CHAPTER VII
DAVID'S TREAT
"I haven't had my criticism yet, and if I don't get it next pose, you'll have to go to the station without me," said Elinor to the other two girls as she met them in the corridor the next morning. "Mr. Benton's awfully slow, but I can't miss this first criticism, you know."
"David'll be fearfully disappointed," remarked Judith dispassionately. "It's his first family spree, and I think it's your duty to go, Elinor."
"Oh, I'll be through in time for the luncheon," said Elinor, hastily. "But if I'm not out here by eleven-fifteen, you'd better start without me. I can meet you somewhere, or you all can come over here for me."
Doris Leighton, passing, stopped for a gay word with Patricia and Judith as they loitered in the hall. She made a laughing little gesture of envy when she heard their program for the day, which Patricia, eager to make amends for the unspoken slight upon her, poured out generously.
"What fun it will be," she said, with the faintest tinge of sadness in her lovely voice. "It must be splendid to have a brother! I have always so longed for one."
Patricia caught herself in the act of offering her a share in David Francis, but remembering his cold criticism of other attractive girls in the past, closed her lips in time.
"We didn't have one till this winter," she said cheerfully. "So I guess we appreciate him for all he's worth."
Doris Leighton's pretty eyes widened. "What in the world do you mean?" she asked with such real interest that Patricia gladly rushed into the tale of the kidnaping of her five-year-old twin brother, and how he had been given up as dead for all the long years until the chance discovery of his identity revealed him to them at the very time when they were most in need of him. She did not dwell on the financial reinforcement that he brought to them, feeling instinctively that the knowledge of their straitened means would lower them in Doris Leighton's estimation, but drew a lively picture of the jolly Christmas party they had had at Greycroft, and the happy future they were looking forward to in their life together.