“Now, Patty, behave yourself. You’re too young to have a man calling on you so often, and I really object to it.”
“‘I will be good, dear mother,
I heard a sweet child say,’”
hummed Patty, “and I’ll tell you frankly, my stern parent, that, if you’ll only let the Van Reypen villain stay by me until I get these puzzles done, I don’t care if I never see him again after that.”
“Oh, Patty,” cried Nan, “how ungrateful!”
“Ungrateful, perhaps, to that bold, bad young man, but obedient to my dear, kind, old father.”
When Patty was in this amiably foolish mood, she was incorrigible, so Mr. Fairfield said:
“All right, my lady. Let him come a few times to work out those pestilential puzzles, and then I shall hold you to your promise, to cut his acquaintance.”
“Is he really as bad as all that, father?” asked Patty, in awestruck tones.
“He isn’t bad at all. He’s a most estimable and exemplary young man. But I won’t have anybody calling on you three nights in one week, at your age. It’s out of the question! Kenneth doesn’t.”