Patty's Butterfly Days

I am going to the mountains,
Where I've never been before.
I shall tramp the mountain pathways,
I shall climb the mountain's peak;
I don't want to stay in this place,
So I'll go away next week!"

"All right for you!" declared Jack. "Go on, and joy go with you! But don't you send me any picture postcards of yourself lost in a perilous mountain fastness,—'cause I won't come and rescue you. So there!"

"What is a mountain fastness?" demanded Patty. "It sounds frisky."

"It isn't," replied Jack; "it's a deep gorge, with ice-covered walls and no way out; and as the darkness falls, dreadful growls are heard on all sides, and wild animals prowl—and prowl—and prow-ow-owl!"

Jack's voice grew deep and terrible, as he suggested the awful situation, but Patty laughed gaily as she said:

"Well, as long as they keep on prowling, they certainly can't harm me. It all sounds rather interesting. At any rate, the ice-covered walls sound cool. You must admit Spring Beach is a hot place."

"All places are hot in hot weather," observed Beatrice, sapiently; "when there's an ocean breeze, it's lovely and cool here."

"Yes," agreed Lora, "when there IS. But there 'most generally ISN'T.

To-day, I'm sure the thermometer must be about two hundred."

"That's your heated imagination," said Jack. "It's really about eighty-four in the shade."

"Let's move around into the shade, then," said Patty. "This side of the veranda is getting sunny."

So the young people went round the corner of the house to a cooler spot, and Nan expressed her intention of going down to the train to meet Mr. Fairfield.

"You people," began Patty, after Nan had left them, "mustn't talk as you do about my going away, before my stepmother. You see, we're going because she wants to go, but it isn't polite to rub it in!"

"I know it," said Beatrice, "but I forgot it. But, I say, Patty, I think it's too bad for you to be trailed off there just to please her."

"Not at all, Bee. She has stayed here three months to please me, and turn about is fair play."

"It's Fairfield play, at any rate," put in Jack. "You're a trump, Patty, to take it so sweetly. I wish you didn't have to go, though."

"So say we all of us," declared Lora, but Patty ordered them, rather earnestly, to drop the subject and not refer to it again.

"You must write me all about the Pageant, girls," she went on.

"Can't I write too, though I'm not a girl?" asked Jack.

"No!" cried Patty, holding up her hands in pretended horror. "I couldn't receive a letter from a young man!"

"Oh, try it," said Jack, laughing. "I'll help you. You've no idea how easy it is! Have you never had a letter from a man?"

"From papa," said Patty, putting the tip of her finger in her mouth, and speaking babyishly.

"Papa, nothing! You get letters from those New York chaps, don't you, now?"

"Who New York chaps?" asked Patty, opening her eyes wide, with an over-innocent stare.

"Oh, that Harper kid and that Farrington cub and that Hepworth old gentleman!"

"What pretty pet names you call them! Yes, I get letters from them, but they're my lifelong friends."

"That's the position I'm applying for. Don't you need one more L. L. F.?" But Patty had turned to the girls, and they were counting up what few parties were to take place before Patty went away.

"I'd have a farewell party myself," said Patty, thoughtfully, "but there's so little time now, and Nan's pretty busy. I hate to bother her with it. You see, we leave next week,—Thursday."

"And our house party comes that very day!" said Beatrice, regretfully.

"And Captain Sayre is coming. He's the most stunning man! He's our second cousin, and older than we are, but he's just grand, isn't he, Lora?"

"Yes; and he'd adore Patty. Oh, girlie, DON'T go!"

"I think I'll kidnap Patty," said Jack. "The day they start, I'll waylay the party as they board the train, and carry Patty off by force."

"You'd have to get out a force of militia," laughed Patty. "My father Fairfield is of a sharp-eyed disposition. You couldn't carry off his daughter under his nose."

"Strategy!" whispered Jack, in a deep, mysterious voice. "I could manage it, somehow, I'm sure."

"Well, it wouldn't do any good. He'd just come back after me, and we'd take the next train. But, oh, girls, I do wish I could stay here! I never had such a disappointment before. I've grown to love this place; and all you people; and my dear Camilla!" Patty's blue eyes filled with real tears, as she dropped her light and bantering manner, and spoke earnestly.

"It's a shame!" declared Jack, as he noted the drops trembling on the long, curled lashes. "Come on, girls, I'm going home before I express myself too strongly."

So Jack and the Sayre girls went away, and Patty went up to her own room.

CHAPTER II

MONA'S PLAN

That night, when Patty was alone in her own room, she threw herself into a rocking chair, and rocked violently, as was her habit, when she had anything to bother her. She looked about at the pretty room, furnished with all her dear and cherished belongings.

"To go away from all this," she thought, "and be mewed up in a little bare room, with a few sticks of horrid old furniture, and nowhere to put things away decently!"

She glanced at her room wardrobes and numerous chiffoniers and dressing-tables.

"Live in a trunk, I s'pose," she went on to herself; "all my best frocks in a mess of wrinkles, all my best hats smashed to windmills! No broad ocean to look at! Nothing but mountains with trees all over their sides! Nothing to do but walk up rocky, steep paths to a spring, take a drink of water, and come stumbling down again! In the evenings, dress up, and promenade eighty thousand feet of veranda, AS ADVERTISED!"

Roused to a frenzy by her own self-pity and indignation, Patty got up and stalked about the room. She flung off her pretty summer frock, and slipped on a blue silk kimono. Then she sat down in front of her dressing-table to brush her hair for the night.

She drew out the pins, and great curly masses came tumbling down around her shoulders. Patty's hair was truly golden, and did not turn darker as she grew older.

She brushed away slowly, and looked at herself in the mirror. What she saw must have surprised her, for she dropped her brush in astonishment.

"Well, Patricia Fairfield!" she exclaimed to her own reflection. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! YOU, who are supposed to be of amiable disposition, YOU whom people call 'Sunshine,' because of your good nature, YOU who have every joy and every blessing that heart can wish, you look like a sour-faced, cross-grained, disgruntled old maid! So there now! And, Miss, do you want to know what I think of you?" She picked up her hair brush, and shook it at the flushed, angry face in the mirror. "Well, I think you're a monster of selfishness! You're a dragon of ingratitude! And a griffin of cross-patchedness! Now, Miss, WILL you drop this attitude of injured innocence, and act like a civilised human being?"

Patty was a little over hard on herself. She hadn't at all exhibited such traits as she charged herself with, but she was not a girl to do things by halves. She sat, calmly looking at her own face, until the lines smoothed themselves out of her forehead, the dimples came back to her cheeks, and the laughter to her blue eyes.