“You can’t,” said Patty, saucily. “You’ll be the first one here, the day the letter is due.”
“Oh, I suppose so! Curiosity has always been my besetting sin. But to-day’s entertainment seems to be over, so I may as well go home.”
“Us, too,” said Roger. “Come on, Elise.”
So good-byes were said, and Patty’s friends went laughing away.
Then Patty took up the letter and read it again.
“Ten days to wait,” she said, to herself. “And suppose I shouldn’t get it, after all? But I will,—I know I will. Something inside my brain makes me feel sure of it. And, when I have that sort of sureness, it never goes back on me!”
She went upstairs, singing merrily, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind as to her success in the contest.
The ten days passed quickly, for Patty was so absorbed in the furnishings for the new summer home that she was occupied every moment from morning till night.
She went with Nan to all sorts of fascinating shops, where they selected wall-papers, rugs, furniture, and curtains. Not much bric-a-brac, and very few pictures, for they were keeping the house simple in tone, but comfortable and cheerful of atmosphere. Christine gladly gave her advice when needed, but she was very busy with her work, and they interrupted her as seldom as possible.
Patty bought lovely things for her own rooms,—chairs of blue and white wicker; curtains of loose-meshed, blue silky stuff, over ruffled dimity ones; a regulation brass bedstead for her bedroom, but a couch that opened into a bed for her out-of-door dormitory. By day, this could be a chintz-covered couch with chintz pillows; by night, a dainty, white nest of downy comfort. Several times they went down to Spring Beach, to inspect the work going on there, and always returned with satisfactory reports.