“Patty, you are the most ridiculous little goose on the face of this earth! Your imagination is something marvellous! Now I’ll inform you that the reason that tassel moved, was because I threw a match at it. I aimed for a waste-basket and hit the curtain, but I had no idea that I should find myself so surprised at the result!”
Patty dimpled and giggled. “It is surprising, isn’t it?” she said, feeling much more light-hearted since her fears were relieved regarding the mouse. “And I’m not sure it’s altogether correct, that you and I should be down here alone after midnight.”
“Fiddlestrings!” exclaimed Philip. “Don’t be a silly! And besides, Jim is about somewhere, and Adèle has been bobbing in and out.”
“There was no one in the halls when I came down. And I think, Philip, I’d better go back.”
“What did you come down for, anyhow?”
For some unexplained reason, Patty suddenly felt unwilling to tell what she had come for. Bill’s letter was hidden in the folds of her voluminous blue gown, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell Philip that she came down for that.
“Oh, I was wakeful,” she said, “and I came down to get a—a book.”
“H’m; and you thought you’d take a volume of the Britannica back with you, to read yourself to sleep?”
Patty had to laugh at this, for in the corner where they were, the shelves contained nothing but cyclopædias and dictionaries.
“But they’re really very interesting reading,” she declared.