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"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?"
The logic of this appealed to him, and he followed meekly on hands and knees. She approached the laundry door and listened warily; the search had withdrawn to other quarters. She led the way along a passage and up a flight of stairs and slipped into the deserted kindergarten room.
"We're safe here," she whispered. "They've already searched it."
She cast about for writing materials. No ink was to be found, but she discovered a red crayon pencil, and tore a sheet of paper from a copy book. "Honesty is the best policy," was inscribed in flowing characters at the top.
She hesitated with her crayon poised.
"If I get you a nice job in charge of onions and orchids and things, will you promise never again to drink any beer?"
"Sure," he agreed, but without much enthusiasm.
There was a light of uneasiness in his eye. Nothing in his past experience tallied with to-night's adventure; and he suspected an ambush.
"Because," said Patty, "it would be awfully embarrassing for me if you did get drunk. I should never dare recommend another burglar."
She wrote her note on the window ledge, by moonlight, and read it aloud:
"Dear Mr. Weatherby,—
"Do you remember the conversation we had the day I ran away and dropped into your onion garden? You said you thought criminals were often quite as good as the rest of us, and that you would find a job for any convict friend I might present. This is to introduce a burglar of my acquaintance who would like to secure a position as gardener. He was trained to be a gardener and much prefers it to burglaring, but finds it difficult to find a place because he has been in prison. He is faithful, honest and industrious, and promises to be sober. I shall appreciate any favor you may show him.
"Sincerely yours,"Patty Wyatt.""P. S.—Please excuse this red crayon. I am writing at midnight, by moonlight in the kindergarten room, and the ink's all locked up. The burglar will explain the circumstances, which are too complicated to write.
"Yours ever,"P. W."She enclosed her note in a large manila envelope that had contained weaving mats, and addressed it to Silas Weatherby, Esq. The man received it gingerly. He seemed to think that it might go off.
"What's the matter?" said Patty. "Are you afraid of it?"
"Ye're sure," he asked suspiciously, "that Silas Weatherby ain't a cop?"
"He's a railroad president."
"Oh!" The burglar looked relieved.
Patty unlocked the window, then paused for a final moral lecture.
"I am giving you a chance to begin again. If you are game, and present this letter, you'll get a job. If you're a coward, and don't dare present it, you can keep on being a burglar for the rest of your life for all I care—and a mighty poor one you'll make!"
She opened the window and waved her hand invitingly toward the outside world.
"Good-by, Miss," he said.
"Good-by," said Patty cordially. "And good luck!"
He paused, half in, half out, for a last reassurance.
"Ye're sure it's on the straight, Miss? Y' ain't pitchin' me no curve?"
"It's on the straight." She pledged her word. "I ain't pitchin' you no curve."
Patty crept upstairs the back way, and by a wide detour avoided the excited crowd still gathered in the East Wing. A fresh hub-bub had arisen, for Evalina Smith had found a monkey-wrench on the floor of her room. It was shown to the scoffing Martin as visible proof that the burglar had been there.
"An it's me own wrench!" he cried in wide-eyed amazement. "Now, what do ye think of his nerve?"
Patty hurriedly undressed and tumbled into a kimono. Sleepily rubbing her eyes, she joined the assemblage in the hall.
"What's happened?" she asked, blinking at the lights. "Has there been a fire?"
A chorus of laughter greeted the question.
"It's a burglar!" said Conny, exhibiting the wrench.
"Oh, why didn't you wake me?" Patty wailed. "I've wanted all my life to see a burglar."
Two weeks later, a groom arrived on horseback with a polite note for the Dowager.
Mr. Weatherby presented his compliments to Mrs. Trent, and desired the pleasure of showing the young ladies of the Senior class through his art gallery on Friday next at four o'clock.
The Dowager was at a loss to account for this gratuitous courtesy on the part of her hitherto unneighborly neighbor. After a moment of deliberation, she decided to meet him half way; and the groom rode back with an equally polite acceptance.
On Friday next, as the school hearse turned in at the gates of Weatherby Hall, the owner stood on the portico waiting to welcome his guests. If there were a shade more empressement in his greeting to Patty than to her companions, the Dowager did not notice it.
