“We won’t come! we’ll none of us ever speak to you again! we’ll cross your name off the books and forget that you ever existed!”
It was so seldom that the gentle Marian became excited over anything that Patty felt really sorry, and tried her best to put the matter in its most attractive light.
“Don’t talk like that, Marian,” she said; “papa has decided that we are to go, and so there’s no use in discussing that part of it. Now the thing to do is to find the bright side and look on that.”
This was Patty Fairfield’s philosophy in a nutshell. All her life she had not only unquestioningly accepted the inevitable, but had immediately found its bright side and ignored all others. This was partly the cause and partly the effect of her bright sunshiny disposition and her uniformly happy and contented frame of mind.
“Just think, Marian,” she went on, “you can come to see me and we can have lots of fun. We’ll have all the girls come over while you’re there, and it will be jolly to have a Tea Club meeting in a hotel.”
“Yes, that will be fun,” assented Marian, “but after the meeting we’ll all have to come home and leave you there. I suppose I’m selfish, but I don’t care! I don’t want you to go away from Vernondale, Patty Fairfield, and I think you’re a mean old thing to go!”
It seemed impossible to do anything with Marian in her present mood, so Patty turned to Aunt Alice for sympathy.
“I feel quite as sorry to have you go as Marian does,” said Mrs. Elliott, looking lovingly at her niece, “though I don’t express myself in such violent language. But Brother Fred has been talking to me and he has convinced me that it is a good plan in many ways. So I am going to give you up bravely, and I think that after a while Marian will be able to face the matter more calmly.”
“I don’t think it’s half bad,” broke in Frank Elliott; “of course we shall miss Patty like the dickens, but I shall spend much of my time visiting her in New York.”
“Do,” said Patty, delighted at this unlooked-for support; “come just as often as you like and I’ll guarantee that you’ll have a good time.”