Just Patty by Jean Webster (the little red hen read aloud .TXT) 📕

strewed the floor with tissue paper and scarlet ribbon. She unpacked a wide assortment of gloves and books and trinkets, each with a message of love. Even the cook had baked a Christmas cake with a fancy top. And little Tommy, in wobbly uphill printing, had labeled an elephant filled with candy, "FOR DERE CISTER FROM TOM."

Patty laughed happily as she plumped a chocolate into her mouth, and dropped the elephant into Harriet's lap.

"Aren't they dears to go to such a lot of trouble? I tell you, it pays to stay away sometimes, they think such a lot more of you! This is from Mother," she added, as she pried off the cover of a big dressmaker's box, and lifted out a filmy dancing frock of pink crêpe.

"Isn't it perfectly sweet?" she demanded, "and I didn't need it a bit! Don't you love to get things you don't need?"

"I never do," said Harriet.

Patty was already deep in another parcel.

"From Daddy, with all the love in the world," she read. "Dear old Dad! What on earth do you s'pose it is? I hope Mother suggested something. He's a perfect idiot about choosing presents, unless--Oh!" she squealed. "Pink silk stockings and slippers to match; and look at those perfectly lovely buckles!"

She offered for Harriet's inspection a pink satin slipper adorned with the daintiest of silver buckles, and with heels dizzily suggestive of France.

"Isn't my father a lamb?" Patty gaily kissed her hand toward a dignified, judicial-looking portrait on the bureau. "Mother suggested the slippers, of course, but the buckles and French heels were his own idea. She likes me sensible, and he likes me frivolous."

She was deep in the absorbing business of holding the pink frock before the glass to make sure that the color was becoming, when she was suddenly arrested by the sound of a sob, and she turned to see Harriet throw herself across the bed and clutch the pillow in a storm of weeping. Patty stared with wide-open eyes; she herself did not indulge in such emotional demonstrations, and she could not imagine any possible cause. She moved the pink satin slippers out of reach of Harriet's thrashing feet, gathered up the fallen elephant and scattered chocolates, and sat down to wait until the cataclysm should pass.

"What's the matter?" she mildly inquired, when Harriet's sobs gave place to choking gasps.

"My father never sent me any s-silver b-buckles."

"He's way off in Mexico," said Patty, awkwardly groping for consolation.

"He never sends me anything! He doesn't even know me. He wouldn't recognize me if he met me on the street."

"Oh, yes, he would," Patty assured her with doubtful comfort. "You haven't changed a bit in four years."

"And he wouldn't like me if he did know me. I'm not pretty, and my clothes are never nice, and--" Harriet was off again.

Patty regarded her for a moment of thoughtful silence, then she decided on a new tack. She stretched out a hand and shook her vigorously.

"For goodness' sake, stop crying! That's what's the matter with your father. No man can stand having tears dripped down his neck all the time."

Harriet arrested her sobs to stare.

"If you could see the way you look when you cry! Sort of streaked. Come here!" She took her by the shoulder and faced her before the mirror. "Did you ever see such a fright? And I was just thinking, before you began, about how pretty you looked. I was, honestly. You could be as pretty as any of the rest of us, if you'd only make up your mind--"

"No, I couldn't! I'm just as ugly as I can be. Nobody likes me and--"

"It's your own fault!" said Patty sharply. "If you were fat, like Irene McCullough, or if you didn't have any chin like Evalina Smith, there might be some reason, but there isn't anything on earth the matter with you, except that you're so damp! You cry all the time, and it gets tiresome to be forever sympathizing. I'm telling you the truth because I'm beginning to like you. There's never any use bothering to tell people the truth when you don't like them. The reason Conny and Pris and I get on so well together, is because we always tell each other the exact truth about our faults. Then we have a chance to correct them--that's what makes us so nice," she added modestly.

Harriet sat with her mouth open, too surprised to cry.

"And your clothes are awful," pursued Patty interestedly. "You ought not to let Miss Sallie pick 'em out. Miss Sallie's nice; I like her a lot, but she doesn't know any more than a rabbit about clothes; you can tell that by the way she dresses herself. And then, too, you'd be a lot nicer if you wouldn't be so stiff. If you'd just laugh the way the rest of us do--"

"How can I laugh when I don't think things are funny? The jokes the girls make are awfully silly--"

Speech was no longer possible, for Kid McCoy came stampeding down the corridor with as much racket as a cavalcade of horses. She was decked in a fur scarf and a necklace set with pearls, she wore a muff on her head, drum-major fashion; a lace handkerchief and a carved ivory fan protruded from the pocket of her blouse and a pink chiffon scarf floated from her shoulders; her wrist was adorned with an Oriental bracelet and she was lugging in her arms a silver-mounted Mexican saddle, of a type that might be suited to the plains of Texas, but never to the respectable country lanes adjacent to St. Ursula's.

"Bully for Guardie!" she shouted as she descended upon them. "He's a daisy; he's a ducky; he's a lamb. Did you ever see such a perfectly corking saddle?"

She plumped it over a chair, transformed the pink chiffon scarf into a bridle, and proceeded to mount and canter off.

"Get up! Whoa! Hi, there! Clear the road."

Harriet jumped aside to avoid being bumped, while Patty snatched her pink