevent it your father would have gone after you long ago–”
“Good for you, Nan!” cried Patty. “You’ve been a trump! You’ve helped me through every time, in all my failures and in my one success. Oh, I’ve so much to tell you of my experiences! They were awfully funny.”
“They’ll keep till later,” said Nan. “You must run and dress now; Ken and the Farringtons are coming to dinner to help us celebrate your success.”
So Patty went dancing away to her own room, singing gaily in her delight at being once more at home.
“Oh, you booful room!” she cried, aloud, as she reached her own door. “All full of pretty homey things, and fresh flowers, and my own dear books and pictures, and—and everything!”
She threw herself on the couch and kissed the very sofa cushions in her joy at seeing them again.
Then she made her toilette, and put on one of her prettiest and most becoming frocks.
“Oh, daddy, dear,” she cried, meeting him in the hall on her way down, “it has done me lots of good to be homeless for a week! I appreciate my own dear home so much more.”
“But you were away from it for a year.”
“Oh, that’s different! Travelling or visiting is one thing, but working for your living is quite another! Oh, don’t lose all your fortune, will you, father? I don’t want to have to go out into the cold world and earn my own support.”
“Then it isn’t as easy as you thought it was?”
“Oh, dear no! It isn’t easy at all! It’s dreadful! Every way I tried was worse than every other. But I succeeded, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. You fulfilled your part of the contract, and when the time comes I’m ready to fulfil mine.”
“We’ll have to see Mr. Hepworth about that,” replied Patty.
Then Kenneth and the two Farringtons came, and the wonderful fifteen dollars had to be shown to them, and they had to be told all about Patty’s harrowing experiences.
“I’ll never again express an opinion on matters I don’t know anything about,” declared Patty. “Just think! I only said I thought it would be easy to earn fifteen dollars a week, and look what I’ve been through in consequence! But I’ve won at last!”
“Plucky Patty!” said Kenneth, appreciatively. “I knew you’d win if it took all summer!”
“But it wasn’t a complete triumph,” confessed Patty, “for she wouldn’t have kept me another week. She practically discharged me to-day.”
“Fired?” cried Roger, in glee. “Fired from your last place! Wanted, a situation! Oh, Patty, you do beat all!”
Then Patty told them of her own surprise when Mrs. Van Reypen told her she would not do as a permanent companion, and they all laughed heartily at the funny description she gave of the scene.
“Never mind,” said her father, “you fulfilled the conditions. A week was the stipulated time, and nothing was said about your outlook for a second week.”
The next night Mr. Hepworth came, and the whole story was told over again to him. He didn’t take it so lightly as the young people had done, but looked at Patty sympathetically, and said:
“Poor little girl, you did have a hard time, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” replied Patty, “though nobody else seems to realise that.”
The kindness in Mr. Hepworth’s glance seemed to bring back to her all those long, lonely, weary hours, and she felt grateful that one, at least, understood what she had suffered.
“It was worth spending that awful week to achieve your purpose,” he went on, “but I well know how hard it was for a home-loving girl like you. And I fancy it was none too easy to find yourself at the beck and call of another woman.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Patty, surprised at his insight. “How did you know that?”
“Because you are an independent young person, and accustomed to ordering your own times and seasons. So I’m sure to be obedient to another’s orders was somewhat galling.”
“It was so!” and Patty’s emphatic nod of her head proved to Mr. Hepworth that he had struck a true chord.
“And now,” said Mr. Fairfield, “when can I make my offer good? How can we induce the rising young artist to come to the metropolis to seek fame and fortune?”
“It will be difficult,” said Mr. Hepworth, “as she is not only proud and sensitive, but very shy. I think if Mrs. Fairfield would write one of her kind and tactful letters that Miss Farley would be persuaded by it.”
“Why can’t I write a kind and tactful letter?” asked Patty. “It’s my picnic.”
“You couldn’t write a tactful letter to save your life,” said Mr. Hepworth, looking at her with a grave smile.
Patty returned his look, and she wondered to herself why she wasn’t angry with him for making such a speech.
But, as she well knew, when Mr. Hepworth made a seemingly rude speech it wasn’t really rude, but it was usually true.
She knew herself she couldn’t write such a letter as this occasion required, and she knew that Nan could. So she smiled meekly at Mr. Hepworth, and said:
“No, I couldn’t. But Nan can be tactful to beat the band!”
“Oh, Patty!” said her father. “Did you talk like that to Mrs. Van Reypen? No wonder she discharged you!”
“No, I didn’t, daddy; truly I didn’t. I never used a word of slang that whole week, except one day when I talked to Nan over the telephone.”
“Soon you’ll be old enough to begin to think it’s time to stop using it at all,” observed Mr. Hepworth, and again Patty took his mild reproof in good part.
“Well, I’ll write,” said Nan. “Shall I ask Miss Farley to come to visit us? Won’t she think that rather queer?”
“Don’t put it just that way,” advised Mr. Hepworth. “Say that you, as a friend of mine, are interested in her career. And say that if she will come to New York for a week and stay with you, you think you can help her make arrangements for a course in the Art School. Your own tact will dress up the idea so as to make it palatable to her pride.”
“Won’t it be fun?” exclaimed Patty. “It will be almost like adopting a sister. What is she like, Mr. Hepworth? Like me?”
“She is about as unlike you as it is possible for a girl to be. She is very slender, dark, and timid, with the air of a frightened animal.”
“I’ll scare her to death,” declared Patty, with conviction. “I’m sure I shall! I don’t mean on purpose, but I’m so—so sudden, you know.”
“Yes, you are,” agreed Mr. Hepworth, as he joined in the general laughter. “But that ‘suddenness’ of yours is a quality that I wish Miss Farley possessed. It is really a sort of brave impulse and quick determination that makes you dash into danger or enterprise of any kind.”
“And win!” added Patty saucily.
“Yes, and win—after a time.”
“Oh well,” she replied, tossing her head, “Mr. Bruce’s spider made seven attempts before he succeeded. So I think my record’s pretty fair.”
“I think so, too,” said Mr. Hepworth, heartily. “And I congratulate you on your plucky perseverance and your indomitable will. You put up a brave fight, and you won. I know how you suffered under that petty tyranny, and your success in such circumstances was a triumph!”
“Thank you,” said Patty, greatly pleased at this sincere praise from one whom she so greatly respected. “It would have been harder still if I hadn’t had a good sense of humour. Lots of times when I wanted to cry I laughed instead.”
“Hurrah for you, Patty girl!” cried her father. “I’d rather you’d have a good sense of humour than a talent for spatter-work!”
“Oh, you back number!” exclaimed Patty. “They don’t do spatter-work now, daddy.”
“Well, china painting—or whatever the present fad is.”