Patience held out her hand for it, then glanced rapidly through it. "This is from the much-worshipped Miss Ashe, isn't it?"
"Yes. We four are going to spend Thanksgiving with her, and, Patience, I should like to have you go with us. Won't you please be the 'extra-delightful girl' and say you'll go?"
"Why—why!" Patience, usually cool and unemotional, colored with pleasure. "Are you sure you really want me? I should be delighted to go. It is very sweet in you to ask me, Grace."
"Not in the least. It's very jolly in you to accept so promptly. There is now only one hitch in the programme. I have already delivered Mabel's invitation to Kathleen."
"She won't go," predicted Patience. "She may be lawless, but she is too wise to make any such mistake."
Patience's prediction, however, seemed destined not to carry far. To the amazement of the five young women who waited on the station platform for the coming of the New York train on Wednesday afternoon, the newspaper girl, suit case in hand, walked serenely into view just as the train was heard whistling around a bend half a mile below the station.
"She is actually going to inflict herself upon us," muttered Elfreda in disgust. Grace had briefly explained the situation to her three friends.
Just then Kathleen's eyes came to rest on the little group. A flash of surprised anger flitted across her moody face as she espied Patience, then, with an eloquent shrug of her shoulders, she marched off toward the other end of the train.
"My doom is sealed," remarked Patience dryly. "Nothing can put our shattered acquaintance together again."