“Oh, because I’m such a good forgiver.  I’d forgive anybody, anything.”

“Huh! then it isn’t much of a compliment to have your forgiveness!”

“Well, why should I pay you compliments?”

“That’s so!  Why should you?  In fact, it ought to be the other way.  Let me pay them to you.”

“Oh, I don’t care much about them.  I get quite a lot, you see—­”

“I see you’re a spoiled baby, that’s what you are!”

“Now,—­Little Billee!” and Patty’s tone was cajoling, and her sideways glance and smile very provoking.

“And I’d like to do my share of the spoiling!” he continued, looking at her laughing, dimpled face and wind-tossed curls.

“So you shall!  Begin just as soon as you like and spoil me all you can,” said Patty, still in gay fooling, when she suddenly remembered Daisy’s prohibition of this sort of fun.

“Of course I don’t mean all this,” she said, suddenly speaking in a matter-of-fact tone.

“But I do, and I shall hold you to it.  You know I have your blossom wreath; I’ve saved it as a souvenir of last night.”

“That forlorn bit of drowned finery!  Oh, Little Billee, I thought you were poetical!  No poet could keep such a tawdry old souvenir as that!”

“It isn’t tawdry.  I dried it carefully, and picked the little petals all out straight, and it’s really lovely.”

“Then if it’s in such good shape, I wish you’d give it back to me to wear.  I was fond of that wreath.”

“No, it’s mine now.  I claim right of salvage.  But I’ll give you another in place of it,—­if I may.”

Patty didn’t answer this, for Daisy, tired of being neglected, leaned her head over between the two, and commenced chattering.

The two girls were well wrapped up in coats and veils Mona had brought them, but they were both glad when they came in sight of “Red Chimneys.”

Patty went gaily off to her own rooms, saying she was going to have a bath and a breakfast, and then she was going to sleep for twenty-four hours.

“I’m not,” announced Daisy.  “I’m going to make a straight dive for the breakfast room.  Come with me, Bill, and see that I get enough to eat.”

Roger, Mona, and the Kenerleys were going for an ocean dip, and Laurence Cromer, who was a late riser, had not yet put in an appearance.  Aunt Adelaide was with Patty, hearing all about the adventure, so Bill was obliged to accept Daisy’s rather peremptory invitation.

“What’s the matter with you, Bill?” asked the girl, as she threw off her motor coat and sat at the table in her low-necked party gown.

“Nothing.  I say, Daisy, why don’t you go and get into some togs more suitable for 9 A.M.?”

“Because I’m hungry.  Yes, James, omelet, and some of the fried chicken.  Bill, don’t you like me any more?”

“Yes, of course I do.  But you ought to act more,—­more polite, you know.”