“No,” said Patsy, shortly. “I told the maids I was coming over to stay a few days with my brother, that’s all. Of course, Laura Hastings was spending the week-end with me when we had the scene—when Warren and his mother came in from Boston, I mean, and found me—Patricia—— Oh, yes,” with a wry face, “she calls me that, Warren’s mother! As I was saying, Laura was there, sliding down too, as it happened, and you know, Claire, Laura’s the worst gossip in New York. She has told it all over, I suppose, that Warren simply ordered me to get down—anybody might know such a good-looking man would be a tyrant!—but she can’t say a word about me, for I was the sweetest thing possible all the time she was there. I wouldn’t condescend to quarrel, you may be sure, even afterward, when only Warren and his mother were there.”
“They went on to Washington that same night, you said——” the stepmother creased a tuck thoughtfully.
“Yes—Warren had some business. His mother”—Patsy’s scorn pelted her words out—“went to a convention of the Women Militant, if you know what that is. Warren’s coming back to-day. Well”—she straightened her collar belligerently—“he’ll find a note on the pincushion that will explain a few things.”
“Ahem!” The stepmother coughed deprecatingly. “He’s been taking some rather tiresome trips lately, Warren, hasn’t he?”
“Oh, of course he has—but what difference does that make?” Patsy’s guilty compassion stirred itself to impatience. “Nobody wanted him to go to Congress except his mother—though of course I was glad he got the election,” she admitted, grudgingly. “But it’s meant running back and forth from New York to Boston and from Boston to Washington all the fall. This last Sunday simply capped the climax of everybody’s endurance. Why the goodness his mother had to come down with him, just that time when he was going to find me on the banisters——” She shook her pretty head despairingly.
“Hello!” whistled somebody. “So the Plain Little Sister has come to congratulate me—what? Didn’t I see a—er—perambulator-rocking-chair-crib, folded compactly as in the advertisement, out there in the hall?”
“Yes.” Patsy kissed her brother with characteristic vehemence. “It is the Angel’s. We’ve come to stay.”
“Oh,” said Timothy, curling his spare shortness into a huge chair, “how disappointing! I mean, that is, I thought you had come to congratulate me, you know.”
“Congratulate you?” Patsy flew at him. “On what?”
“Why, on Doromea, of course. I’ve got her to marry me.”