Patty wondered to herself why she felt as if something awful had happened. She couldn’t realise that Bill had been there, and had gone away, and she hadn’t seen him! What a cruel coincidence that it should have been just at the time when she was away. But her pride came to her rescue. She had no intention of letting Hal Ferris or anybody else know that she cared.
So she said, lightly: “Well, of all things! Didn’t anybody expect him?”
“No; he thought he’d surprise us. He was awfully cut up that you weren’t there.”
“Oh, he was! Well, why didn’t you send for me?”
“Send for you! And you miles away, and a blizzard blizzing like fury! But we spent hours hanging over the telephone, trying to get word to you.”
“The wires were down,” said Patty, thinking of the uninteresting evening she had spent, when she might have been talking to Little Billee.
“They sure were! We tried and tried, but we couldn’t get a peep out of you. Daisy said it was because you were so wrapped up in Philip that you wouldn’t answer the old telephone.”
Patty’s pretty face hardened a little as she thought how Daisy would delight in making such a speech as that before Farnsworth.
“I say, Patty, are you cut up about this? Did you want to see Big Bill, specially?”
“Oh, no, no,” said Patty, smiling again. “I only thought it seemed funny that he happened to come when I happened to be away.”