"'Chummy' isn't exactly the word that fits Miss Merton, Ju," she said gayly. "It sounds suspiciously like unimposing me, rather than the elegant young lady of the three-room apartment. The only thing I'm afraid of is that she'll get tired of her bargain before the week is out. I may be an awful nuisance with my scales and strummings."
Then Judith was scandalized in earnest. The idea of anyone finding Miss Pat a nuisance was beyond her powers of thought, and she could not even find words to express her scorn of such an impossible state of things.
Patricia rippled again at the sniff of disgust which Judith made so prodigious. "Never mind, Judy-pudy, you shall come and look me over every once in a while and see that I am being well treated. Miss Merton may be a perfect monster, after all."
Judith was not to be won to speech by any such bald nonsense, and stalked homeward in thoughtful silence, hardly seeming to hear the gay chat of the other two in regard to what Miss Pat should or should not take with her to Artemis Lodge.
At the door of their own apartment Patricia stood quite still with a rather blank expression.
"We forgot all about asking Doris Leighton," she said. "How perfectly stupid of us."
Elinor had her key in the door and she flung it open on an unlighted interior as she spoke.
"Very stupid indeed, my dear," she admitted cheerfully, "but it's too late to remedy it now. Besides, I don't see how you'd have got a room in Artemis Lodge in any other way."
"And that was the most important thing, after all," agreed Patricia, stumbling over a stool in the dimness. "Mercy! What's that?"
The small figure which rose at their approach gave a familiar chuckling laugh and before it could speak, Judith exclaimed, "Marty Sneath, all by herself, too!"