"But I'm only fourteen," protested Patty, "and I don't want to be grown up for years yet. Your hair looks lovely, but I like you better with it down, as it was this afternoon."
"Don't say so before mamma, or shell insist on my wearing it so."
When the girls entered the drawing-room, Mrs. St. Clair smiled amiably at her pretty niece, and bade her come to her side.
"My dear," she said, "you are a pretty little girl, and a sweet one, I've no doubt, but your name I do not like at all. I can't abide nicknames, so I'm going to call you by your full name. What is it, Martha?"
"Martha!" exclaimed Patty in surprise, "oh, no, Aunt Isabel, I was named for my great-grandmother. My name is Patricia."
"Oh, how lovely," cried Aunt Isabel, kissing her niece in the exuberance of her delight. "We will all call you Patricia. It is a beautiful name and suits you extremely well. You must stand very straight, and acquire dignified manners in order to live up to it."
This made merry Patty laugh, but she offered no objection to her aunt's decision, and promised to sign her name Patricia whenever she wrote it, and to make no further use of the despised nickname while staying at Villa Rosa. Ethelyn was pleased too, at the change.
"Oh," she said, "now your name is as pretty as mine and Florelle's, and we have the prettiest names in Elmbridge. Here comes Reginald, you haven't seen him yet."
Reginald St. Clair, a lad of thirteen, advanced without a trace of shyness and greeted his new cousin.
"So it is Patricia," he said, as he took her hand; "I heard them rechristening you. How do you do, Cousin Patricia?"
"Very well, I thank you," she replied, smiling, "and though I meet you the last of my new cousins, you are not the least," and she glanced up at him, for Reginald was a tall boy for his age, taller than either Ethelyn or Patty.
"Not the least in any way, as you'll soon find out if you stay with us,
Cousin Patricia."
Patty almost laughed at this boastful assumption of importance, but seeing that the boy was in earnest, she humored him by saying:
"As the only son, I suppose you are the flower of the family."
Then dinner was announced, and the beautiful dining-room was a new pleasure to the little visitor. She was rapidly making the discovery that riches and luxury were very agreeable, and she viewed with delight the handsome table sparkling with fine glass and silver.
"Well, Patricia," said Uncle Robert, who had been warned against using the objectionable nickname, "how do you like Villa Rosa so far?"
"Oh, I think it is beautiful, Uncle Robert. Every room is handsomer than the last, and my own room I like best of all. You're awfully good, Aunt Isabel, to give me such a lovely room, and to spend so much thought and time arranging it for me."
"And money, too," said her aunt, smiling. "That rug in your room, Patricia, cost four hundred dollars."
"Did it really?" said Patty, with such a look of amazement, almost horror, that they all laughed.
You see, Patty had never been used to such expensive rugs, still less had she been accustomed to hearing the prices of things mentioned so freely.
"Oh, Aunt Isabel, I'd rather not have it then. Really, I'd much rather have a cheaper one. Suppose I should spoil it in some way."
"Nonsense, my dear, spoil it if you like, I'll buy you another," said Uncle
Robert, grandly.
"Never mind rugs," interrupted Reginald. "I say, mother, aren't you going to give a party for Patricia?"
"Yes, I think so," answered his mother, "but I haven't decided yet what kind of an affair it shall be."
"Oh, have a smashing big party, and invite everybody."
"No, Reginald," said Ethelyn, "I hate those big parties, they're no fun at all. It isn't going to be a party anyway. It's going to be a tea. Didn't you say so, mamma? A tea is a much nicer way to introduce Patricia than a party."
"Ho, ho," laughed her brother, "a tea! why they're the most stupid things in the world. Nobody wants to come to a tea."
"They do so," retorted Ethelyn, "you don't know anything about society. Teas are ever so much stylisher than evening entertainments, aren't they, mamma?"
"Well, I don't know," said Mrs. St. Clair, doubtfully, "the Crandons gave a tea when their cousin visited them."
"Ho, the Crandons," sneered Ethelyn, "they're nobody at all; why, they've only got one horse."
"I know it," said her mother, "but they're awfully exclusive. They won't speak to hardly anybody."
"Then don't speak to them," said Mr. St. Clair. "I just guess we're as good as the Crandons any day in the week. I don't know as you'd better invite them, my dear."
"They wouldn't come if you did," said Reginald.
"They would so," snapped Ethelyn, "they'd jump at the chance."
"I bet they wouldn't!"
"I bet they would! You don't know everything in the world."
"Neither do you!"
"Hush, children," said Mrs. St. Clair, mildly, "your Cousin Patricia will think you very rude and unmannerly if you quarrel so. Florelle is the only one who is behaving nicely, aren't you, darling?"
Florelle beamed at this, and looked like a little cherub, until Reginald slyly took a cake from her plate.
"Oh-h-h!" screamed Florelle, bursting into tears, "he took my cakie, he did,give it to me!" and she began pounding her brother with her small fists.
But Reginald had eaten it, and no other cake on the plate would pacify the angry child.
"No, no," she cried, "I want that same oneit had a green nut on it,and
I wa-a-ant it!"
"But brother can't give it to you, baby, he's eaten it," said her father, vainly trying to console her with other dainties.
But Florelle continued to scream, and Mrs. St Clair was obliged to summon the nurse and have her taken up-stairs.
"Well, that's a relief," said Ethelyn, as the struggling child was carried away. "I told you you'd hear her yell pretty often, Patricia."
Patty felt rather embarrassed, and didn't know what to say; she was beginning to think Villa Rosa had some thorns as well as roses.
After dinner, as they sat round the great fireplace in the library, Mrs.
St. Clair announced:
"I have made up my mind. I will give a tea for Patricia in order that she may be properly introduced to the Elmbridge people,the best of them,and then later, we will have a large party for her."
This pleased everybody and amiability was restored, and all fell to making plans for the future pleasures of their guest.
When Patty went to her room that night, she was so tired out with the excitements of the day, that she was glad to go to rest.
But first of all she opened the little box that her father had given her at parting. Was it possible that she had left her father only the day before? Already it seemed like weeks.
With eager fingers she broke the seals and tore off the paper wrappings, and found to her great delight an ivory miniature of her mother.
She had seen the picture often; it had been one of her father's chief treasures, and she prized it the more highly as she thought what a sacrifice it must have been for him to give it up, even to his child.
It was in a Florentine gold frame, and Patty placed it in the centre of her dressing-table, and then sat down and gazed earnestly at it.
She saw a sweet, girlish face, which was very like her own, though she didn't recognize the resemblance.
"Dear mother," she said softly, "I will try to be just such a little girl as you would have wished me to be if you had lived to love me."
CHAPTER V
A MINUET
"Mamma," said Ethelyn, the next morning at breakfast, "I'm going to take a holiday from lessons to-day, because Patricia has just come, and she doesn't want to begin to study right away."