ung and so--er--"

"Young!--Wait till you see me with my hair done up."

"I wonder what the end will be?" asked Rosalie.

"The end," said Mae unkindly, "will be that the baggage man will deliver
the suit-case, and Jermyn Hilliard, Junior, will never know--"

A maid appeared at the door.

"If you please," she murmured, her amazed eyes on Irene who was still
wearing the coat, "Mrs. Trent would like to have Miss Patty Wyatt come
to the drawing-room, and I am to take the suit-case down. The gentleman
is waiting."

"Oh, Patty!" a gasp went around the room.

"Do your hair up--quick!"

Priscilla caught Patty's twin braids and wound them around her head,
while the others in a flutter of excitement, thrust in the coat and
relocked the suit-case.

They crowded after her in a body and hung over the banisters at a
perilous angle, straining their ears in the direction of the
drawing-room. Nothing but a murmur of voices floated up, punctuated by
an occasional deep bass laugh. When they heard the front door close,
with one accord they invaded Harriet Gladden's room, which commanded the
walk, and pressed their noses against the pane. A short, thick-set man
of German build was waddling toward the gate and the trolley car. They
gazed with wide, horrified eyes, and turned without a word to meet Patty
as she trudged upstairs lugging her errant suit-case. A glance told her
that they had seen, and dropping on the top step, she leaned her head
against the railing and laughed.

"His name," she choked, "is John Hochstetter, Jr. He's a wholesale
grocer, and was on his way to a grocers' convention, where he was to
make a speech comparing American cheese with imported cheese. He didn't
mind at all not having his dress-suit--never feels comfortable in it
anyway, he says. He explained to the convention why he didn't have it
on, and it made the funniest speech of the evening. There's the study
bell."

Patty rose and turned toward Paradise Alley, but paused to throw back a
further detail:

"He has a dear little daughter of his own just my age!"

V

The Flannigan Honeymoon

The Murphy family, with a judicious eye to the buttered side of the
bread, had adopted Saint Ursula as their patron saint. The
family--consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy, eleven little Murphys
and "Gramma" Flannigan--occupied a five-room cottage close to the gates
of St. Ursula's school. They subsisted on the vicarious charity of
sixty-four girls,