“No, my boy; I lost my taste for garden parties some years ago. But it’s a fine setting for you young people, and I hope Emmeline will take you all.”
“Mother said she’d see about it,” said Mabel, “and that’s always the same as ‘yes.’ If it’s going to be ‘no,’ she says, ‘I’ll think it over.’”
“It’s a great thing to understand your mother-tongue so well,” said Patty, laughing; “now I shouldn’t have known those distinctions.”
“We have a wonderful talent for languages,” said Sinclair, gravely. “Indeed, we have a language of our own. Shall I teach it to you?”
“You might try,” said Patty, “but I’m not at all clever as a linguist.”
“You may not learn it easily, but it can be taught in one sentence. It consists in merely using the initial of the word instead of the word itself.”
“But so many words begin with the same initial,” said Patty, bewildered at the idea.
“Yes, but it’s ever so much easier than you’d think. Now listen. Wouldn’t you understand me if I said: ‘D y w t g t t g p?’”
“Say it again, please, and say it slowly.”
Sinclair repeated the letters, and Patty clapped her hands, crying: “Yes, yes, of course I understand. You mean ‘Do you want to go to the garden party?’ Now, listen to me while I answer: Y I w t g i i d r.”
“Good!” exclaimed Mabel. “You said: ‘Yes, I want to go, if it doesn’t rain.’ Oh, you are a quick pupil.”
“But those are such easy sentences,” said Patty, as she considered the matter.
“That’s the point,” said Bob, “most sentences, at least, the ones we use most, are easy. If I should meet you unexpectedly, and say H d y d? you’d know I meant How do you do? Or if I took leave, and said G b, you’d understand good-bye. Those are the simplest possible examples. Now, on the other hand, if I were to read you a long speech from the morning paper, you’d probably miss many of the long words, but that’s the other extreme. We’ve talked in initials for years, and rarely are we uncertain as to the sense, though we may sometimes skip a word here and there.”
“But what good is it?” asked Patty.
“No good at all,” admitted Bob; “but it’s fun. And after you’re used to it, you can talk that way so fast that any one listening couldn’t guess what you are saying. Sometimes when we’re riding on an omnibus, or anything like that, it’s fun to talk initials and mystify the people.”
“D y o d t?” said Patty, her eyes twinkling.
“Yes, we often do that,” returned Bob, greatly gratified at the rapid progress of the new pupil. “You must be fond of puzzles, to catch this up so quickly.”
“I am,” said Patty. “I’ve guessed puzzles ever since I was a little girl. I always solve all I can find in the papers, and sometimes I take prizes for them.”
“We do that too,” said Mabel; “and sometimes we make puzzles and send them to the papers and they print them. Let’s make some for each other this evening.”
After dinner the young people gathered round the table in the pleasant library, and were soon busy with paper and pencils. Patty found the Hartleys a match for her in quickness and ingenuity, but she was able to guess as great a proportion of their puzzles as they of hers.
After amusing themselves with square words and double acrostics, they drifted to conundrums, and Bob asked:
“Which letter of the Dutch alphabet spells an English lady of rank?”
“That’s not fair,” objected Patty, “because I don’t know the Dutch alphabet.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Mabel, “you can guess it just as well without.”
“Indeed I can’t, and besides I don’t know the names of all the English ladies of rank.”
“That doesn’t matter either,” said Sinclair, smiling; “it spells a title, not a name; and one you know very well.”
“I can’t guess it, anyway,” said Patty, after a few moment’s thought. “I give it up; tell me.”
“Why, Dutch S,” said Bob, and Patty agreed that it was a good catch.
“Now, I’ll catch you,” said Patty. “You all know your London pretty well, I suppose, and are familiar with the places of interest. Well, Mabel, why is your nose like St. Paul’s?”
Mabel thought hard, and so did the boys.
“Is my nose like St. Paul’s, too?” asked Bob, thoughtfully, stroking his well-shaped feature.
Patty looked at it critically. “Yes,” she said, “and so is Sinclair’s. But why?”
At last they gave it up, and Patty said, triumphantly, “Because it is made of flesh and blood.”
They all screamed with laughter, for they quickly saw the point, and realised that it was the historic character referred to, and not the cathedral.
“Here’s one,” said Sinclair: “Where did the Prince of Wales go on his eleventh birthday?” But Patty was quite quick enough for this. “Into his twelfth year,” she answered promptly. “And now listen to this: A man walking out at night, met a beggar asking alms. The man gave him ten cents. He met another beggar and gave him fifteen cents. What time was it?”
“Time for him to go home,” declared Bob, but Patty said that was not the right answer.
“Springtime,” guessed Mabel, “because the man was in such a good humor.”
“No,” said Patty, “it was quarter to two.”
Her hearers looked utterly blank at this, and, suddenly realising that they were not very familiar with American coins, Patty explained the joke. They saw it, of course, but seemed to think it not very good, and Sinclair whimsically insisted on calling it, “a shilling to Bob,” which he said was equally nonsensical.
“Give us one of your poetry ones, Grandy,” said Bob to Mrs. Cromarty, who sat by, quietly enjoying the young people’s fun.
“Miss Fairfield may not care for the old-fashioned enigma, but I will offer this one,” and in her fine, clear voice the old lady recited her verse with elocutionary effect:
The others had heard this before, and when Patty promptly guessed “Bark,” Mrs. Cromarty was distinctly pleased with her quick-wittedness.
Then lemonade and wafery little cakes were brought in, that the puzzlers might refresh themselves.
The atmosphere of the Hartley household was very pleasant, and Patty felt much more at home than she had ever expected to feel among English people. She made allusion to this, and Bob said: “Oh, this place isn’t homey at all, compared with our real home. You must come to see us down in the country, mustn’t she, mother?”
“I should be very glad to welcome you there, my dear,” said Mrs. Hartley, smiling at Patty, “and I trust it may be arranged. We have this apartment for only a few weeks longer, and then we shall go back to Leicester.”
“I’m in no haste to go,” declared Mabel. “I love Cromarty Manor, but I want to stay in London a little longer. But when we do go, Patty, you surely must visit us there.”
“Indeed I will, if I can manage it. My parents want me to go with them to Switzerland, but I’d much prefer to spend the summer in England. I have ever so many delightful invitations to country houses, and they seem to me a lot more attractive than travelling about. I suppose I ought to care more about seeing places, but I don’t.”
“You’re quite young enough yet,” said Mrs. Hartley, “to look forward to travelling in future years. I think some experiences of English life would be quite as advantageous for you.”
“I’ll tell father you said that,” said Patty. “Then perhaps he’ll let me have my own way. But he usually does that, anyway.”
“You’d love Cromarty Manor,” said Bob, enthusiastically. “It’s so beautiful in spring and early summer.”
“But not half as grand as other houses where Patty’s invited,” said Mabel, and again the shadow crossed her face that seemed always to come when she spoke of her country home.
“Grandeur doesn’t count in the country,” declared Bob. “That belongs to London life. Other places may be larger or in better condition than ours, but they can’t be more beautiful.”
“That is true,” said Mrs. Cromarty, in her quiet way, which always seemed to decide a disputed point. And then it was time to go home, and Mrs. Hartley sent Patty away in her carriage, with a maid to accompany her. The woman was middle-aged, with a pleasant voice and a capable manner. She chatted affably with Patty, and dilated a little on the glories of the Cromarty family.