CHAPTER VIIIA TEA-PARTY
On Saturday, when Patty saw the Harts in the dining-room, she asked them to come to see her that afternoon. Jeannette was going out with her mother, but the other two willingly accepted the invitation.
“I’ll ask Lorraine, too,” said Patty, “and we’ll make tea and have a real cosey time.”
“The tea sounds cheerful,” said Adelaide, “but if you’re going to have Lorraine, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.”
“Oh, then of course I won’t ask her,” said Patty, quickly, for she did not think it just to the others to insist upon Lorraine’s presence; “I can have her some other time just as well. But Clementine Morse said she would come and see me this afternoon.”
“That’s all right,” said Editha; “everybody likes Clementine.”
In a gay mood Patty prepared for her little tea-party. She easily persuaded Grandma to send out for a box of marshmallows and a big bag of chestnuts. “For,” she said, “that lovely wood fire is just the very place to toast marshmallows and roast chestnuts. I know you’ll like Clementine Morse, Grandma, she’s so sweet and pretty, and I know she’ll like you—for the very same reasons.” Patty paused in her preparations to bestow a butterfly kiss on Grandma’s forehead, and then went on arranging her dainty tea-table.
“It’ll be almost like the Tea Club,” she said, as she piled up the sugar lumps and cut thin slices of lemon. “I suppose they’re having a meeting this afternoon, and Marian is being president. Do you know, Grandma, sometimes I get a little homesick for the Tea Club.”
“I should think you would, my dear. The Vernondale girls are a nice set. But perhaps you can get up a Tea Club here.”
“I’d like that,” said Patty, “but the girls are all so different here. They seem divided, and in Vernondale we were all united, just like one big family.”
The Harts came early. Editha brought a piece of exquisite fancy-work. She was a dainty, fragile girl, like a piece of Dresden china, and Patty looked at her in admiration as she deftly worked at the beautiful embroidery.
“What clever girls you are,” said Patty; “I couldn’t do anything like that, if I tried; and I couldn’t make the things Adelaide makes.”
“Probably you can do a lot of things that we can’t do,” said Editha, as she threaded her needle.
“I can do lots of things,” said Patty, laughing, “but I can’t do anything very well. I’m a Jack-of-all-trades. The only thing I really understand is housekeeping; and here, of course, I’ve no opportunity for that.”
“Housekeeping!” exclaimed Adelaide, “do you really know how to do that? Wherever did you learn?”
“I used to keep house in my home in New Jersey,” said Patty, quite ignoring the fact that Lorraine had warned her against mentioning her country home.
But Adelaide apparently did not share Lorraine’s views on this subject.
“How lovely!” she cried. “Did you have a whole house of your own, where you could drive tacks in the wall and do whatever you pleased?”
“Yes,” said Patty, “and I had entire charge of it. I always ordered everything; and I can cook, too.”
“Then you’re cleverer than we are,” said Editha, with an air of decision; “cooking is much more difficult than embroidering centre-pieces or nailing boards together.”
“Speak for yourself,” cried Adelaide; “of course anybody can do embroidery, but it isn’t so awful easy to nail boards together properly!”
“Why do you do it then?” retorted her sister; “I’m sure nobody wants the ridiculous things you make.”
“All right then,” said Adelaide, “give me back that book-rack I gave you yesterday. I’ll be glad to have it for myself.”
“Injun giver!” cried Editha, looking at her sister, angrily at first and then breaking into a laugh. “Take it, if you want it. I don’t care for it.”
“Wild horses couldn’t get that thing away from her,” said Adelaide to Patty; “she’s just crazy over it.”
“I am not!” cried Editha; “it’s nothing but useless rubbish.”
“All right, then Iwilltake it, and I’ll give it to Patty. And just you wait till I ever make you anything again, Editha Hart!”
“I won’t have to wait long,” said Editha, smiling good-naturedly once more; and then suddenly Adelaide laughed, too, and harmony was restored.
Soon Clementine Morse came.
“My brother brought me,” she explained, as she came in, “and he’s coming for me again at five o’clock.”