He made an exceptionally attentive host. In person he conducted them through the gallery and pointed out the famous Botticelli. Tea was served at little tables set on the western terrace. Each girl found a gardenia at her plate and a silver bonbonnière with the St. Ursula monogram on the cover. After tea their host suggested a visit to the Italian garden. As they strolled through the paths, Patty found herself walking beside him and the Dowager. His conversation was addressed to Mrs. Trent, but an occasional amused glance was directed toward Patty. They turned a corner behind a marble pavilion, and came upon a fountain and a gardener man, intent upon a border of maiden-hair ferns.
"I have a very remarkable new Swedish gardener," Mr. Weatherby casually remarked to the Dowager. "The man is a genius at making plants grow. He came highly recommended. Oscar!" he called. "Bring the ladies some of those tulips."
The man dropped his watering-can, and approached, hat in hand. He was a golden-haired, blue-eyed young chap with an honest smile. He presented his flowers, first to the elder lady and then to Patty. As he caught her interested gaze, a light of comprehension suddenly leaped to his eyes. Her costume and make-up to-day were so very dissimilar to those which she had assumed on the occasion of their first meeting, that recognition on his part had not been instantaneous.
Patty fell back a step to receive her flowers and the others strolled on.
"I have to thank ye, Miss," he said gratefully, "for the finest job I ever had. It's all right!"
"You know now," Patty laughed, "that I didn't pitch you no curves?"
XII
The Gypsy Trail
HEELS together. Hips firm, one, two, three, four—Irene McCullough! Will you keep your shoulders back and your stomach in? How many times must I tell you to stand straight? That's better! We'll start again. One, two, three, four."
The exercise droned on. Some twenty of the week's delinquents were working off demerits. It was uncongenial work for a sunny Saturday. The twenty pairs of eyes gazed beyond Miss Jellings' head—across ropes and rings and parallel bars—toward the green tree tops and the blue sky; and twenty girls, for that brief hour, regretted their past badnesses.
Miss Jellings herself seemed to be a bit on edge. She snapped out her orders with a curtness that brought a jerkily quick response from forty waving Indian clubs. As she stood straight and slim in her gymnasium suit, her cheeks flushed with exercise, she looked quite as young as any of her pupils. But if she appeared young, she also appeared determined. No instructor in the school, not even Miss Lord in Latin, kept stricter discipline.
"One, two, three, four—Patty Wyatt! Keep your eyes to the front. It isn't necessary for you to watch the clock. I shall dismiss the class when I am ready. Over your heads. One, two, three, four." Finally, when nerves were almost at the breaking point, came the grateful order, "Attention! Right about face. March. Clubs in racks. Double quick. Halt. Break ranks."
With a relieved whoop, the class dispersed.
"Thank heaven, there's only one more week of it!" Patty breathed, as they regained their own quarters in Paradise Alley.
"Good-by to Gym forever!" Conny waved a slipper over her head. "Hooray!"
"Isn't Jelly awful?" Patty demanded, still smarting from the recent insult. "She never used to be so bad. What on earth has got into her?"
"She is pretty snappy," Priscilla agreed. "But I like her just the same. She's so—so sort of spirited, you know—like a skittish horse."
"Urn," growled Patty. "I'd like to see a good, big, husky man get the upper hand of Jelly once, and just make her toe the mark!"
"You two will have to hurry," Priscilla warned, "if you want to get into your costumes up here. Martin starts in half an hour."
"We'll be ready!" Patty was already plunging her face into an inky mixture in the wash bowl.
The fancy-dress lawn fête, which St. Ursula's School held on the last Friday in every May, had occurred the evening before; and this afternoon the girls were redonning their costumes to make a trip to the village photographer's. The complicated costumes, that required time and space for their proper adjustment, were to be assumed at the school and driven down in the hearse. Those more simple of arrangement were to go in the trolley car, and be donned in the cramped quarters of the gallery dressing-room.
Patty and Conny, whose make-up was a very delicate matter, were dressing at the school. They had gone as Gypsies—not comic opera Gypsies, but real Gypsies, dirty and ragged and patched. (They had daily dusted the room with their costumes for a week before the fête.) Patty wore one brown stocking and one black, with a conspicuous hole in the right calf. Conny's toes protruded from one shoe, and the sole of the other flapped. Their hair was unkempt and the stain on their faces streaked. They were the last word in realism.
