"I earned my money knitting mittens and selling them and True Scott crocheted tam-o'-shanters. They were awfully pretty and all the girls ordered them. Peggy Lee worked on Saturdays in a grocery store--taking telephone orders," Sheila explained.
"I can't knit well enough or crochet or do anything," Pat wailed afterwards, in gloomy consultation with Renée and Sheila.
Then at Sheila's suggestion the girls studied the "Help Wanted" column of the newspaper. They spread it out upon the floor and knelt around it; Renée reading off each advertisement and Sheila and Pat passing upon its possibilities. After considerable discussion it was decided that on the next afternoon Pat should go to a certain office address where, as the advertisement read, any refined lady, young or old, would be told how to make ten dollars a week, in pleasant occupation, in her spare hours!
"That will be just right for me!" Pat declared enthusiastically. "It won't interfere with 'school.'"
Aunt Pen's "school" was well started. At first Pat had been inclined to treat rather lightly the schedule of "household arts," but she realized very soon that Aunt Pen was in earnest and that she intended to demand the same thoroughness and accuracy in the simple tasks about the house that were necessary in the sums in Algebra! At the beginning Pat had detested what Melodia called "the upstairs work," but under Aunt Pen's pleasant instruction and with Renée's cheerful company--that little lady was a true housewife and her hands flew eagerly about her work--Pat began to feel more interest and to try very hard to do everything just right! And at the end of the first week Aunt Pen had allowed the girls to make apple pies which Mr. Everett had declared were better than any apple pies he had ever tasted!
"And ten dollars a week!" Pat went on, "I will be rich very soon! Now we must find something for Renée!"
"Perhaps I might earn a little arranging flowers in shop windows; often I helped Colette Voisin, who had a stall at St. Cloud, and I loved it!"
"Just the thing!" cried Pat, delighted with anything out of the ordinary. "Most of the flower shops look hideous and they'd probably pay you well! While I go for my position to-morrow afternoon, you and Sheila can stop at each one of the florists and offer to trim their windows!"
The fortune-seekers spent an excited hour preparing for their adventure. Aunt Pen had gone out for the afternoon, so they were undisturbed. Pat insisted upon fastening her hair tightly back from her face so as to give to herself an appearance of mature severity! At the last moment she donned a long coat of Aunt Pen's which concealed her own kilted skirt and then for a finishing touch added Celia's last year's sable furs!
"There--I'm sure anyone would take me easily for twenty-one!" she declared, surveying herself with satisfaction. And to Pat twenty-one seemed old enough to suit the most exacting employer!