over to the hotel for dinner. Meanwhile I'll call in the Street
Cleaning Department to attend to this dining-room."

CHAPTER XIII

A NEW FRIEND

"Patty," said her father, a week or two later, "Mr. Hepworth has invited
us to a tea in his studio in New York tomorrow afternoon, and if you care
to go, I'll take you."

"Yes, I'd love to go; I've always wanted to go to a studio tea. It's very
kind of Mr. Hepworth to ask us after the way he was treated here."

Mr. Fairfield laughed, but Patty looked decidedly sober. She still felt
very much crestfallen to think that the first guest her father brought
home should be obliged to dine at the hotel, or at a neighbour's. Aunt
Alice had invited them to dinner on that memorable Sunday, and though she
said she had expected to ask the Fairfields anyway, still Patty felt
that, as a housekeeper, she had been weighed in the balances and found
sadly wanting.

According to arrangement, she met her father in New York the day of the
tea, and together they went to Mr. Hepworth's studio.

It gave Patty a very grown-up feeling to find herself amongst such
strange and unaccustomed surroundings.

The studio was a large room, on the top floor of a high building. It was
finished in dark wood and decorated with many unframed pictures and dusty
casts. Bits of drapery were flung here and there, quaint old-fashioned
chairs and couches were all about, and at one side of the room was a
raised platform. A group of ladies and gentlemen sat in one corner,
another group surrounded a punch bowl, and many wise and learned-looking
people were discussing the pictures and drawings.

Patty was enchanted. She had never been in a scene like this before, and
the whole atmosphere appealed to her very strongly.

The guests, though kind and polite to her, treated her as a child, and
Patty was glad of this, for she felt sure she never could talk or
understand the artistic jargon in which they were conversing. But she
enjoyed the pictures in her own way, and was standing in delighted
admiration before a large marine, which was nothing but the varying
blues of the sea and sky, when she heard a pleasant, frank young voice
beside her say:

"You seem to like that picture."

"Oh, I do!" she exclaimed, and turning, saw a pleasant-faced boy of about
nineteen smiling at her.

"It is so real," she said. "I never saw a realer scene, not even down at
Sandy Hook; why, you can fairly feel the dampness from it."