They scrambled into their dresses to-day with little ceremony, and hitched them together anyhow. Conny caught up a tambourine and Patty a worn-out pack of cards, and they clattered down the tin-covered back stairs. In the lower hall they came face to face with Miss Jellings, clothed in cool muslin, and in a more affable frame of mind. Patty never held her grudges long; she had already forgotten her momentary indignation at not being allowed to look at the clock.
"You cross-a my hand with silver? I tell-a your fortune."
She danced up to the gymnasium teacher with a flutter of scarlet petticoats, and poked out a dirty hand.
"Nice-a fortune," Conny added with a persuasive rattle of the tambourine. "Tall, dark-a young man."
"You impudent little ragamuffins!" Miss Jellings took them each by the shoulder and turned them for inspection. "What have you done to your faces?"
"Washed 'em in black coffee."
Miss Jellings shook her head and laughed.
"You're a disgrace to the school!" she pronounced. "Don't let any policeman see you, or he'll arrest you for vagabonds."
"Patty! Conny!—Hurry up. The hearse is starting."
Priscilla appeared in the doorway and waved her gridiron frantically. Priscilla, late about finding a costume, at the last moment had blasphemously gone as St. Laurence, draped in a sheet, with the kitchen broiler under her arm.
"We're coming! Tell him to wait." Patty dashed out.
"Don't you want a coat?" Conny shrieked after her.
"No—come on—we don't need coats."
The two raced down the drive after the wagonette—Martin never waited for laggards; he let them run and catch up. They sprang onto the rear step; and half-a-dozen outstretched hands hauled them in, head first.
They found the photographer's waiting-room a scene of the maddest confusion. When sixty excited people occupy the normal space of twelve, the effect is not restful.
"Did anyone bring a button-hook?"
"Lend me some powder."
"That's my safety-pin!"
"Where'd you put the burnt cork?"
"Is my hair a perfect sight?"
"Fasten me up—please!"
"Does my petticoat show?"
Everybody babbled at once, and nobody listened.
"I say, let's get out of this—I'm simply roasting!"
St. Laurence seized the Gypsies by the shoulder and shoved them into the vacant gallery. They squeezed themselves, with a sigh of relief, onto a shaky flight of six narrow stairs before the breezes of an open window.
"I know exactly what ails Jelly!" Patty spoke with the air of carrying on a conversation.
"What?" asked the others, with interest.
"She's had a quarrel with that Laurence Gilroy man who is manager at the electric light place. Don't you remember how he used to be hanging about all the time? And now he never comes at all? He was out every day in the Christmas vacation. They used to go walking together—and without any chaperone, too! You would think the Dowager would have made an awful fuss, but she didn't seem to. Anyway, you should have seen the way Miss Jellings treated that man—it was per-fect-ly dreadful! The way she jumps on Irene McCullough is nothing to the way she jumped on him."
"He doesn't have to work off demerits. He's a fool to stand it," said Conny simply.
"He doesn't stand it any more."
"How do you know?"
"Well, I—sort of heard. I was in the library alcove one day in the Christmas vacation, reading the 'Murders in the Rue Morgue,' when Jelly and Mr. Gilroy walked in. They didn't see me, and I didn't pay any attention to them at first—I'd just got to the place where the detective says, 'Is that the mark of a human hand?'—but pretty soon they got to scrapping so that I couldn't help but hear, and I felt sort of embarrassed about interrupting."
"What did they say?" asked Conny, impatiently brushing aside her apologies.
"I didn't grasp it entirely. He was trying to explain about something, and she wouldn't listen to a word he said—she was perfectly horrid. You know,—the way she is when she says, 'I understand it perfectly. I don't care to hear any excuse. You may take ten demerits, and report on Saturday for extra gymnasium.'—Well, they kept that up for fifteen minutes, both of 'em getting stiffer and stiffer. Then he took his hat and went. And you know, I don't believe he ever came back—I've never seen him. And now, she's sorry. She's been as cross as a bear ever since."