Patty introduced her new friend to Grandma, and then Clementine greeted the Hart girls gaily.
“Isn’t it lovely,” she exclaimed, “for you all to live in this same house together! Where you can visit each other whenever you like, without waiting for a brother to come and bring you or take you home.”
“We’d wait a long while for our brother,” said Adelaide, laughing, “and so would Patty. You’re lucky to have a brother, Clem.”
“Yes, I know it; and Clifford is an awful nice boy, but just so sure as I want him he wants to be going somewhere else. Still, he’s pretty good to me. Oh, what lovely marshmallows! are you going to toast them on hat-pins?”
“Good guesser!” cried Patty, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do, and we’re going to do it right now. I’ll toast yours, Editha, and pop them into your mouth, so you won’t get your fingers sticky.”
“No, thank you,” said Editha, rolling up her work; “half the fun is in the toasting. Let’s all do it together.”
“We didn’t wear any hats,” said Adelaide, “so we haven’t any hat-pins with us.”
“That’s one of the disadvantages of living in the same hotel, after all,” said Clementine; “of course having no hat-pins, you can’t be in the toasting party at all.”
But Grandma came to the rescue with some knitting-needles, and soon four laughing girls with very red cheeks were sitting on the floor in front of the fire, and the marshmallows were rapidly disappearing. The chestnuts were voted to be nearly as much fun as the confections, and the feast was at its height when the doorbell rang and Kenneth Harper was announced.
“Oh, Ken!” cried Patty, scrambling to her feet, “I’m so glad to see you. We’re having a roasting and toasting party, and it’s lucky you came before it’s all eaten up.”
Kenneth shook hands with Patty, and then politely greeted Grandma Elliott, who was always glad to welcome the boy.
Then he was presented to the girls, and in a few minutes the young people were chattering like friendly and well-acquainted magpies.
Patty, quite in her element, hovered round the tea-table and made tea in her usual successful fashion. Grandma produced a surprise in the shape of dear little frosted cakes, and the healthy young appetites did full justice to all these things.
“How is the farm growing, Patty?” inquired Kenneth; “I thought I’d come down and mow the grass for you.”
“I wish you would,” said Patty. “It’s growing all over the place and threatens to choke the tulip bulbs before they sprout. But oh, Ken, you ought to see Adelaide’s palmery, or palmistry, or whatever it is. She has an old Venetian fountain that plays all the time, and goldfish swim in it, and the palms grow on its banks, and it’s perfectly lovely, and she made it all herself.”
“I always told you that the city girls were clever,” said Kenneth, smiling at Patty. “Still, a home-made fountain is really outside of my experience.”
“It wasn’t difficult,” said Adelaide; “I have a mechanical turn of mind, and the fountain was an easy matter. But what I’m puzzling over now is how to build a suspension bridge across the library table. Our library is so small and the table is so big and there are so many of us to sit around it that you can’t cross the room at all. And so I thought a suspension bridge would be both useful and ornamental.”
“I’m sure it would,” said Kenneth, “and as I expect to be a bridge-builder some day, I might help you draw your plans now; it will be good practise.”
“I wish you’d hurry up and get it built,” said Editha; “it will be useful for a great many purposes. I would stand on it sometimes and recite ‘I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight’; it would be so very appropriate.”
“I hope you’ll do it at midnight, and then the rest of us needn’t hear your recitation,” put in Adelaide.
Patty feared one of the sisterly squabbles, and hastened to interrupt it. “I would come over and stand on your bridge and recite ‘How Horatius Kept the Bridge.’ ”
“ ‘And I will stand at thy right hand and keep the bridge with thee,’ ” said Kenneth in exaggerated dramatic tones.
“Well, a bridge seems to be a household necessity,” said Clementine. “I don’t see how we’ve worried along without one as long as we have.”
In merry nonsense and chaff the time slipped away, and everyone was surprised when Clifford Morse came for his sister, and said it was after five o’clock. The boy was invited in, and Patty begged of him that Clementine might stay a few moments longer.
