Apparently it would, and the two girls discussed the Cleopatra costume in all its details, until the little clock on the dressing-table held its two hands straight up in shocked surprise.
After Mona left her, Patty gave herself a scolding. It was a habit of hers, when bothered, to sit down in front of a mirror and "have it out with herself" as she expressed it.
"Patty Fairfield," she said to the disturbed looking reflection that confronted her, "you're a silly, childish old thing to feel disappointed because you weren't chosen to be Spirit of the Sea! And you're a mean-spirited, ill-tempered GOOSE to feel as you do, because Daisy Dow has that part. She'll be awfully pretty in it, and Guy Martin had a perfect right to choose her, and she had a perfect right to change her mind and say she'd take it, even if she HAD told you she didn't want it! Now, Miss, what have you to say for yourself? Nothing? I thought so. You're vain and conceited and silly, if you think that you'd be a better Spirit of the Sea than Daisy, and you show a very small and disagreeable nature when you take it so to heart. Now, WILL you brace up and forget it?"
And so practical and just was Patty's true nature that she smiled at herself, and agreed to her own remarks. Then dismissing the whole subject from her mind, she went to bed and to sleep.
Next day she went in search of Laurence Cromer, and found that young man sketching in a corner of one of the picturesque terraces of "Red Chimneys."
"Why these shyness?" asked Patty, as he quickly closed his sketch-book at her approach. "Why these modest coquetry? Art afraid of me? Gentle little me? Who wouldn't hurt a 'squito? Or am it that I be unworthy to look upon a masterpiece created by one of our risingest young artists?"
"I don't want you to see this sketch till it's finished," said Cromer, honestly. "It's going to be an awfully pretty bit, but unfinished, it looks like the dickens. Let me sketch you, Miss Fairfield, may I?"
"Yes, indeed; but can you talk at the same time? I want your advice."
"Oh, yes; the more I talk the better I work. Turn a little more to the right, please. Oh, that's perfect! Rest your fingertips on the balustrade, so—now, don't move!"
"Huh," remarked Patty, as Cromer began to sketch in swiftly, "how long do I have to stand this way? It isn't such an awful lot of fun."