"Oh, now you are laughing at me," Cousin Patty said, helplessly.
Mary gave Cousin Patty the suite next to Aunt Isabelle's, and the two gentle ladies smiled and kissed in the fashion of their time, and became friends at once.
When Cousin Patty had unpacked her bag, and had put all of her nice little belongings away, she tripped across the threshold of the door between the two rooms, to talk to Aunt Isabelle.
"Mary said that we should be going to the theater to-night with Mr. Bigelow. You must tell me what to wear, please. You see I've been out of the world so long."
"But you are more of it than I," Aunt Isabelle reminded her.
Cousin Patty, in her pretty wrapper, sat down in a rocking-chair comfortably to discuss it. "What do you mean?"
"Mary has been telling me how far ahead of me your thoughts have flown. You're taking up all the new questions, and you're a successful woman of business. I have envied you ever since I heard about the wedding cake."
"It's a good business," said Cousin Patty, "and I can do it at home. I couldn't have gone out in the world to make my fight for a living. I can defy men in theory; but I'm really Southern and feminine—if you know what that means," she laughed happily. "Of course I never let them know it, not even Roger."
And now Mary came in, lovely in her white dinner gown.
"Oh," she accused them, "you aren't ready."