She came through at that,
and we lay together in the snow and like to burst a rib laughing.
"You'll never be a princess, Miss Patty," I declared. "You're too lowly
minded."
She sat up suddenly and straightened her sealskin cap on her head.
"I wish," she said unpleasantly, "I wish you wouldn't always drag in
disagreeable things, Minnie!"
And she was sulky all the way to the house.
Miss Summers came to my room that night as I was putting my hot-water
bottle to bed, in a baby-blue silk wrapper with a band of fur around the
low neck--Miss Summers, of course, not the hot-water bottle.
"Well!" she said, sitting down on the foot of the bed and staring at me.
"Well, young woman, for a person who has never been farther away than
Finleyville you do pretty well!"
"Do what?" I asked, with the covers up to my chin.
"Do what, Miss Innocence!" she said mockingly. "You're the only
red-haired woman I ever saw who didn't look as sophisticated as the
devil. I'll tell you one thing, though." She reached down into the
pocket of her dressing-gown and brought up a cigarette and a match. "You
never had me fooled for a minute!" She looked at me over the match.
I lay and stared back.
"And another thing," she said. "I never had any real intention of
marrying Dicky Carter and raising a baby sanatorium. I wouldn't have the
face to ask Arabella to live here."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Miss Summers," I said. "I've gone through a
lot; I'm an old woman in the last two weeks.
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