Although Clifford Morse was only eighteen, he was a young giant. More than six feet tall, he was broad-shouldered and strong-limbed. His good-looking boyish face was framed in a thick close-cut crop of brown hair, and his athletic carriage and bearing was marked by the usual athlete’s grace.
The courteous respect he showed to Grandma Elliott, and his frank pleasant manner toward the girls, proved him a well-born and well-bred young American citizen, and, though meeting for the first time, he and Kenneth Harper instinctively felt a mutual friendliness.
“This is right down jolly,” he exclaimed, as he took the cup of tea Patty offered him. “I have attended affairs that were called afternoon teas, but there must have been a mistake somewhere; they were oppressive and awe-inspiring functions, but this is the real thing. Is it of frequent occurrence, Miss Fairfield, or must I wait a long and weary while before I may come again—to take my sister home?”
“You must ask Grandma,” said Patty, laughing; “she is the captain and the cook and the crew of thisNancy Bell. I am only the midshipmite.”
Young Morse turned to Grandma Elliott with his merry smile. “May I hope to come again,” he said, “if I promise to be very good and not drink up all the tea?”
“You may come any Saturday afternoon when we are at home,” said Grandma, smiling; “but it’s only fair to warn you that we’re very rarely home on Saturdays.”
“I shall come,” said Clifford, “and I’ll come early, and I’ll make myself so charming that you’ll quite forget all other engagements.”
“You may try it,” said Grandma, looking kindly at the merry boy.
The click of the key was heard in the front door and in a few moments Mr. Fairfield joined the party.
Then there were more introductions and more jokes, and much laughter, for Mr. Fairfield was a universal favourite with children and young people, and had a talent for always saying and doing exactly the right thing.
He was as courteous to the girls, including Patty, as though they had been grown-up ladies, and he greeted the boys with a frank cordiality as of man to man, which delighted their young souls.
Then Clementine declared she must go home, and, accompanied by Kenneth, she and her brother took their departure.
Then Editha and Adelaide went away, and Patty sat down by her father’s side to talk it all over.
“We had a beautiful time, papa,” she said, “and they’re a nice crowd. But what do you think? The Hart girls said they wouldn’t come if I asked Lorraine. So I didn’t ask her: and I’m glad of it, for she would have spoiled the whole party. But it does seem too bad, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does, Puss, but you mustn’t take it too much to heart. You’re not responsible for Lorraine’s unpopularity, and you mustn’t allow it to spoil your good times. Whenever you can help her, or give her pleasure in any way that she will accept graciously, I know you’ll do it.”
“Indeed I will, for I’m really going to try to make that girl happier. But of course I can’t force the other girls to help me, though after I know them better I may be able to coax them to.”
“You’re a good little girl, Patty, and you’re showing a kind and generous spirit. Let the good work go on, and some day when you least expect it I’ll help you out with it.”
CHAPTER IXHILDA
On Monday morning Patty started for her second week at the Oliphant school without any misgivings as to her reception by the girls.
Although little had been said regarding Lorraine, and though Patty had loyally refrained from disclaiming her as an intimate friend, yet Clementine and Adelaide both understood matters better now, and were quite ready to accept Patty on her own merits.
So it came about that she walked to school between Adelaide and Lorraine, and though her two companions had little to say to each other, Patty skilfully managed to be pleasant and sociable with both.
Of course the morning was entirely occupied with lessons, but at the noon hour Adelaide appropriated Patty and carried her off to join a group off girls who were merrily chatting together. Clementine was one of them, and in a few moments Patty discovered that they were all Gigs, and seemed proud of the appellation.
“It will be the most fun,” Flossy Fisher was saying; “I’ll manage the Elephant—I can always wind her around my finger—and she won’t know what it’s all about until she finds herself down cellar in front of the mirror. You’ll come to it, won’t you, Patty?”
“What is it, and where, and when, and how, and why?” asked Patty, laughing; “you see I’m a new girl, and a green one. But I suppose from your mention of the elephant, you’re talking about a circus.”
