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

"What fun!" cried Patty. "Have you got him now? I should love to see a murderer."

"He left some time ago. The place was too slow for him."

"How long have you been working for Mr. Weatherby?" she asked.

"A good many years--and I've worked hard!" he added, with a slight air of challenge.

"I hope he appreciates you?"

"Yes, I think on the whole that he does."

He knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose.

"And now," he suggested, "should you like me to show you the Italian garden?"

"Oh, yes," said Patty, "if you think Mr. Weatherby wouldn't mind."

"I'm head gardener. I do what I please."

"If you're head gardener, what makes you plant onions?"

"It's tiresome work--good for my character."

"Oh!" Patty laughed.

"And then you see, when I have a tendency to overwork the men under me, I stop and think how my own back ached."

"You're much too nice a man to work for him!" she pronounced approvingly.

"Thank ye, Miss," he touched his hat with a grin.

The Italian garden was a fascinating spot, with marble steps and fountains and clipped yew trees.

"Oh, I wish Conny could see it!" Patty cried.

"And who is she?"

"Conny's my room-mate. She's awfully interested in gardens this year, because she's going to get the botany prize for analyzing the most plants--at least, I think she's going to get it. It's between her and Keren Hersey; all the rest of the class have dropped out. Mae Van Arsdale is working against Conny, to spite me, because I wouldn't stay in an old secret society that she started. She gets orchids from the city and gives them to Keren."

"H'm," he frowned over this tangle of intrigue. "Is it entirely fair for the rest to help?"

"Oh, yes!" said Patty. "They have to do the analyzing, but their friends can collect and paste. Every time anybody goes for a walk, she comes back with her blouse stuffed full of specimens for either Conny or Keren. The nice girls are for Conny. Keren's an awful dig. She wears eye-glasses and thinks she knows everything."

"I'm for Miss Conny myself," he declared. "Is there any way in which I could help?"

Patty glanced about tentatively.

"You have quite a number of plants," she suggested, "that Conny hasn't got in her book."

"You shall take back as many as you can carry," he promised. "We'll pay a visit to the orchid house."

They left the garden behind, and turned toward the glass roofs of the conservatories. Patty was so entertained, that she had entirely forgotten the passage of time, until she came face to face with a clock in the gable of the carriage house; then she suddenly realized that St. Ursula's luncheon had been served three quarters of an hour before--and that she was in a starving condition.

"Oh, goodness gracious! I forgot all about luncheon!"

"Is it a very grave crime to forget about luncheon?"

"Well," said Patty, with a sigh, "I sort of miss it."

"I might furnish you with enough to sustain life for a short time," he suggested.

"Oh, could you?" she asked relievedly.

She was accustomed to having a table spread three times a day, and she cared little who furnished it.

"Just some milk," she said modestly, "and some bread and butter and--er--cookies. Then, you see, I won't have to go back till four o'clock when they come from the station, and maybe I can slip in without being missed."

"You just wait in the pavilion, and I'll see what the gardener's cottage can supply us."

He was back in fifteen minutes, chuckling as he lugged a big hamper.

"We'll have a picnic," he proposed.

"Oh, let's!" said Patty joyously. She did not mind eating with him in the least, for he had washed his hands, and appeared quite clean.

She helped him unpack the hamper and set the table in the little pavilion beside the fountain. He had lettuce sandwiches, a pat of cottage cheese, a jug of milk, orange marmalade, sugar cookies, and gingerbread hot from the oven.

"What a perfectly bully spread!" she cried.

He held out his hand.

"Another penny!"

Patty peered into an empty pocket.

"You'll have to charge it. I've used up all my ready money."

The spring sun was warm, the fountain was splashing, the wind was sprinkling the pavilion floor with white magnolia petals. Patty helped herself to marmalade with a happy sigh of contentment.

"The most fun in the world is to run away from the things you ought to do," she pronounced.

He acknowledged this immoral truth with a laugh.

"I suppose you ought to be working?" she asked.

"There are one or two little matters that might be the better for my attention."

"And aren't you glad you're not doing them?"

"Bully glad!"

She held out her hand.

"Give it back."

The cent returned to her pocket, and the meal progressed gaily. Patty was in an elated frame of mind, and Patty's elation was catching. Escaping from bounds, trespassing on a private estate, planting onions, and picnicking in the Italian garden with the head gardener--she had never had such a dizzying whirl of adventures. The head gardener also seemed to enjoy the sensation of offering sanctuary to a runaway school girl. Their appreciation of the lark was mutual.

As Patty, with painstaking honesty, was dividing the last of the gingerbread into two exact halves, she was startled by the sound of a footstep on the gravel path behind; and there walked into their party a groom--a crimson-faced, gaping young man who stood mechanically bobbing his head. Patty stared back a touch apprehensively. She hoped that she hadn't got her friend into trouble. It was very possibly against the rules for gardeners to entertain runaway school girls in the Italian garden. The groom continued to stare and to duck his head, and her companion rose and faced him.

"Well?" he inquired with a note of sharpness. "What do you want?"

"Beg pardon, sir, but this telegram come, and Richard says it might be important, sir, and he says for me to find you, sir."

He received the telegram, ran his eyes over it, scribbled an answer on the back with a gold pencil which