They were spry, and were fortunate enough to catch a fast train, so that by four o’clock they were at Aunt Alice’s.
Marian had gone to the Tea Club, which met that day at Elsie Morris’s, and after waiting only for a few words with Aunt Alice and the little children, Patty flew over to Elsie’s.
Such a hullabaloo as greeted her arrival! As Patty said afterwards, the girls couldn’t have made more fuss over her if she had been Queen of the Cannibal Islands.
“I’m so glad you came,” said Ethel Holmes, for the dozenth time, as she hovered around Patty; “now tell us every single thing you’ve done since you’ve been in New York. Are the girls nice? How do you like your school? Do you belong to a Tea Club? How do you like your hotel? Don’t you miss us girls?”
“Do wait a minute, Ethel,” cried Patty, laughing, “before you go any further. That is, if you want your questions answered. I guess I’ll answer the last one first. Of course I miss you girls awfully. Not but what the girls there are nice enough, but I want you, too. I wish you’d all come and live in New York.”
Marian said very little, but sat and held Patty’s hand, as if afraid she might run away. Marian was devotedly attached to her cousin, and missed her more than anybody had any idea of, excepting Aunt Alice.
“But tell us about it all,” said Polly Stevens; “do you go to the theatre every night?”
“Goodness, no!” exclaimed Patty; “of course not. I don’t go at all, except when papa took me to a matinée once, and he says I may go two or three more times during the winter. No, Ethel, we don’t have a Tea Club, but we have a club called the Grigs.”
“What a crazy name!” exclaimed Elsie; “what does it mean?”
So Patty explained all about the Grigs, and their aims, and their work, and play.