"I know why she is doing it," said Patty, "though I don't see why she couldn't have waited until she got home; but I suppose she is awfully anxious. Berta, don't say that we saw her, or anything about the needles, to anybody. That will be kind to her, and she is so poor. Whatever you hear, don't say anything."
"I'm sure I don't want to say anything to hurt her," answered Berta, a little resentfully, for she did think Patty might have told her all about it. "But I must say I think society in Butternut Corner is a little mixed."
"Ruby asked her," explained Patty. "I think it was right; Tilly never went to a party before."
"Her way of enjoying herself at a party is a little queer," said Berta, unsympathetically.
And Patty thought she did not feel quite so sorry as she had done that Berta was going back to California the next day.
She thought she would tell Ruby Nutting; Ruby would understand, and pity Tilly; but before she had a chance, while Horace Barker was singing a college song and Ruby was playing the accompaniment on the piano, a sudden recollection struck her that sent the color from her face. Aunt Eunice's spoons!
Aunt Eunice had said that there were never spoons enough to go round at a surprise party, and Viola Pitkin's mother was her intimate friend, so she wished to help her all she could, and she put a dozen spoons into the basket—the solid silver ones that had been Grandmother Oliver's—and charged Patty to take care of them. And it was not until she overheard Mrs. Pitkin whisper to Viola that she wasn't sure that there were sauce-plates enough that Patty remembered the spoons.
She had a struggle to repress a cry of dismay, those spoons were so precious! Uncle Reuben had demurred when they were put into the basket, but Aunt Eunice was proud, and always liked to give and lend of her best. Patty felt as if she must cry out and denounce Tilly when she crept slyly in behind broad-backed Uncle Nathan Pitkin and slyly warmed her benumbed hands at the fire. But Patty held her peace; when she had reflected for a few minutes she knew that this was too grave a matter for fourteen-year-old wits to grapple with, and she must tell Uncle Reuben and Aunt Eunice.
Tilly Coombs was drawn into a merry game—Ruby Nutting took care of that—and before long her queer little sharp face was actually dimpling with fun, and her laugh rang out with the gayest! Patty Perley looked at her, and decided that it was a very queer world indeed; for her the joy of Viola Pitkin's party was done.
When they were all dressing to depart, Patty looked involuntarily at Tilly Coombs's mittens; in fact, many furtive glances were cast around at the red mittens by those who remembered the theft of the roast chickens. There were many of them, red being the fashionable color for mittens at Butternut Corner, but apparently they were all sound and whole. Tommy Barker had one mitten with a white thumb, which his blind grandmother had knitted on in place of a torn thumb, and little Seba Sage had but one mitten; but that one was very dark red, not the vivid scarlet of the ravelling.