CHAPTER III
THE TEA CLUB

"Well I should think you'd better stay in Vernondale, Patty Fairfield, if you know what's good for yourself! Why, if you had attempted to leave this town, we would have mobbed you with tar and feathers, or whatever those dreadful things are that they do to the most awful criminals."

"Oh, if I had gone, Polly, I should have taken this club with me, of course. I'm so used to it now, I'm sure I couldn't live a day, and know that we should meet no more, as the Arab remarked to his beautiful horse."

"It would be rather fun to be transported bodily to New York as a club, but I'd want to be transported home again after the meeting," said Helen Preston.

"Why shouldn't we do that?" cried Florence Douglass. "It would be lots of fun for the whole club to go to New York some day together."

"I'm so glad Patty is going to stay with us, I don't care what we do," said Ethel Holmes, who was drawing pictures on Patty's white shirt-waist cuffs as a mark of affection.

"I'm glad, too," said Patty; "and, Ethel, your kittens are perfectly lovely, but this is my last clean shirt-waist, and those pencil-marks are awfully hard to wash out."

"I don't mean them to be washed out," said Ethel, calmly going on with her art work; "they're not wash drawings, they're permanent decorations for your cuffs, and are offered as a token of deep regard and esteem."

The Tea Club was holding a Saturday afternoon meeting at Polly Stevens's house, and the conversation, as yet, had not strayed far from the all-engrossing subject of Patty's future plans.

The Tea Club had begun its existence with lofty and noble aims in a literary direction, to be supplemented and assisted by an occasional social cup of tea. But if you have had any experience with merry, healthy young girls of about sixteen, you will not be surprised to learn that the literary element had softly and suddenly vanished away, much after the manner of a Boojum. Then, somehow, the social interest grew stronger, and the tea element held its own, and the result was a most satisfactory club, if not an instructive one.

"But," as Polly Stevens had said, "we are instructed all day long in school, and a good deal out of school, too, for that matter; and what we need most is absolutely foolish recreation; the foolisher the better."

And so the Saturday afternoon meetings had developed into merely merry frolics, with a cup of tea, which was often a figure of speech for chocolate or lemonade, at the close.

There were no rules, and the girls took pleasure in calling themselves unruly members. There were no dues, and consequently no occasion for a secretary or treasures. Patty continued to be called the president, but the title meant nothing more than the fact that she was really a chief favourite among the girls. No one was bound, or even expected to attend the meetings unless she chose; but, as a rule, a large majority of the club was present.

And so to-day, in the library at Polly Stevens's house, nine members of the Tea Club were chattering like nine large and enthusiastic magpies.

"Now we can go on with the entertainment," said Lillian Desmond, as she sat on the arm of Patty's chair, curling wisps of the presidential hair over her fingers. "If Patty had gone away, I should have resigned my part in the show and gone into a convent. Where are you going to live, Patty?"

"I don't know, I am sure; we haven't selected a house yet; and if we don't find one we like, papa may build one, though I believe Marian has one all picked out for us."

"Yes, I have," said Marian. "It's the Bigelow house on our street. I do want to keep Patty near us."

"The Bigelow house? Why, that's too large for two people. Patty and Mr. Fairfield would get lost in it. Now, I know a much nicer one. There's a little house next-door to us, a lovely, little cottage that would suit you a lot better. Tell your father about it, Patty. It's for sale or rent, and it's just the dearest place."

"Why, Laura Russell," cried Marian, "that little snip of a house! It wouldn't hold Patty, let alone Uncle Fred. You only proposed it because you want Patty to live next-door to you."

"Yes; that's it," said Laura, quite unabashed; "I know it's too little, but you could add ells and bay-windows and wings and things, and then it would be big enough."

"Would it hold the Tea Club?" said Patty. "I must have room for them, you know."

"Oh, won't it be fun to have the Tea Club at Patty's house!" cried Elsie. "I hadn't thought of that."

"What's a home without a Tea Club?" said Patty. "I shall select the house with an eye single to the glory and comfort of you girls."

"Then I know of a lovely house," said Christine Converse. "It's awfully big, and it's pretty old, but I guess it could be fixed up. I mean the old Warner place."

"Good gracious!" cried Ethel; "'way out there! and it's nothing but a tumble-down old barn, anyhow."

"Oh, I think it's lovely; and it's Colonial, or Revolutionary, or something historic; and they're going to put the trolley out there this spring,—my father said so."

"It is a nice old house," said Patty; "and it could be made awfully pretty and quaint. I can see it, now, in my mind's eye, with dimity curtains at the windows, and roses growing over the porch."

"I hope you will never see those dimity curtains anywhere but in your mind's eye," said Marian. "It's a heathenish old place, and, anyway, it's too far away from our house."

"Papa says I can have a pony and cart," said Patty; "and I could drive over every day."

"A pony and cart!" exclaimed Helen Preston. "Won't that be perfectly lovely! I've always wanted one of my own. And shall you have man-servants, and maid-servants? Oh, Patty, you never could run a big establishment like that. You'll have to have a housekeeper."

