At the hotel they made some nice acquaintances, and but for the uncouth spinster the quite presentable Patty might have made some headway; but Cousin Tabby became the butt of everybody’s ridicule.
“She can never get on with that old fright dangling after her. Why don’t she engage some nice, fashionable woman of straitened means to present her in society, and send that old silly back to the woods?” Patty overheard one clever woman saying to another one morning.
She reddened with mortification, for she had secretly mistrusted all along that the spinster was a laughingstock for the cultured fashionables at the grand hotel.
She determined not to let the old woman stand in her light. She had received considerable attention as the rich West Virginian heiress, and she wanted to make a good match, as grand as the one she heard Eva was going to make.
Patty never let any false delicacy stand in the way of her desires. She shortly sought an interview with the clever woman whose opinion she had overheard.
“Oh, Mrs. Putnam, what will you say when I tell you I overheard your remarks about Cousin Tabby this morning?” she smiled.
“Oh, my dear, can you ever forgive me?” with saucy penitence.
“You know I am not blaming you, dear Mrs. Putnam. I quite realize that you are right. Indeed, I never really expected to keep the silly old thing with me so long. I only brought her for a little sightseeing, expecting her to become my Cousin Eva’s guest. But when Eva declined to receive her, I had not the heart to send her home just yet.”
“Very good of you, I’m sure, my dear Miss Groves; but I think Miss Somerville showed more of her usual worldly wisdom in declining to present such a ridiculous relative to New York society,” purred Mrs. Putnam, who had been told in the beginning of their proud Cousin Eva, who had turned her back on her mother’s relations since her father elevated her to wealth and position.
Patty had also hinted that she “could tell some things Eva wouldn’t relish, if she chose.”