“A ramble through the park?”

“More woodsy than that.  The park is almost like the city.”

“Well, a picnic to Bronx Park, then, or Van Cortlandt.”

“That sounds better.  But I’ll come to any party you make,—­I know it will be lovely.  Oh, I’ll tell you, Patty, what I’d like best.  To go on one of your Saturday afternoon jinks; with the queer, poor people, you know.”

“They’re not queer and they’re not always very poor,” returned Patty, seriously; “I’m afraid you’d tease them or make fun of them.”

“Honest Injun, I wouldn’t!  Please let me go, and I’ll be heavenly nice to them.  They’ll simply adore me!  Please, pretty Patty!”

“Of course I will, since you’ve promised to be nice to them.”

“Oh, you lovely Patty!  Don’t you sometimes get tired of being so pink and white?”

“Of course I do.  I wish I could be brown and dark-eyed like you.”

“You’d soon wish yourself back again.  Can’t you combine the woodsy party and the Happy Chaps, or whatever you call them?”

“I think we can,” smiled Patty, who had already planned a Saturday afternoon picnic, and would be glad to include Bee.

“But Bee has to learn to behave properly at formal parties,” said Marie.  “I’m going to give a luncheon for her, while she’s at home, and it’s going to be entirely grown-up and conventional.”

“Don’t want it!” and Bee scowled darkly.

“That doesn’t matter.  Mother says we must have it, and that you must behave properly.  You have to learn these things, you know.”

“Oh, Bee will do just exactly right, I know,” said Patty, as she rose to go.  “If she doesn’t, we can’t let her come to the picnic.  When is the luncheon, Marie?”

“We haven’t quite decided yet, but I must send out the invitations in a day or two.”

Patty went home, thinking about this sister of Marie’s.

“She’s an awfully attractive little piece,” she said to Nan, later, “but you never can tell what she’s going to do next.  I think if she had the right training, she’d be a lovely girl, but Mrs. Homer and Marie spoil her with indulgence and then suddenly scold her for her unconventionality.  Perhaps the school she’s attending will bring her out all right, but she’s a funny combination of naughty child and charming girl.  She would stop at nothing, and I don’t wonder that they say when she and Kit Cameron get together, look out for breakers.”

A few days later, Patty received an invitation to Marie’s luncheon for her sister.

It was formally written, and the date set was Tuesday, April the eighth, at half-past one.  Patty noted the day on her engagement calendar, and thought no more about it at the time.  But a day or two later it suddenly occurred to her that she had heard that Beatrice was to return to school on the seventh of April.

“I must be mistaken about her going back,” Patty thought, remembering the luncheon on the eighth, and then, lest she herself might be mistaken in the date, she looked at the invitation again.  It read “the eighth,” and though Marie’s handwriting was scrawly and not very legible, the figure eight was large and plain.