“It will be a circus,” said Clementine, “but a little private one of our own. The Elephant is our pet name for Miss Oliphant, and we Gigs are always playing tricks on her. She pretends she doesn’t like it, but I think she does, for often behind her frowning spectacles she hides a smiling face.”
“Isn’t Clementine the cleverest thing!” exclaimed Adelaide; “she can misquote from all the standard British and American authors. It’s a great thing to be the bright and shining light of the Literature class.”
“But tell me more about this elephant performance,” said Patty; “why are you going to put Miss Oliphant down cellar?”
“Sh! breathe it not aloud,” warned Clementine; “the Wild West must not hear it. It isn’t until Hallowe’en, you know, and then——”
The announcement of luncheon interrupted this conversation, and the girls started for the dining-room. Adelaide insisted that Patty should sit at their table, but for two reasons Patty hesitated about this.
In the first place she did not quite want to desert Lorraine so completely; and second, she was not yet sure that she wanted to proclaim herself one of the Gigs. Still less did she want to be a Prig, and she well knew she could never by the widest stretch of imagination be called a Dig, so she concluded not to ally herself definitely with either of these mystic orders until she had opportunity for further consideration.
So she firmly but good-naturedly declined to change her table for the present, and took her usual place by the side of Lorraine.
“Well,” said Lorraine, pettishly, “you seem to have made a great many new friends.”
“Yes,” said Patty, determined to be pleasant, “I have. I’m getting better acquainted with the girls, and I think they’re a very nice lot. You can’t judge much the first few days, you know. Clementine is a dear, isn’t she?”
“I don’t see anything dear about her. I think she’s silly and stuck-up.”
“Why, Lorraine, how absurd! Clementine isn’t stuck-up at all.”
“Well, I think she is, and, anyway, I don’t like her.” After which gracious speech Lorraine devoted herself to eating her luncheon, and was so unresponsive to further attempts at conversation that Patty gave it up, and turned to talk to the girl on the other side of her.
This was Hilda Henderson, an English girl, who had lived in America only about two years. She was slender, yet with a suggestion of hardy strength in her small bones and active muscles. She had a quick nervous manner, and her head, which was daintily set on her shoulders, moved with the alert motions of a bird. Not exactly pretty, but with dark straight hair and dark eyes, she looked like a girl of fine traits and strong character.
Patty had liked the appearance of this girl from the first, but had not seemed to be able to make friends with her.
But fortified by the new conditions which were developing, she made overtures with a little more confidence.
“You are a boarding pupil here, aren’t you?” said Patty. “Do you know anything about the plans for a Hallowe’en party?”
“No,” said Hilda, “except that there’s going to be one. I fancy it will be just like last year’s party.”
“Are they nice? What do you do at them?”
“Yes, they’re rather good fun. We bob for apples, and go downstairs backward, and sail nut-shell boats, and all those things.”
Patty said nothing further about Miss Oliphant’s part in it, as she thought perhaps it was a secret.
“You must have real good times living here,” she went on; “so many of you girls all together.”
“Yes, it’s not so very horrid; though it’s very unlike an English boarding school. American girls are so enthusiastic.”
“Yes, we are; but I like that, don’t you?”
“Oh, if one has anything to be excited over, it’s all very well; but you waste such a lot of enthusiasm that, when anything comes along really worth while, you have no words left to show your appreciation of it.”
“Oh, I have,” said Patty, laughing. “Or if I haven’t, I use the same words over again. They don’t wear out, you know.”
“Yes, they do,” said Hilda, earnestly; “you say everything is perfectly grand or gorgeous when it’s most commonplace. And then when you come across something really grand or gorgeous what can you say?”
“Of course that’s all true; but that’s just a way we have. You like America, don’t you?”
“Yes, rather well. But I never shall learn to rave over nothing the way you all do.”
“How do you know I do? You scarcely know me at all yet.”
“You’re not as much so as the rest. And I think I shall like you. But I don’t make friends easily, and often I don’t get on with the very ones I most want to.”
“Oh, you’ll get on with me all right if you have the least mite of a wish to. I make friends awfully easily. That is, I generally have,” supplemented Patty, suddenly remembering her experiences of the past week.
