“And this is the little girl who was so sleepy she had to run off to bed as soon as the party was over! Patty, Patty, I’m afraid you’re not telling me the truth! Try again.”
“Well, then,—well, then, I came down because,—because I was hungry!”
“Ah, that’s better. Anybody has a right to be hungry, or even afraid of mice,—but no one has a right to lug a whole cyclopædia upstairs to read oneself to sleep.”
“I wasn’t going to take all the volumes,” said Patty, demurely, and then she jumped down from her perch. “I’ll just see which one I do want,” and pretending to read the labels, she deftly slipped her letter back between the volumes, unseen by Van Reypen.
“You little goose, you,” said Philip, laughing. “Stop your nonsense, and let’s go and forage in the dining-room for something to eat. We might as well have some good food while we’re about it.”
“But I’m not exactly in proper dinner garb,” said Patty, shaking out her blue folds, and trailing her long robe behind her.
“Nonsense! I don’t know much about millinery, but you never wore anything more becoming than all that fiddly-faddly conglomeration of blue silk and white fur.”
“It isn’t fur,—it’s down.”
“Well, I said you were a goose,—so it’s most appropriate.”
“But it’s swansdown.”