"I'm going to try it," said Patty, laughing. "It will be an experiment, and, of course, I shall make lots of blunders at first; but I think it's a pity if a girl nearly sixteen years old can't keep house for her own father."

"So do I," said Laura. "And, anyhow, if you get into any dilemmas we'll all come over and help you out."

The girls laughed at this; for Laura Russell was a giddy little feather-head, and couldn't have kept house for ten minutes to save her life.

"Much good it would do Patty to have the Tea Club help her keep house," said Florence Douglass. "But we'll all make her lovely things to go to housekeeping with. I shall be real sensible, and make her sweeping-caps and ironing-holders."

"Oh, I can beat that for sensibleness," cried Ethel Holmes. "I read about it the other day, and it's a broom-bag. I haven't an idea what it's for; but I'll find out, and I'll make one."

"One's no good," said Marian sagely. "Make her a dozen while you're about it."

"Oh, do they come by dozens?" said Ethel, in an awestruck voice. "Well, I guess I won't make them then. I'll make her something pretty. A pincushion all over lace and pin ribbons, or something like that."

"That will be lovely," said Laura. "I shall embroider her a tablecloth."

"You'll never finish it," said Patty, who well knew how soon Laura's bursts of enthusiasm spent themselves. "You'd better decide on a doily. Better a doily done than a tablecloth but begun."

"Oh, I'll tell you-what we can do, girls," said Polly Stevens. "Let's make Patty a tea-cloth, and we'll each write our name on it, and then embroider it, you know."

"Lovely!" cried Christine. "Just the thing. Who'll hemstitch it? I won't. I'll embroider my name all right, but I hate to hemstitch."

"I'll hemstitch it," said Elsie Morris. "I do beautiful hemstitching."

"So do I," said Helen Preston. "Let me do half."

"Ethel and I hemstitch like birds," said Lillian Desmond. "Let's each do a side,—there'll be four sides, I suppose."

"Well, the tea-cloth seems in a fair way to get hemstitched," said Patty. "You can put a double row around it, if you like, and I'll be awfully glad to have it. I'll use it the first Saturday afternoon after I get settled."

"I wish I knew where you're going to live," said Ethel. "I'd like to have a correct mental picture of that first Saturday afternoon."

"It's a beautiful day for walking," said Polly Stevens. "Let's all go out, and take a look at the Warner place. Something tells me that you'll decide to live there."

"I hope something else will tell you differently, soon," said Marian, "for I'll never give my consent to that arrangement. However, I'd just as lieve walk out there, if only to convince you what a forlorn old place it is."

"Come on; let's go, then. We can be back in an hour, and have tea afterwards. I'll get the key from Mr. Martin, as we go by."

Like a bombarding army the Tea Club stormed the old Warner house, and once inside its Colonial portal, they made the old walls ring with their laughter. The wide hall was dark and gloomy until Elsie Morris flung open the door at the other end, and let in the December sunshine.

"Seek no farther," she cried dramatically. "We have crossed the Rubicon and found the Golden Fleece! This is the place of all others for our Tea Club meeting, and it doesn't matter what the rest of the house may be like. Patty, you will kindly consider the matter settled."

"I'll consider anything you like," said Patty; "and before breakfast, too, if you'll only hurry up and get out of this damp, musty old place. I'm shivering myself to pieces."

"Oh, it isn't cold," said Laura Russell; "and while we're here, let's go through the house."

"Yes," said Marian; "examine it carefully, lest some of its numerous advantages should escape your notice. Observe the hardwood floors, the magnificent mahogany stair-rail, and the lofty ceilings!"

The old floors were creaky, worm-eaten, and dusty; the stair-rail was in a most dilapidated condition, and the ceilings were low and smoky; so Marian scored her points.

"But it is antique," said Ethel Holmes, with the air of an auctioneer. "Ah, ladies, what would you have? It is a fine specimen of the Colonial Empire period, picked out here and there with Queen Anne. The mantels, ah,—the mantels are dreams in marble."

"Nightmares in painted wood, you mean," said Lillian.

"But so roomy and expansive," went on Ethel. "And the wall-papers! Note the fine stage of complete dilapidation left by the moving finger of Time."

"The wall-papers are all right," said Patty. "They look as if they'd peel off easily. Come on upstairs."

The chambers were large, low, and rambling; and the house, in its best days, must have been an interesting specimen of its type. But after a short investigation, Patty was as firmly convinced as Marian that its charms could not offset its drawbacks.

"I've seen enough of this moated grange," cried Patty. "Come on, girls, we're going back to tea, right, straight, smack off."

"There's no pleasing some folks," grumbled Ethel. "Here's an ancestral pile only waiting for somebody to ancestralise it. You could make it one of the Historic Homes of Vernondale, and you won't even consider it for a minute."

"I'll consider it for a minute," said Patty, "if that will do you any good, but not a bit longer; and as the minute is nearly up, I move we start."