“I think I’d like to be friends with you,” said Hilda, with an air of thoughtful caution, “but of course I can’t say yet.”
“Of course not!” said Patty, unable to resist poking a little fun at this very practical girl; “I think you ought to know anybody four weeks before you decide, and then take them on trial.”
“I think so, too,” said Hilda, heartily, taking Patty quite seriously, though the speech had been meant entirely in jest. “You’re awfully sensible, for an American.”
“Yes, I think I am,” said Patty, demurely.
After luncheon another triumph awaited Patty.
Gertrude Lyons and Maude Carleton came up to her, and each taking her by one arm, walked her over to the bay-window, where they might talk uninterruptedly.
“We want you to be in our set,” said Gertrude; “we have the nicest girls in school in our set, and I know you’ll like it best of any.”
“And we have the best times,” put in Maude; “none of the sets can do the things we do.”
Patty did not altogether like this sudden change of attitude on the part of these girls. And, too, they seemed to her a little condescending in their manner. She liked better Hilda Henderson’s proposition, which, though less flattering, seemed to promise better results.
And she had not forgotten Gertrude’s real rudeness the week before.
“Thank you ever so much,” she said, “but I’m not sure that I want to join your set. Last week you didn’t want me, and turn about is fair play.” Patty’s pleasant smile, as she said this, robbed the words of all harshness and made it impossible for the girls to feel offended.
“I suppose Iwashateful,” said Gertrude, “and I take it all back. But, you see, everybody said you were Lorraine Hamilton’s chum and that you were just like her. Now, you’re not a bit like her, and I don’t believe you’re such a great chum of hers. Are you?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” said Patty, smiling; “I’m a friend of Lorraine’s, and always shall be, I hope; but I’m not such a chum of hers that I can’t be friends with anybody else.”
“That’s what I said,” put in Maude; “and so there’s no reason why you can’t belong to our set, even if Lorraine doesn’t.”
“Why do they call you the Prigs?” asked Patty.
Gertrude laughed. “They think the name teases us,” she said; “but it doesn’t a bit. They call us Prigs because they think we’re stuck-up, and so we are. We’re the richest girls in the school and we belong to the best families. But that isn’t all; we have the best manners, and we’re never rude or awkward, and we’re always perfect in deportment, so we’re almost always on the Privileged Roll.”
“What’s the Privileged Roll?” asked Patty.
“Why, it’s a special Roll of Honour, and if your name’s on it you have a lot of little extra favours and privileges that the others don’t have. The Gigs, now, they never get on the Privileged Roll. They have a lot of fun, but I think it’s silly and babyish.”
“And the Digs?” asked Patty. “Are they on the Privileged Roll?”
“Not often,” said Gertrude; “they get perfect in their lessons, of course, but they’re so busy studying they are apt to forget their manners. Hilda Henderson is a Dig, but she has good manners because she’s English. English girls always do; they can’t seem to help it.”
“I like Hilda Henderson,” said Patty; “she seems to me an awfully nice girl.”
“Yes, she’s nice enough,” said Maude, carelessly; “but she’s rather heavy and not up to our ideas of fun.”
The class-bell rang just then and with a promise to think about joining Gertrude’s set, Patty left them.
After school she walked home with Lorraine. Adelaide had been detained and the two girls went home alone.
“I suppose you’ll be dreadfully thick with the Prigs, now that they’ve taken you up,” said Lorraine.
“They haven’t taken me up yet,” replied Patty, a little shortly.
“Well, they’re beginning to hang around you, so I suppose they will take you up soon.”
“They’ve already asked me to join their set, if that’s what you mean by ‘taking up.’ ”
“Well, then of course you’ll join it, and I suppose you’ll have no use for me after that.”
“Now, look here, Lorraine, we might as well have this out now, once for all. I’d like to be a friend of yours, but there are lots of times when you make me feel as if you didn’t want me to be. And besides, I expect to be friends with everybody. That’s the way I always have been; it’s my nature. And if being friends with you is going to prevent my having anything to do with anybody else in the whole school, why then I’m not going to do it, that’s all.”
