For the occasion, she had engaged a large salon, and aside from the pretty floral decorations, there were dolls and Teddy Bears and rocking horses, and all sorts of children’s toys and games. On the walls hung bright-colored prints, intended for nursery use, and little, low chairs and ottomans stood about.
Of course, Lady Hamilton, as hostess, did not dress like a child, but wore one of her own lovely, trailing white house-gowns.
When the guests arrived they were shown to dressing-rooms, where white-capped nurses awaited them, and assisted them to lay aside their wraps.
Then led to the salon by these same nurses, the guests were presented to Lady Hamilton and Patty. Such shouts of laughter as arose at these presentations! The young people, dressed as tiny children, came in with a shy air (not always entirely assumed), and made funny little, bobbing curtseys. Some, finger in mouth, could find nothing to say; others of more fertile brain, babbled childishly, or lisped in baby-talk.
Before many had arrived, Patty and Lady Kitty were in such roars of laughter they could scarcely welcome the rest.
Tom Meredith was a dear. Though a boy nearly six feet tall, he had a round, cherubic face, and soft, curly hair. He wore a white dress of simple “Mother Hubbard” cut, the fulness hanging from a yoke, and ending just below his knees, in lace-edged frills. White stockings, and white kid pumps adorned his feet, and his short curls were tied at one side with an immense white bow. He was such a smiling, good-natured chap, and looked so girlish and sweet in his white frock, that Patty at once called him Baby Belle, and the name exactly suited him.
“Did you come all alone?” asked Lady Hamilton.
“Yeth, ma’am,” replied Tom, rolling up his eyes in pretended diffidence. “My nurthie went to a ball game, tho I had to come all by mythelf. But I’th a big dirl, now!”
“You are indeed,” said Patty, glancing at his stalwart proportions, “but you’re surely the belle of this ball.”
Grace Meredith was a little Dutch girl, and was charming in the picturesque Holland headgear, and a tight-waisted, long-skirted blue gown, that just cleared the tops of her clattering wooden sabots. She talked a Dutch dialect, or rather, what she imagined was such, and if not real Hollandese, it was at least, very amusing and funny.