All of these matters Patty attended to with punctilious care and she loved to think that she was helping her Little Billee and also her country.
“One doesn’t read one’s love letters aloud,—naturally!” and Patty looked down and blushed.
“Of course not!” cried Helen; “I should say not! And especially yours! Oh, I know! You’ve read bits to me now and then, and if what you omit is any more—ahem—well, turtle-dovish than what you do read, and I’ve no doubt it is——”
“It is,” Patty returned, with unmoved equanimity. “What’s the use of being engaged if one may not be what you call turtle-dovey! I’m not a bit embarrassed about it. But for my part, I think Mrs. Doremus was decidedly over-curious and forward about me and my affairs.”
“Unladylike,” put in Van Reypen.
“How you harp on that word!” exclaimed Patty. “I don’t think it was so much that, as a lack of good breeding——”
“Oh, come now, Patty, didn’t you catch on?”
“Catch on to what?”
“Why, that Mrs. Doremus was no lady,—because,—she was a man.”
“What!”