“I told you so,” said Lorraine, staring moodily before her; “I knew when those Prigs took you up you’d drop me.”
“But I won’t drop you, Lorraine,” said Patty, exasperated by such injustice. “And if you drop me, it’s your own fault. What is the matter with you, anyway? Why don’t you like anybody?”
“Because nobody likes me, I suppose,” and Lorraine’s face wore such a helpless, hopeless expression that Patty’s indignation calmed down a little.
“I feel like shaking you,” she said, half angry, half laughing. “Now, see here, why don’t you try a different tack? Just make up your mind that you like everybody, and act so, and first thing you know they’ll all like you.”
Patty expected an irritable retort of some kind, and was surprised when Lorraine said, wistfully:
“Do you really think so, Patty?”
“Of course I do,” cried Patty, delighted to find Lorraine so responsive; “just you try it, girlie, and see if I’m not a true prophet.”
“I’ll try,” said Lorraine, who seemed to be in a particularly gentle mood, at least for the moment; “but I haven’t much hope of myself or anybody else; I’m cross and ugly by nature, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever be any different.”
“Oh, pshaw!” cried Patty; “yes, you will. Never mind what you are by nature. Try art. Make believe you’re happy and jolly, like other people, and suddenly you’ll discover that you are.”
CHAPTER XGRIGS
The more Patty saw of Hilda Henderson the better she liked her.
Hilda was not quite so scatter-brained as Clementine, yet she was far more merry and companionable than Lorraine.
So it came about that Hilda and Patty were much together.
They often walked together when the school went for a promenade in the Park, and Patty was surprised to find that there was a lot of fun in the English girl, after all.
Then, too, they were congenial in their tastes. They liked the same things, they read the same books, and they almost always agreed in their opinions.
One day the girls were gathered in the gymnasium. It was recreation hour, and the various groups of young people were chatting and laughing.
Patty sat in a window-seat, looking out at the steadily falling rain.
“It’s a funny thing,” she said, “but although a rainy day is supposed to be depressing, it doesn’t affect me that way at all. I feel positively hilarious, and I don’t care who knows it.”
“So do I,” said Hilda; “I’m as merry as a grig.”
“I know most of your English allusions,” said Patty, “but ‘grig’ is too many for me. What is a grig, and why is it merry?”
“A grig,” said Hilda, “why, it’s a kind of cricket or grasshopper, I think. I don’t know Natural History very well, but the habits of grigs must be merry, because ‘as merry as a grig’ is the only thing anybody ever heard about them.”
“Of course grasshoppers are merry,” said Clementine; “you can tell that by the way they jump. But grig is a much nicer name than grasshopper; it sounds more jumpy.”
“Girls!” said Patty, with an air of sudden importance, “I have a most brilliant idea!”
“Your first?” inquired Adelaide, interestedly.
“No, indeed,” said Patty, “I often have them when I’m in your vicinity. But this is really great. You know that foolishness about Prigs and Digs and Gigs?”
“Yes,” said the girls in chorus.
“Well, there’s no sense to it; it doesn’t mean anything, really.”
“Do you happen to know, Miss Fairfield, that you’re attacking old and time-honoured institutions of the Oliphant school?” asked Clementine in mock indignation.
“So much the worse for the honourable Time,” rejoined Patty. “Now listen; I think we can have a society, a real true society, I mean, that will be a lot more fun than any of those ancient and honourable orders.”
“Grigs!” cried Hilda, with a sudden flash of understanding.
“Yes,” said Patty, “Grigs. You see, I never could make up my mind which of those other three sets I’d belong to, because none of them seemed to fit me. Now if we start a society of Grigs, a regular club, you know, we can invite anybody we want in the school to join it.”
“What kind of a society will it be?” demanded Adelaide.
“What is the chief characteristic of a grig?” demanded Patty in return.
“Well, I never met one,” said Adelaide, “but Hilda says they have nothing but merriment to distinguish them from other animals.”
