“If it’s funny to be a common-sense, rational human being, then I am funny!  Now, good-night, chickabiddy.  Mrs. Perry says she’ll send up our breakfast about nine to-morrow morning.  Hop into my room and have it with me, won’t you?”

Marie agreed to this arrangement, and gathering up her belongings, Patty slipped across the hall to her own room.

The wood fire had burnt down to red embers, and lowering the lights, Patty sat down for a few moments in a big fireside chair to think.

She had told the truth, that she did not want to think seriously of what Marie called “an especial liking” for anybody; but what Kenneth had said that evening troubled her.

Her friendship for Kenneth was so firm and strong, her real regard for him so deep and sincere, that she hated to have it intruded upon by a question of a more serious feeling.  And she had never suspected that any such question would arise.  But she could not mistake the meaning of Kenneth’s spoken wish that he might be capable of the gay conversation in which Patty delighted.

“Dear old Ken,” she said to herself, “he’s so nice just as he is, but when he tries to be funny, he—­well, he can’t, that’s all.  It isn’t his fault.  All the boys can’t be alike.  And I s’pose Ken is the nicest of them, after all.  He’s so true and reliable.  But I hope to gracious he isn’t going to fall in love with me.  That would spoil everything I Oh, well, I won’t cross that bridge until I come to it.  And if I have come to it,—­well, I won’t cross it, even then.  I’ll just stand stock-still, and wait.  I believe there’s a poem somewhere, that says: 

     “’Standing with reluctant feet
     Where the brook and river meet,—­
     Womanhood and childhood sweet.’

“I s’pose I have left childhood behind, but I feel a long way off from womanhood.  And yet, in a couple of months I’ll be twenty.  That does begin to sound aged!  But I know one thing, sure and certain:  I’ll wait till I am twenty, before I think about a serious love affair.  Suitors are all very well, but I wouldn’t be engaged to a man for anything!  Why, I don’t suppose he’d let me dance with anybody else, or have any fun at all!  No, sir-ee, Patricia Fairfield, you’re going to have two or three years of your present satisfactory existence, before you wear anybody’s diamond ring.  And now, my Lady Gay, you’d better skip to bed, for to-morrow night you have a theatre party in prospect, and you want to look fairly decent for that.”

The fire was burnt out now, and Patty was so sleepy that her head had scarcely touched the pillow before she fell asleep.

A light tap at her door awakened her the next morning, and Marie appeared, followed by Nora, with a breakfast tray.

“Wake up, curly-head-sleepy-head,” and Marie playfully tweaked Patty’s curls.  “Here, I’ll be your maid.  Here’s your nightingale, and here’s your breakfast cap.”