room began to look like a booth at a
fancy bazaar.

One Saturday morning, as the sewing-circle was hard at work, little
Gilbert came in carrying a paper bag, which evidently contained
something valuable.

"It's for you, Patty," he said. "I brought it for you, to help keep
house; and its name is Pudgy."

Depositing the bag in his cousin's lap, little Gilbert knelt beside her.
"You needn't open it," he cried; "it will open itself!"

And, sure enough, the mouth of the bag untwisted, and a little grey head
came poking out.

"A kitten!" exclaimed Patty; "a Maltese kitten. Why, that's just the very
thing I wanted! Where did you get it, Gilbert, dear?"

"From the milkman," said Gilbert proudly. "We always get kitties
from him, and I telled him to pick out a nice pretty one for you. Do
you like it?"

"I love it," said Patty, cuddling the little bunch of grey fur; "and
Pudgy is just the right name for it. It's the fattest little cat I
ever saw."

"Yes," said Gilbert gravely; "don't let it get thin, will you?"

"No, indeed," said Patty; "I'll feed it on strawberries and cream all the
year round!"

That same afternoon Patty and Aunt Alice started out on a cook-hunting
expedition. A Cook's Tour, Frank called it; and the tourists took it very
seriously.

"Much of the success of your home, Patty," said Aunt Alice, as they were
going to the Intelligence Office, "depends upon your cook; for she will
be not only a cook, but, in part, housekeeper, and overseer of the whole
place. And while you must, of course, exercise your authority and demand
respect, yet at the same time you will find it necessary to defer to her
judgment and experience on many occasions."

"I know it, Aunt Alice," said Patty very earnestly; "and I do want to do
what is right. I want to be the head of papa's home, and yet there are a
great many things that my servants will know more about than I do. I
shall have to be very careful about my proportion; but if you and papa
will help me, I think I'll come out all right."

"I think you will," said Aunt Alice, but she smiled a little at the
assured toss of her niece's head.

The Intelligence Office proved to be as much misnamed as those
institutions usually are, and varying degrees of unintelligence were
shown in the candidates offered for the position of cook at Boxley Hall;
though, if the applicants seemed unsatisfactory to Patty, in many cases
she was no less so to them.

One tall, rawboned Irishwom