“To go away from all this,” she thought, “and be mewed up in a little bare room, with a few sticks of horrid old furniture, and nowhere to put things away decently!”

She glanced at her room wardrobes and numerous chiffoniers and dressing-tables.

“Live in a trunk, I s’pose,” she went on to herself; “all my best frocks in a mess of wrinkles, all my best hats smashed to windmills!  No broad ocean to look at!  Nothing but mountains with trees all over their sides!  Nothing to do but walk up rocky, steep paths to a spring, take a drink of water, and come stumbling down again!  In the evenings, dress up, and promenade eighty thousand feet of veranda, as advertised!”

Roused to a frenzy by her own self-pity and indignation, Patty got up and stalked about the room.  She flung off her pretty summer frock, and slipped on a blue silk kimono.  Then she sat down in front of her dressing-table to brush her hair for the night.

She drew out the pins, and great curly masses came tumbling down around her shoulders.  Patty’s hair was truly golden, and did not turn darker as she grew older.

She brushed away slowly, and looked at herself in the mirror.  What she saw must have surprised her, for she dropped her brush in astonishment.

“Well, Patricia Fairfield!” she exclaimed to her own reflection.  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!  You, who are supposed to be of amiable disposition, you whom people call ‘Sunshine,’ because of your good nature, you who have every joy and every blessing that heart can wish, you look like a sour-faced, cross-grained, disgruntled old maid!  So there now!  And, Miss, do you want to know what I think of you?” She picked up her hair brush, and shook it at the flushed, angry face in the mirror.  “Well, I think you’re a monster of selfishness!  You’re a dragon of ingratitude!  And a griffin of cross-patchedness!  Now, Miss, will you drop this attitude of injured innocence, and act like a civilised human being?”

Patty was a little over hard on herself.  She hadn’t at all exhibited such traits as she charged herself with, but she was not a girl to do things by halves.  She sat, calmly looking at her own face, until the lines smoothed themselves out of her forehead, the dimples came back to her cheeks, and the laughter to her blue eyes.

“That’s better!” she said, wagging her head at the pretty, smiling face.  “Now, never again, Patty Fairfield, let me see you looking mopy or peevish about anything!  Mind, not about anything at all!  You have enough blessings and pleasures to make up for any disappointments that may come to you.  So, now that you’ve braced up, just stay braced up!  See?”

The scolding, though self-inflicted, did Patty good, and humming a lively tune, she busied herself with arranging some fans and frills in boxes to take away with her.

If stray thoughts of the Pageant or the Fancy Dance crept into her mind, she determinedly thrust them out, and forced her anticipations to the unknown fun and gaiety she would enjoy at the big Mountain Houses.