On Saturday, when Patty saw the Harts in the dining-room, she asked them to come to see her that afternoon. Jeannette was going out with her mother, but the other two willingly accepted the invitation.

“I’ll ask Lorraine, too,” said Patty, “and we’ll make tea and have a real cosey time.”

“The tea sounds cheerful,” said Adelaide, “but if you’re going to have Lorraine, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.”

“Oh, then of course I won’t ask her,” said Patty, quickly, for she did not think it just to the others to insist upon Lorraine’s presence; “I can have her some other time just as well. But Clementine Morse said she would come and see me this afternoon.”

“That’s all right,” said Editha; “everybody likes Clementine.”

In a gay mood Patty prepared for her little tea-party. She easily persuaded Grandma to send out for a box of marshmallows and a big bag of chestnuts. “For,” she said, “that lovely wood fire is just the very place to toast marshmallows and roast chestnuts. I know you’ll like Clementine Morse, Grandma, she’s so sweet and pretty, and I know she’ll like you—for the very same reasons.” Patty paused in her preparations to bestow a butterfly kiss on Grandma’s forehead, and then went on arranging her dainty tea-table.

“It’ll be almost like the Tea Club,” she said, as she piled up the sugar lumps and cut thin slices of lemon. “I suppose they’re having a meeting this afternoon, and Marian is being president. Do you know, Grandma, sometimes I get a little homesick for the Tea Club.”

“I should think you would, my dear. The Vernondale girls are a nice set. But perhaps you can get up a Tea Club here.”

“I’d like that,” said Patty, “but the girls are all so different here. They seem divided, and in Vernondale we were all united, just like one big family.”

The Harts came early. Editha brought a piece of exquisite fancy-work. She was a dainty, fragile girl, like a piece of Dresden china, and Patty looked at her in admiration as she deftly worked at the beautiful embroidery.

“What clever girls you are,” said Patty; “I couldn’t do anything like that, if I tried; and I couldn’t make the things Adelaide makes.”

“Probably you can do a lot of things that we can’t do,” said Editha, as she threaded her needle.

“I can do lots of things,” said Patty, laughing, “but I can’t do anything very well. I’m a Jack-of-all-trades. The only thing I really understand is housekeeping; and here, of course, I’ve no opportunity for that.”

“Housekeeping!” exclaimed Adelaide, “do you really know how to do that? Wherever did you learn?”

“I used to keep house in my home in New Jersey,” said Patty, quite ignoring the fact that Lorraine had warned her against mentioning her country home.

But Adelaide apparently did not share Lorraine’s views on this subject.

“How lovely!” she cried. “Did you have a whole house of your own, where you could drive tacks in the wall and do whatever you pleased?”

“Yes,” said Patty, “and I had entire charge of it. I always ordered everything; and I can cook, too.”

“Then you’re cleverer than we are,” said Editha, with an air of decision; “cooking is much more difficult than embroidering centre-pieces or nailing boards together.”

“Speak for yourself,” cried Adelaide; “of course anybody can do embroidery, but it isn’t so awful easy to nail boards together properly!”

“Why do you do it then?” retorted her sister; “I’m sure nobody wants the ridiculous things you make.”

“All right then,” said Adelaide, “give me back that book-rack I gave you yesterday. I’ll be glad to have it for myself.”

“Injun giver!” cried Editha, looking at her sister, angrily at first and then breaking into a laugh. “Take it, if you want it. I don’t care for it.”

“Wild horses couldn’t get that thing away from her,” said Adelaide to Patty; “she’s just crazy over it.”

“I am not!” cried Editha; “it’s nothing but useless rubbish.”

“All right, then I will take it, and I’ll give it to Patty. And just you wait till I ever make you anything again, Editha Hart!”

“I won’t have to wait long,” said Editha, smiling good-naturedly once more; and then suddenly Adelaide laughed, too, and harmony was restored.

Soon Clementine Morse came.

“My brother brought me,” she explained, as she came in, “and he’s coming for me again at five o’clock.”

Patty introduced her new friend to Grandma, and then Clementine greeted the Hart girls gaily.

“Isn’t it lovely,” she exclaimed, “for you all to live in this same house together! Where you can visit each other whenever you like, without waiting for a brother to come and bring you or take you home.”

“We’d wait a long while for our brother,” said Adelaide, laughing, “and so would Patty. You’re lucky to have a brother, Clem.”

“Yes, I know it; and Clifford is an awful nice boy, but just so sure as I want him he wants to be going somewhere else. Still, he’s pretty good to me. Oh, what lovely marshmallows! are you going to toast them on hat-pins?”

“Good guesser!” cried Patty, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it right now. I’ll toast yours, Editha, and pop them into your mouth, so you won’t get your fingers sticky.”

“No, thank you,” said Editha, rolling up her work; “half the fun is in the toasting. Let’s all do it together.”

“We didn’t wear any hats,” said Adelaide, “so we haven’t any hat-pins with us.”

“That’s one of the disadvantages of living in the same hotel, after all,” said Clementine; “of course having no hat-pins, you can’t be in the toasting party at all.”

But Grandma came to the rescue with some knitting-needles, and soon four laughing girls with very red cheeks were sitting on the floor in front of the fire, and the marshmallows were rapidly disappearing. The chestnuts were voted to be nearly as much fun as the confections, and the feast was at its height when the doorbell rang and Kenn............