Excerpt
FLOWERS!
“Patty, do come along and get your luncheon before everything grows cold!”
“‘And the stars are old, And the leaves of the judgment book unfold,’” chanted Patty, who had just learned this new song, and was apt to sing it at unexpected moments. She sat on the floor in the middle of the long drawing-room of her New York home. To say she was surrounded by flowers, faintly expresses it. She was hemmed in, barricaded, nearly smothered in flowers.
They were or had been in enormous florist’s boxes, and as fast as Patty opened the boxes and read the cards which accompanied the blossoms, Jane took the boxes away.
It was the great occasion of Patty’s début, and in accordance with the social custom, all her friends had sent her flowers as a message of congratulation.
“You certainly have heaps of friends,” said Elise, who was helping arrange the bouquets.
“Friends!” cried Patty; “nobody could have as many friends as this! These flowers must be also from my enemies, my casual acquaintances, and indeed from utter strangers! I think the whole hilarious populace of New York has gone mad on the subject of sending flowers!”
Even as she spoke, Jane came in with several more boxes, followed by Miller, fairly staggering under an enormous box that was almost too much for one man to carry. Behind him was Nan, who went straight to Patty and held out both hands to assist her to rise.
“Patty,” she said, “if you don’t come out this minute, you never can get out! A few more of these boxes, and the door will be completely blocked up.”
“That’s so, Nan,” and Patty scrambled to her feet. “Come on, girls, let’s gather our foodings while we may. These flowers will keep; but I shudder to think of the accumulation when we come back from luncheon!”
“I didn’t know there were so many flowers in the world,” said Mona Galbraith, who paused to look back into the drawing-room.
“There aren’t,” said Patty solemnly; “it’s an optical illusion. Don’t you know how the Indian jugglers make you see flowers growing, when there aren’t any flowers there? Well, this is like that.”
Following Nan, Patty’s pretty stepmother, the three girls, arm in arm, danced along to the dining-room, quite hungry enough to do justice to the tempting luncheon they found there.
All the morning they had been untying the flower boxes and making a list of the donors.
“Just think of the notes of thanks I have to write,” said Patty, groaning at the outlook.
“Wish we could help you,” said Elise, “but I suppose you have to do those yourself.”
“Yes; and I think it will take me the rest of my natural life! What’s the use of ‘coming out,’ if I have got to go right in again, and write all those notes? Why, there are hundreds!”
“Thousands!” corrected Elise. And Mona said, “Looks to me like millions!”
“Who sent that last big box, Patty?” asked Nan; “the one that just came.”
“Dunno, Nancy; probably the Czar of Russia or the King of the Cannibal Islands....