“That’s enough,” said Patty. “All that the members of our society need do is to be merry. Honest, girls, don’t you think it will be fun?”
“I do,” said Hilda, catching the spirit of the thing at once. “And we’ll have officers and dues, and regular meetings, just like——”
“Just like Parliament,” put in Clementine, “and then, my British subject, you’ll feel quite at home.”
“I used to belong to a club in Vernondale,” said Patty, “and we didn’t do anything but just drink tea and have fun at our meetings. We were merry as grigs, though we didn’t call ourselves by that name. But I think that’s a jolly name for a society—especially a society that has to be made up of Prigs and Gigs and Digs.”
“So do I,” said Hilda; “let’s organise right away.”
“Oh, we can’t,” said Patty, “we haven’t decided what girls to ask, or anything.”
“Let’s organise first,” said Adelaide, “just we four, you know, and then decide on the other members afterwards.”
“All right,” said Patty, “but the bell will ring in a minute and we won’t have time now. Besides, we can’t do it in such a hurry. Now I’ll tell you what; you girls come down to my house Saturday morning and then we’ll do it all up properly.”
“That’s a jolly lark,” said Hilda; “I’ll be there.”
And the others agreed to come, too.
So on Saturday morning the Fairfields’ library was the scene of a most animated club organisation.
“We ought to have some definite aim,” said Hilda, as they talked over ways and means.
“We have,” said Patty decidedly; “I’ve been thinking this thing over, and I really think that to be merry and to scatter merriment around the world is a worthy enough aim for anybody.”
“How do you mean to scatter it?” asked Adelaide, with a look of utter bewilderment at the idea.
“I don’t know yet, exactly,” said Patty; “that’s for the club to decide; but I’m sure there are lots of ways. You know the charitable societies scatter food and clothing, and there’s a Sunshine Society that scatters help or aid or something, and I do believe that there are plenty of ways to scatter merriment.”
“Do you mean to poor people?” asked Clementine.
“Not only to poor people,” said Patty; “it doesn’t make any difference whether they’re poor or not; everybody likes to have some fun, or if they don’t, they ought to.”
“It’s a great scheme,” exclaimed Hilda, her eyes shining, as she thought of various possibilities. “For one thing we could collect comic papers and take them to the hospitals.”
“Yes, that will be fine,” said Clementine, “for when most people send reading matter to the hospitals they send dry old books and poky old magazines that nobody can read. I know, because I have been to the hospital sometimes to read to the children, and I’ve seen the literature that was sent in. And of all forlorn stuff!”
“Yes, that’s the kind of thing I mean,” said Patty; “and we can go to the hospitals ourselves sometimes and chirk up the patients and make them laugh. Clementine could sing some of her funny songs. But that’s only a part of it. We’ll have meetings, too, where we’ll just be merry as grigs ourselves, and make fun for each other.”
“Well, I think the whole thing is lovely,” said Adelaide; “let’s organise right straight off. Patty, of course you’ll be president.”
“Of course I won’t,” said Patty, quickly; “Hilda must be president, because if it hadn’t been for her we would never have known what grigs were, and so we couldn’t be them.”
Hilda demurred at accepting the honourable position, and Adelaide frankly said she thought Patty better adapted for it, but Patty was firm and insisted that the office should be Hilda’s.
“I’ll be secretary, if you like,” she said, “or anything else; but I won’t be president.”
So Hilda was made president and Patty secretary of the noble society of Grigs. Clementine was appointed vice-president and Adelaide treasurer.
The four officers wanted to enter upon their duties at once, and Adelaide begged that they would decide upon what the dues should be, so that she might collect them. Clementine asked Hilda to go home, in order that she might be president during her absence; and Patty declared that there was no use trying to keep the minutes of a society of Grigs, for it would read like a nonsense-book.
But Hilda, who had some notions of taking charge of a meeting, called the members to order and expressed her views.
“We don’t want to be bothered with much in the way of rules and regulations,” she said; “but we must have some few laws if we’re going to be a society at all. Now, first, how many members shall we have?”
