Patty Blossom

Excerpt

SAM BLANEY

  "Patty, Patty, pit-a-pat,
  Grinning like a Chessy Cat,

if you don't stop looking so everlasting cheerful, I'll throw something at you!"

"Throw," returned Patty, as her grin perceptibly and purposely widened to the full extent of her scarlet lips.

"All right!" and Elise threw a sofa cushion and another and another, following them up with a knitted afghan, a silk slumber robe, and then beginning on a pile of newspapers.

Patty, who was lounging on a broad divan, protected her face with a down pillow, and contentedly endured the avalanche.

Then, as the enemy's stock of missiles gave out, she sat up, flinging the impedimenta right and left, and her smiling face and tumbled curls triumphantly braved further assault.

"It's snowing like the very dickens," Elise declared, disconsolately.

"I don't see any snow," and Patty shut her blue eyes tight.

"Of course you don't, you old goose! If a roaring Bengal tiger stood in front of you, with full intent of eating you at once, you'd shut your eyes and say, 'There isn't any tiger there.' That is, if you had time to get the words out before you slipped down his throat."

Leisurely, Patty got up, shook her rumpled skirts, and walked to the window.

"It does look like snow," she observed, critically eyeing the landscape.

"Look like snow!" cried Elise; "it's a blizzard, that's what it is!"

"Well, doesn't a blizzard look like snow? It does to me. And I don't know anything nicer than a whole long day in the house. I'm having the time of my life."

Patty threw herself into a big armchair, in front of the blazing log fire, and contentedly held out her slippered feet to the glowing warmth.

"But we were going to play tennis, and——"

"My dear child, tennis will keep. And what's the use of growling? As you remark, it is a young blizzard, and we can't possibly stop it, so let's make the best of it, and have what is known in the kiddy-books as Indoor Pastimes."

"Patty, you're enough to exasperate a saint! You and your eternal cheerfulness!"

"All right, anything to please," and Patty assumed a doleful expression, drew down the corners of her mouth, and wrung her hands in mock despair.

"Isn't it mean," she wailed; "here's this horrid, hateful old snowstorm, and we can't go outdoors or anything! I'm mad as a hornet, as a hatter, as a wet hen, as a March hare, as a—as hops, as—what else gets awful mad, Elise?"

"I shall, if you continue to act like an idiot!"

"My good heavens!" and Patty rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, "there's no pleasing her—positively no pleasing her! What to do! What to do!"

But Elise's face had cleared up, and as she looked from the window, she smiled gaily.

"He's coming!" she cried, "Sam's coming!"

Patty hastily adjusted her dignity and sat up with a formal air to greet the visitor, while Elise scrabbled up the sofa cushions and newspapers.

The girls were down at Lakewood. Patty was the guest of Elise, whose family had taken a cottage there for the season. That is, it was called a cottage, but was in reality an immense house, most comfortably and delightfully appointed....