Then the guests crowded about with gay greetings and good wishes.
“I shall miss you, Patty,” said Phil Van Reypen, his face clouded at the thought.
“Good for you, Philip, do, please! But let me tell you a great secret; something you don’t dream of,—yet.”
Patty smiled mysteriously, and whispered low, in Philip’s ear:
“Your girl is waiting for you. She doesn’t know it,—you don’t know it,—but I do! When I come back from France—I hope everybody will know it!”
Van Reypen looked a little self-conscious, but gaily protested he didn’t know what she was talking about.
And then, the time came to go. Like a dream, Patty saw the people all about; saw herself being whisked upstairs and put into a travelling gown; saw Nan and Helen packing things; saw a maze of faces, a whirl of good-byes—and then,—she was alone with Farnsworth in a motor-car—and they were rolling away, as the jubilant orchestra played “For the Flag and the Girl Back Home.”
“How did Father and Nan get there?” Patty asked, as she emerged from her husband’s first embrace.
“I sent for ’em. Telephoned early this morning, and they just made it.”
“Early this morning! You hadn’t asked me to go, then!”