"And she can be awfully nice," said Priscilla.
"Yes, she can," said Patty. "But she's too cocky. I'd just like to see that man come back, and show her her place!"
The masqueraders trooped in and the serious business of the day commenced. The school posed as a whole, then an infinity of smaller groups disentangled themselves and posed separately, while those who were not in the picture stood behind the camera and made the others laugh.
"Young ladies!" the exasperated photographer implored. "Will you kindly be quiet for just two seconds? You have made me spoil three plates. And will that monk on the end stop giggling? Now! All ready. Please keep your eyes on the stove-pipe hole, and hold your positions while I count three. One, two, three—thank you very much!"
He removed his plate with a flourish, and dove into the dark room.
It was Patty's and Conny's turn to be taken alone, but St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins were clamoring for precedence on the ground of superior numbers, and they made such a turmoil that the two Gypsies politely stood aside.
Keren Hersey, as St. Ursula, and eleven little Junior A's—each playing the manifold part of a Thousand Virgins—made up the group. It was to be a symbolical picture, Keren explained.
When the Gypsies' turn came a second time, Patty had the misfortune to catch her dress on a nail and tear a three-cornered rent in the front. It was too large a hole for even a Gypsy to carry off with propriety; she retired to the dressing-room and fastened the edges together with white basting thread.
Finally, last of all, they presented themselves in their dirt and tatters. The photographer was an artist, and he received them with appreciative delight. The others had been patently masqueraders, but these were the real thing. He photographed them dancing, and wandering on a lonely moor with threatening canvas clouds behind them. He was about to take them in a forest, with a camp fire, and a boiling kettle slung from three sticks—when Conny suddenly became aware of a brooding quiet that had settled on the place.
"Where is everybody?"
She returned from a hasty excursion into the waiting-room, divided between consternation and laughter.
"Patty! The hearse has gone!—And the street-car people are waiting on the corner by Marsh and Elkins's."
"Oh, the beasts! They knew we were in here." Patty dropped her three sticks and rose precipitately. "Sorry!" she called to the photographer, who was busily dusting off the kettle. "We've got to run for it."
"And we haven't any coats!" wailed Conny. "Miss Wadsworth won't take us in the car in these clothes."
"She'll have to," said Patty simply. "She can't leave us on the corner."
They clattered downstairs, but wavered an instant in the friendly darkness of the doorway; there was no time, however, for maidenly hesitations, and taking their courage in both hands, they plunged into the Saturday afternoon crowd that thronged Main Street.
"Oh, Mama! Quick! Look at the Gypsies," a little boy squealed as the two pushed past.
"Heavens!" Conny whispered. "I feel like a circus parade."
"Hurry!" Patty panted, taking her by the hand and beginning to run. "The car's stopped and they're getting in—Wait! Wait!" She frenziedly waved the tambourine above her head.
An express wagon at the crossing blocked their progress. The last of the Eleven Thousand Virgins climbed aboard, without once glancing over her shoulder; and the car, unheeding, clanged away, and became a yellow spot in the distance. The two Gypsies stood on the corner and stared at one another in blank interrogation.
"I haven't a cent—have you?"
"Not one."
"How are we going to get home?"
"I haven't an idea."
Patty felt her elbow jostled. She turned to find young John Drew Dominick Murphy, a protégé of the school, and an intimate acquaintance of her own, regarding her with impish delight.
"Hey, youse! Give us a song and dance."
"At least our friends don't recognize us," said Conny, drawing what comfort she could from her incognito.
Quite a crowd had gathered by now, and it was rapidly growing larger. Pedestrians had to make a detour into the street in order to get past.
"It wouldn't take us long," said Patty, a spark of mischief breaking through the blankness of her face, "to earn money enough for a carriage—you thump the tambourine and I'll dance the sailor's hornpipe."
"Patty! Behave yourself." Conny for once brought a dampening supply of common sense to bear on her companion. "We're going to graduate in another week. For goodness' sake, don't let's get expelled first."
She grasped her by the elbow and shoved her insistently down a side street. John Drew Murphy and his friends followed for several blocks, but having gazed their fill, and perceiving that the Gypsies had no entertainment to offer, they gradually dropped away.