Only the girls’ parents and Gilbert Hepworth knew how tightly the tension of Patty’s nerves had been strained, but they had been alertly watching for any sign of collapse, and were thankful and relieved that the danger was over.
Hepworth didn’t stop then to wonder why Patty had handed him the letter first. And, indeed, she didn’t know herself. But she felt his sensitive sympathy so keenly, and saw such deep anxiety in his eyes, that involuntarily she turned to him in her moment of triumph.
“I told you so!” Philip Van Reypen was shouting. “I knew we’d win! Hepworth, old man, you did it, with that last charade! Bully for you!”
“Yes, he did!” cried Patty, holding out her hand to Mr. Hepworth, with a smile of gratitude; “but you all helped me. Oh, isn’t it splendid! I didn’t so much care for the car, but I wanted to win!”
“Oh, listen to that!” exclaimed Kenneth. “She didn’t care for the car! Oh, Patty, what are you saying? Give me the car, then!”
“Oh, of course I want the car, you goose! But I mean I really cared more for the game,—the winning of it!”
“Of course you did!” declared Van Reypen. “That’s the true sportsman spirit: ‘not the quarry, but the chase!’ I’m proud of you, Miss Fairfield! Your sentiments are the right sort.”
Patty smiled and dimpled, quite her roguish self again, now that the exciting crisis was past.
“Nan,” she cried, “we must celebrate! Will you invite all this hilarious populace to dinner, or give them an impromptu tea-fight right now?”
“Dinner!” cried Philip Van Reypen; and “Dinner!” took up the other voices, in gay insistence.