“Couldn’t you have coaxed fifteen dollars a week out of her?” asked Mr. Fairfield, after Patty had told how Madame Villard’s price had gradually increased.
“Oh, father, I was so afraid she would say fifteen! Then I should have felt that I ought to go to her for a week; for I may not get another such chance. But I couldn’t live in that place a week, I know I couldn’t!”
“Why?” asked Nan, curiously.
“I don’t know exactly why,” returned Patty, thoughtfully. “But it’s mostly because it’s all so artificial and untrue. Miss O’Flynn talks as if she were a superior being; Madame Villard talks as if she were a Royal personage. They talk about their customers and each other in a sort of make-believe grandiose way, that is as sickening as it is absurd. I don’t know how to express it, but I’d rather work in a place where everybody is real, and claims only such honour and glory as absolutely belong to them. I hate pretence!”
“Good little Patty!” said her father, heartily; “I’m glad you do. Oh, I tell you, my girl, you’ll learn some valuable lessons, even if you don’t achieve your fifteen dollars.”
“But I shall do that, too, father. You needn’t think I’m conquered yet. Pooh! What’s three failures to a determined nature like mine?”
“What, indeed!” laughed Mr. Fairfield. “Go ahead, my plucky little heroine; you’ll strike it right yet.”
“I’m sure I shall,” declared Patty, with such a self-satisfied air of complacency that both her hearers laughed.