"That's because you expect people to be perfect and then, when they show the tiniest human weakness, you declare them demons at once," said Elinor, gayly. "You couldn't expect her to like overhearing them praise me, could you? I think she tried to be very kind, and I admire her tremendously for it."
Patricia puckered her brows judicially.
"I do, too, now," she declared. "But I've been paid up for my evilmindedness by losing half my good time. I think I'll try to find her and be awfully agreeable to her. I'll feel better for it, I'm sure."
The dancing was beginning as Patricia made her way slowly across the great room to the laughing group where she had seen Doris Leighton but a moment ago, and before she was halfway across Doris and a tall Turk swung past her in the whirl of the newest dance, followed by Elinor and Aladdin, and then by Griffin and the young king of the Black Isles. Patricia stood still in sudden swift contrition.
"If I haven't forgotten all about Miss Jinny!" she thought remorsefully. "How fearfully self-absorbed I'm getting to be. I'm a perfect pig!"
She had a long search before she discovered the valiant Sinbad in a far corner of the now deserted divan surrounded by a circle of kindred spirits to whom Griffin had delivered her, holding her own with great spirit and enjoyment among the dashing wit and pungent repartee.
Miss Jinny, at the sight of Patricia fluttering in among them in her white gauzy draperies like some dainty moth, held out a reproving finger.
"Why aren't you dancing?" she demanded sternly, her whiskers trembling with the fervor of her interest. "What is Elinor up to that you're not dancing?"
Patricia, abashed by being thus publicly admonished, murmured something about its being only the first dance, and not knowing many people, but Miss Jinny cut her short.
"Don't tell me," she said abruptly. "You ought to be dancing instead of wasting your time on old ladies like me." Here there was a burst of mirth at the incongruity of the words with Miss Jinny's ferocious masculine aspect, but she silenced it with a wave of her hookah stem. "Let me introduce the Second Calendar, who I hope knows enough respectable young men here to see that you aren't a wall flower."