"You do look very nice," she said to the girl in the mirror. "If you were only a little bit less addicted to yourself, my child, you'd not be half bad. That's a thing you're going to get over, though, so I won't scold you tonight about it."
She shut off the light and sat down by the window to watch the first arrivals. The night was warm, even for spring, and the window was open.
"It's just like being at the play," she told herself, smiling into the warm darkness. "I'm glad I had to wait for Doris."
The courtyard was light with torches and the entrance was ablaze with torches and the windows across the quadrangle she could see figures moving to and fro, shadows fell on the curtained oblongs and inside the open ones she saw girls who were late in dressing getting frantically ready, others who were putting on their gloves, and still others with their guests even making ready to go down to the ball-room, which was the transformed tea-room not to be seen from Patricia's point of vantage.
Maids came and went across the courtyard. The first guests came in a straggling fashion, and then suddenly everyone seemed to be rushing in at once. Patricia laughed as she recognized the tall, lanky figure of Bob Wetherill, whose attachment to Rosamond Merton was the bane of that young lady's life. Then she gave a little cry. She had recognized Bruce and Elinor.
She flew down to them for a rapturous greeting and though the courtyard was filled with hurrying people she hugged both of them heartily, dropping some tears of real delight on her own apple blossoms.
"I'll be down later," she told them. "I'm waiting for Doris Leighton. Do look after Mr. Long if he comes in before I do, and for goodness sake tell him not to breathe a word about what I was talking to him about in the Park the other day."
"Mysteries, and with your late rival in the hen-yard?" cried Bruce with feigned concern. "I'll have to look into this later, Miss Pat, and see what you've been up to behind our backs."
"You'll find out later, I hope," laughed Patricia, giving Elinor another squeeze before she ran off laughing at the thought of her conspiracy with Mr. Long coming under Bruce's notice in this unexpected way.
"I had to tell him," she thought, as she hurried back to her post. "He might have found it out before it came to anything and then I'd have felt so silly."