CHAPTER IV
CHRISTMAS, AND AN INVITATION
In the week that intervened between the opening of the tea room and Christmas, the Patty-Pans girls found their new enterprise developing from a sort of glorified doll's house, in which they could fulfil their favorite childish play of "helping mother," into a stern reality. Even Happie came home at night silent and white, Laura openly bemoaned her fate, while Margery and Gretta palely and limply betrayed their indifference to everything but bed and sleep.
Of course it was delightful to be so successful as they were; that is, it was delightful to review the success of each day from the vantage ground of the following morning. But at night, when feet ached, head was tired, hands weary and patience tried by a succession of women, themselves too tired from shopping to be courteous, then the tea room lost all semblance of a frolic and became a stern fact.
Christmas eve came at last, just as the girls had had faith to believe it would come, on the twenty-fourth. Everybody seemed to be too busy to drink tea, so it was an easy day, and Happie, Laura and Polly came home early, in good spirits, when Bob called for them. Margery and Gretta had been at home all day, for it would never do for them all to desert the Patty-Pans on Christmas eve.
"THE TEA ROOM ... BECAME A STERN FACT"
"I have a Christmas present!" Bob announced jubilantly the moment the quartette got inside the little parlor. "I was bursting to tell Happie—and Laura and Polly, of course—on the way home, but I kept it to tell all of you together. It's from Mr. Felton. What do you guess, girls?"