“First,” said Patty, “where are you going to meet? do you think it will be more fun just to have a school society and have our meetings there, say in the gymnasium, or do you think it will be nicer to meet around at each other’s houses?”
“Oh, around at the houses,” said Clementine. “Let’s meet Saturday mornings, just like this. If we have it at school, we’ll have to ask a lot of girls we don’t want, or else they’ll get mad.”
This argument was considered good, and meetings at the homes of the members seemed to be the best plan.
“But not every week,” said Adelaide; “I couldn’t come so often. I have a singing lesson every other Saturday morning.”
So it was agreed that the Grigs should meet once a fortnight during the school term, and it was furthermore settled that eight members would be enough for the present.
“For our rooms are awfully small,” said Hilda, “and it will be all I can do to get eight in.”
“Our house is big enough,” said Clementine, “but I think eight is enough to start with, until we see how the club goes. Now who shall the other four be?”
“How would it do,” said Hilda, “for us each to select one?”
“Do they have to be girls in the school?” asked Adelaide; “because, if not, I’ll ask Editha. She’s merry enough for anybody and she loves to do things for hospital people.”
“Why, of course they don’t have to be schoolgirls,” said Hilda; “perhaps it’s better to have some who aren’t, and then those who are and whom we don’t ask won’t have so much reason to get mad about it.”
Although somewhat ambiguous, this speech was understood by the other Grigs, and they all heartily agreed to it.
Then Clementine said she would ask Flossy Fisher. As Flossy was the embodiment of merriment, they all thought her a most acceptable member.
“I shall ask Mary Sargent,” said Hilda. “You girls don’t know her very well, and she seems quiet, but really there’s a lot of fun in her, and you’ll find it out.”
“Oh, I think she’s jolly,” said Clementine; “anybody must be to draw such funny pictures as she does. She got me giggling in class the other day, and I came near being marked in deportment. It was an awful narrow escape. Who are you going to ask, Patty?”
Patty looked at her three fellow-Grigs. “I’ve made up my mind,” she said, and her eyes twinkled; “I shall ask Lorraine Hamilton.”
A chorus of groans greeted this announcement, and then Clementine said: “That’s a good joke, Patty, and an awfully funny one; but, honest, who do youreallymean to ask?”
“It isn’t a joke,” said Patty. “You girls each made your selection, and nobody found any fault; now I think I ought to have the same privilege.”
“But we chose merry girls,” said Adelaide; “nobody could call Lorraine as merry as a Grig! Oh, Patty, she’ll spoil the whole club.”
“But listen, girls; the club is to make other people merry as well as to be merry ourselves, and don’t you think it would be a good thing if we could make Lorraine merry?”
“Yes,” said Hilda; “but the people we’re going to cheer up are not members of the club. I think the members ought to be really grigs and not croaking ravens, like Lorraine.”
“If she’s a member, I won’t be,” said Adelaide, “and Editha won’t either.”
“Then that settles it,” said Patty, cheerfully; “of course, Adelaide, I wouldn’t do anything that would keep you out of the club. But look here, girls: if Lorraine gets more pleasant and sunshiny after a while, will you let her come in then?”
“If she gets to be as merry as a grig, of course she can come in,” said Adelaide; “Lorraine is a nice enough girl, except that she’s so disagreeable and always throws a wet blanket on everything. Why, we couldn’t have any fun at all at the meetings, if she sat up there, looking as cross as two sticks.”
“That’s so,” said Patty, with a sigh; “but never you mind, she’s going to improve. She said she’d try to, and somehow the Grigs must help her.”
“And in the meantime you must choose somebody else, Patty.”
“No, I don’t want to; let’s just leave her place vacant for the present, and if we want anyone else in, we can decide about it later.”
“All right,” said Hilda, “and really I wouldn’t be surprised if Lorraine should improve. Why one day this week I saw her smile.”
“I saw it too!” exclaimed Clementine; “it was Tuesday, at noon hour. The rest of the girls were almost in hysterics over something or other, and I saw Lorraine break into a small timid little smile. Oh, she’ll be merry as a Grig yet!”