“Now, will you listen to that!” cried her husband. “Well, I won’t be outdone in generosity. I’ll be proud to escort any one of this galaxy of beauty,” and he looked at the group of pretty girls.
“Now, we must do it all up proper,” said Hal. “In the first place, we must draw lots to see whether the girls shall hide or we shall. We must have it all very fair.”
He tore two strips of paper, one longer than the other, and holding them behind him, bade Adèle choose.
“Right!” she said, and Hal put forth his right hand and gave her a paper on which was written “Girls.”
“All right,” went on the master of ceremonies. “Now you girls must hide. We’ll give you fifteen minutes to tuck yourselves away, and then we’re all coming to look for you. As soon as any man finds any girl, he brings her back here to the hall to wait for the others. Now, there’s no stipulation, except that you must not go out of the house. Scoot! and remember, in fifteen minutes we’ll be after you!”
The six girls ran away and made for various parts of the house. The two Misses Crosby, who had come as dinner guests, looked a little surprised at this unusual game, and Patty said to them, kindly: “You don’t mind, do you? You know, you needn’t really go with the man who finds you, if you don’t want to.”
“Oh, we don’t mind,” said the elder Miss Crosby. “I think it’s fun,—only if I should draw that dignified Mr. Van Reypen I’d be scared to death!”
“Oh, he isn’t so awfully dignified,” laughed Patty. “That’s just his manner at first. When you know him better, he’s as jolly as anything. But hurry up, girls, the minutes are flying.”
The girls scampered away, some running to the attic, others going into wardrobes or behind sofas, and Patty ran to her own room.
Then she bethought herself that that was one of the most likely places they would look for her, and she was seized with an ambition to baffle the seekers. With a half-formed plan in her mind, she slipped out of a side door of her own room that opened on a small passage leading to the nursery. In the nursery, she found the baby asleep in her crib, and the Fräulein lying down on a couch with a slumber-robe thrown over her, though she was not asleep.