"Oh, I just love to do it!" cried Patricia. "I love to do anything for you--you've been so nice to me. I'll go the very first minute after I've straightened you up and had some breakfast. I'm so glad it isn't my lesson morning." Rosamond's improvement delighted her, and she danced off to attend to her various duties with a light heart. Breakfast over, she did her errand, and after a short walk in the Park she came back to find Rosamond in a flush of fever. The doctor, when he came at her anxious bidding, assured her it meant nothing, that Miss Merton was recovering as rapidly as possible; but Patricia was so disturbed and unhappy over her friend's condition that she sat down and telephoned to Elinor that she could not go to the opera with them and that she had asked Constance Fellows and Marie Graham--the shabby entertaining friend--to go in the place of Rosamond and herself. To Elinor's expostulations and arguments, she had one answer: "She has been too good to me for me to leave her now," and her disappointed sister was forced to be content with that. When, the next morning, she found that Rosamond was fulfilling the doctor's predictions and getting well by leaps, she was not sorry for her self-denial. "I'm glad I could do it for her," she said, nodding at herself in the quaint mirror above her dresser. "I shall always do things for her, because I just _love_ to." CHAPTER XI THE REWARD OF THE FAITHFUL "I think Miss Pat is simply foolish over Miss Merton," said Judith, with an uneasy note in her calm voice. "We haven't seen anything of her for a week, and now she's trying to back out of coming Sunday night, just because her Rosamond is going to sing at Mrs. Filmore's and they've asked Miss Pat to come and worship." Elinor had just come in. Her cheeks were tinted with the crisp air and her eyes were dancing with the brisk walk home through the Park. She tossed her muff on the divan and made a laughing face at her disturbed small sister. "Never mind, Judy, you still have us," she said brightly. "Constance is coming and Doris Leighton too, and we'll have to give Miss Pat up to such a fine opportunity. Rosamond has not been singing 'publicly,' as she calls it, so it will be a great treat, no doubt." "Yes, but she will simply have to miss it," declared Judith firmly. "Tell her, will you, Elinor, when she comes in that she must come tomorrow?" Elinor hesitated, and Judith burst out, "Well, then, if I have to tell! Mrs. Shelly told me that Mrs. Nat was coming in to surprise us, and of course Miss Pat must be here." "What's that about me?" asked Patricia, appearing in the doorway from the bedroom, where she had been sewing a button on her glove while she waited for Elinor to come home. "Who's requesting the pleasure of my society?"