“Of course, I know it, Patty. Give me a minute to think. I hate to go home and give up our nice day here. Maybe we can fix it. I’ll go and see the housekeeper.”
“Oh, that would be all right, Phil,” and Patty’s lovely face broke into a smile. “If she’s a nice motherly or auntly old lady, she’d do admirably! Go and see about it, do!”
“Let me go,” said Herron, “maybe I can fix it up.”
He was gone a long time, but he came back smiling.
“The housekeeper isn’t here,” he announced, “she’s gone off for a few days’ holiday. Her present substitute is her daughter, a girl younger than you girls are. Also there’s nobody who can play chaperon to a pair of lone, lorn damsels but one elderly specimen, who is by way of being a pastry-cook or something like that. However,——”
“Oh, all right!” cried Helen; “I don’t care if she’s a pastry-cook or a laundress if she only satisfies Patty’s insane desire for a chaperon! Will she come? Will she stay by us till we go home?”
“She’ll come to luncheon with us,” said Herron, “and after that I think we’d better start for home. The snow is getting deeper, and though it looks as if the sun might break through the clouds any minute,—yet it may not, and the drifts are high, and——”
“You’re a calamity howler!” cried Helen. “We’re here, and we’re safe and warm, and the pie lady will do quite well for a chaperon, and anybody who grumbles now, is a wet blanket and a pessimist and a catamaran! So, there, now!”
“All right,” Patty laughed; “let me see the elderly dame, and if she passes muster, I’ll stop growling like a bear and be so nice and amiable you won’t know me!”
“I don’t know you when you’re anything but amiable!” declared Philip; “where’s your friend, Herron? Trot her in.”