Sally paid no attention to that cry of Patty's. "I must go back to get ready," she said. "I haven't any too much time."
But Sally did not take the noon train up. Just as she was leaving Mrs. Stump's, she met Charlie coming in. He looked rather seedy and quite forlorn.
CHAPTER XI[ToC]
When Charlie went back, he was feeling rather elated, for he had two hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket. That was all the cash Patty could raise without making an appeal to Dick Torrington or making some other arrangement which would have betrayed her, and that would not have done. It would not have done at all. Sally might have heard of it, and Patty, to tell the truth, was afraid of Sally. Sally was so—so decided, you know, and so downright, and she could be so hard about anything that concerned Charlie. Sally was not fair to Charlie—the dear boy! What if he was a little extravagant? All young men must have their fling. So Patty, with but the vaguest ideas of what the fling was,—she could think only of fireworks and yelling, although three hundred dollars will buy a great deal of fireworks and yelling is cheap,—Patty, I say, feeling very low in pocket and in spirits, bade Charlie an affectionate farewell and returned to Miss Miller's. She spent the afternoon in casting up her accounts and in biting the end of her pencil; occupations from which she derived but little satisfaction. She could not seem to make the accounts come out right and the end of a pencil, even the best, becomes a little cloying to the taste in time.
Charlie's parting injunction had been really unnecessary. "Don't tell Sally, will you, Patty?" he had said in a voice from which he tried in vain to keep the note of exultation. There was little danger of that. Patty was as anxious as Charlie was to keep all knowledge of the transaction from Sally. And Patty sighed and cast up her accounts all over again. There was no escape from it. She must look the matter in the face. The absence of that two hundred and fifty would make a great difference to her; it would leave her absolutely without ready money for more than a month, or—or, perhaps,—and she stared out of the window with unseeing eyes—she could manage to borrow—or ask Miss Miller to trust her—or somebody—But that would not make up half and everybody would know about it; and she sighed again and put down the remains of the pencil with its chewed end and put the paper into her waste-basket. She had given it up. She would trust to luck. She never was any good at arithmetic anyway.
What specious arguments Charlie had used to persuade her I do not know. It does not matter and she probably did not give them much attention. Charlie wanted the money. That was the point with her as it was the point with him. What were arguments and explanations? Mere words. But she noted that his watch was gone. Patty, herself, had given it to him only the year before. She could not help asking about that, in a somewhat hesitating and apologetic way.
Charlie set her doubts at rest at once. "Oh, that?" he said carelessly. "It needed cleaning and I left it." He gave the same answer to Sally when she asked about it.