Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head, while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and relocked the suit-case.
They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close, with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head against the railing and laughed.
"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't mind at all not having his dress-suit—never feels comfortable in it anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study bell."
Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a further detail:
"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"
V
The Flannigan Honeymoon
HE Murphy family, with a judicious eye to the buttered side of the bread, had adopted Saint Ursula as their patron saint. The family—consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy, eleven little Murphys and "Gramma" Flannigan—occupied a five-room cottage close to the gates of St. Ursula's school. They subsisted on the vicarious charity of sixty-four girls, and the intermittent labor of Murphy père, who, in his sober intervals, was a sufficiently efficient stone-cutter and mason.