After dinner they adjourned to the library, and the girls fell to making plans for the Tea Club, which was to meet there next day.
"I do think," said Marian, "it's awfully mean of Helen Preston to insist on having a bazaar. They're so old-fashioned and silly; and we could get up some novel entertainment that would make just as much money, and be a lot more fun besides."
"I know it," said Patty. "I just hate bazaars; with their everlasting
Rebeccas at the Well, and flower-girls, and fish-ponds, and gipsy-tents.
But, then, what could we have?"
"Why, there are two or three of those little acting shows that Elsie
Morris told us about. I think they would be a great deal nicer."
"What sort of acting shows are you talking about, my children; and what is it all to be?" asked Mr. Fairfield, who was always interested in Patty's plans.
"Why, papa, it's the Tea Club, you know; and we're going to have an entertainment to make money for the Day Nursery—oh, you just ought to see those cunning little babies! And they haven't room enough, or nurses enough, or anything. And you know the Tea Club never has done any good in the world; we've never done a thing but sit around and giggle; and so we thought, if we could make a hundred dollars, wouldn't it be nice?"
"The hundred dollars would be very nice, indeed; but just how are you going to make it? What's this about an acting play?"
"Oh, not a regular play,—just a sort of dialogue thing, you know; and we'd have it in Library Hall, and Aunt Alice and a lot of her friends would be patronesses."
"It would seem to me," said Frank, "that Miss Patty Fairfield, now being an old and experienced housekeeper, could qualify as a patroness herself."
"No, thank you," said Patty. "I'm housekeeper for my father, and in my father's house, but to the great outside world I'm still a shy and bashful young miss."