"Oh, you darlings!" she cried, hugging them both at once. "Oh, how heavenly it is to be here, and how adorable you look! Judy, that's a simply perfect green in that frock, and, Norn, you're lovelier than ever in that queer faded yellow. The studio looks stunning. Oh, I'm so excited that I don't know what I'm doing! To think of actually being here at last!" And she flung down her hat on the long divan and, crumpling her bright hair between both pink palms, she stepped back and faced the group in the middle of the studio with laughing lips and wet eyes.
Elinor, Judith and Bruce, with Mrs. Spicer in their midst, smiled back at her, but did not speak, each feeling, somehow, that this was Miss Pat's moment for utterance. On the brink of her new life—that life she had so ardently longed and planned and worked for—she had become for the moment the first figure in the scene. Tomorrow she would be gone into the ranks of that great army which is building up the beautiful world for others less gifted to live in, but today she was the center of her little world.
"To think, Judy and Elinor and Bruce and Mrs. Jinny-Nat, that I'm here, here, all ready to begin too with my music. One little day and then I'll be a real singing student. Why, it takes my breath away—" And she paused with a catch in her voice that threatened tears.
This was too much for the calm and practical Judith. "But you've been simply crazy to be here, Miss Pat," she cried reprovingly. "You've toiled and moiled on chickens and sculpture and candy and boarders and everything just to be able at last to be a real singer. I don't see what there is to be a cry-baby about now."
Patricia's merry peal rang out wholesomely and she caught Judith by her slim shoulders and gave her a playful shake.
"It takes Ju to show up our little mistakes, doesn't it, Mrs. Nat?" she cried gayly. "Thank you, Judy, for them kind words. I won't be a cry-baby again; I promise you that. Come, Norn, tell us what you and Bruce have been up to while we've been wandering toward the sunny South this last two weeks. Is your stained glass window done, Norn, and has Marty been behaving as well as ever? Oh, there's such a lot to talk about, it's hard to know where to begin."
Mrs. Spicer laid aside her wraps and drew a deep chair to the fire. "I move we get thawed out while we gabble," she proposed, with her deep, husky chuckle. "I'm so frozen that it'll take a week of Sundays to shed my icicles. This zero weather isn't particularly inspiring after the balmy breezes of the Gulf Stream."
"Oh, do let's stay in for tea and go without any real dinner, Elinor," begged Patricia, impulsively. "Bruce said we were to take dinner at the Ritz as a special treat, but I'd ever so much rather stay home for this one night, if you don't mind."
Elinor looked inquiringly at her husband, who nodded and disappeared into the adjoining room, and then she smiled at Mrs. Spicer and nodded reassuringly at Judith, whose rather troubled expression did not escape the quick eyes of her impetuous sister.
"Will it disappoint you, Judy?" she asked with slightly dampened ardor. "I never thought of your being set on it——"